In reply to Offwidth:
Dear Mr Offwidth
You really should get out of the Peak more.
> Maybe the new bumper sizes are a mistake in terms of production schedules (I do wonder now how many average CC sized guides it would add up to?)
I would tell you but I don't think there is an 'average' CC guide, Clogwyn Du’r Arddu is 192 pages Meirionnydd is 512 pages, The Sandstone Outcrops of the Forest of Dean is 184, West Cornwall is 472. At least two of those look like ‘bumper sizes’.
> The BMC have taken on a much more labour intensive format with this series (full colour, a more complex layout with photo topos).
Exactly what the CC have done also, have you noticed the 5 guides printed in the last two years in full colour with photo topos and loads more maps and action photos?
> For the main Peak definitive guides the books are also much bigger. The current guidebook we are discussing has well over double the content of the total of the two previous guidebooks it overlaps with (it includes 95% of the previous Chatsworth guide content and about 45% of the previous Froggatt, plus new crags, new routes, and a shed load of bouldering and proportionally more 'features'.).
Care to take a look at the Meirionnydd guide, everything from the old Mid-Wales guide, some very remote mountain crags in there, plus a brand new area, Rhinogau, that had never been in a guidebook before. Also, published more recently, a brand new guide to an area that had never appeared in print before, The Sandstone Outcrops of the Forest of Dean.
> You come and check some of those Chatsworth guide quarries for us and see if you change your mind. A good number of routes in this guide have taken a disproportionate amount of time; many of the obscure ones being filthy and possibly even unclimbed since the last guide. I know this is a much harder job as Stanage was not an especially dissimilar task for us as say a Rockfax and was done and dusted in a comparative whirlwind of activity (another reason I don’t believe your costings)
How hard? Compared to what? To mention a few:
Lundy (hard to access sea cliffs in a place where you can only climb part of the year and you have pre-book both your transport and accommodation just to get there before you even start guidebook work)
Clogwyn Du’r Arddu (good climbing conditions for only part of the year, routes often in poor condition and very weather dependent)
Lleyn (some of the most serious and inaccessible climbing outside of Scotland)
North Devon and Cornwall (also numerous difficult to access crags with tricky tides)
Let’s take an easy benchmark, the year 2000, the millennium, between then and now the CC have published 15 guidebooks, with no professional paid officer support. Just keen dedicated volunteers backed up by experienced production workers and included in that the introduction of a new all-colour design. Have you seen the reviews of the Lundy and Southern Sandstone guides?