New! Improved! Updated!

We are thrilled to announce that Colossal Books has published a brand-new edition of William J. Brown's American Colossus: the Grain Elevator 1843-1942. First published in 2009, American Colossus remains the only book-length history of the invention, development and widespread adoption of the mechanized grain elevator in Buffalo, NY, and elsewhere, starting in 1843.

This new edition includes 16 new pictures and updates. It is also shorter and cheaper!

Buy a copy here.

Small Book Fair in Cincinnati

Between 2 and 4 pm on Saturday 6 November 2010, a Small Press Fair will be held at the Contemporary Arts Center, 44 East 6th Street, in downtown Cincinnati. Colossal Books will have a table at this event, and copies of our publications will be available for sale.

Availability through Amazon.com

American Colossus: the Grain Elevator, 1843 to 1943 is now available from Amazon.

Where to buy a copy

American Colossus still isn't available on Amazon, but I'm sure it will be by October of this year. In the meantime, you can still buy it through Lulu. The price will be the same ($29.99) in either case.

To date, 34 copies of the book have been sold. Two-thirds of them (22 copies) were purchased by Colossal Books (which re-sold 15 of them and gave 7 of them away to potential reviewers); and one-third (12 copies) were purchased by others through Lulu. To all those people who have bought a copy of American Colossus: thank you very much!

Where not to buy a copy

Edwin Mellen Press claims that, come 31 July 2009, it will publish a book by William J. Brown entitled History of the Grain Elevators of Buffalo, New York. This claim that has led ecampus.com and a distributor in Taiwan to believe that it will carry the title -- though it is "not yet printed" -- "as soon as it arrives."

Please be informed that this title will never be published by Edwin Mellen Press, nor will it be distributed by ecampus.com or books.com.tw. Anyone who has placed an advance order for this book through any of these companies should demand a refund of their one-hundred-plus dollars (!) immediately.

Buying a copy

American Colossus can be ordered through www.lulu.com. Search for item number 6054599 or the phrase "grain elevator" and scroll down. It will not be available through Amazon, etc. for another month or so, which is a fact that might actually please some of our readers and not displease them, as might be expected: unlike Lulu, which publishes copies of the book on demand for a modest fee (plus production costs), Amazon will distribute copies of it for an exorbitant fee. Indeed, I will make more money per sale with Lulu than with Amazon, even though Amazon's reach is global. (So there is no mystery: each book costs approximately $13 to produce.)

Anyway, when you reach Lulu's page devoted to American Colossus, you will find a short preview of the book's content: the front cover; the frontispiece (an illustration of the Watson Elevator in Buffalo circa 1885 that makes the elevator look dark and menacing); a pair of epigraphs concerning America as "Colossus" that set the stage for the book's subsequent shifts between light and dark tones; the table of contents; the short preface by Marshall Brown (no relation), who is a designer and architect employed by the Illinois Institute of Technology; and the backcover, which carries blurbs about the book and its author.

In future blog posts, I will upload the book's introduction and illustrations, and any other items that might spark our readers' imaginations, if not convince them to buy a copy of the Colossus, as well.