There was a time when I couldn't wait for genealogical publishers to send me their new listings. Somewhere in those pages was a book that I would use that would help my research. Nowadays, there aren't any books being published that can help me and those that might seem to take forever to come out. Presently I'm waiting on a Winslow book by Brandon Fradd, the last book of the Dean Smith ancestry by Melinde Sanborn, and many of us have been waiting for the better part of a decade for the all my ancestor book by Brice Claggett. The Winslow was due in October and the others are due out maybe in the spring.
I just got the latest catalogue from Heritage Books. I used to love that publisher. It was run by a New Hampshire-ite and it had so many good books for my own research. My bookshelves are lined with HB logos. However, HB was merged with two other companies and now they don't publish anything worthy. Their new books on New Hampshire consist of a running series of vital records per town starting in 1890. Well, you know my view of 1890--it just happened. The other two books are newspaper abstracts, which I love. Except it is for single years (1824 and 1835) for the New Hampshire Patriot Gazette of Concord, which is fully-searchable in America's Historical Newspapers 1690-1922, for its entire run from 1809 to 1872. So why would I buy those books?
So much of genealogical publishing went away with the advent of the computer and CDs. It is far more profitable to take a book that is in the public domain and resell it as a pdf image in CD. Trouble is, I've been doing this for thirty years and there isn't a book published before 1950 that I haven't already used in a library. So this boom for publishers and for newbie genealogists helps me not a bit.
Picton Press started a run of original primary sources for the state of Maine which is great, but way overpriced in my book. All deeds and probate per county, in pdf format, which is great. They also have all the original town books, but each CD is $50 a pop. I love their cemeteries series on CD and their marriage return series--both are excellent. I wish other states would emulate Maine in this regard.
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