This book was originally issued in 1987 and the work by John Townson, Gordon Minto and George Richardson became a classic. For those who really don’t know: it sums up all UK record releases in all its variations for labels and sleeves. In other words a must have for the die-hard collector.
Design
The book got a few (digital) add-ons over the years, but the original is still doing well in the second hand circuit. Nowadays it is too expensive to issue a work like this in print, so a reprint is nearly impossible. So John Townson and Gordon Minto decided to do a digital upgrade and re-issued the book with bonus material in the form of a ‘flipbook’: basically a scan of the original book. You can ‘thumb’ through it as if it’s a real book.
On my (23”) monitor it works pretty neat. Unfortunately my eyes (or glasses) are just not good enough to read it without zooming. Gladly the zoom function works okay and the pages still fit completely in the browser content-wise, when it reaches a readable size.
An extra plus of this digital format is that the search function works great. You’ll end up at the place you want without having to browse to it.
Last, but not least… if you really want it on paper: there is a print button!
Content
As said, for record collectors it is a must have. For others, like myself, it depends a lot. I like to read about background history, the production process and such. So I got plenty of reading pleasure from it. You should not get the wrong impression though, it’s not your regular ‘Elvis book’, but it is really a book about Elvis records.
Conclusion
It’s a good move by the authors to make this book available (again), if you are interested you can go to their website Elvis UK Books to find more information and order it.