“Presbyopia. He was squinting at fine print, holding the paper at arm’s length, avoiding paperbacks because the print was too small. A week after he got his first pair of reading glasses he started looking for office space. Within a month he’d signed a lease here and given notice at Newbold. I was an assistant in the production department there, on the phone every day arguing with printers while I dreamed about becoming the next Maxwell Perkins and fanning some young spark into the next literary bonfire. ‘Ellie,’ he said, ‘the world is filling up with old farts with weak eyes and there’s nothing out there for them to read. Once you get past thirty-odd editions of the Bible, the only large-type books are The Power of Positive Thinking and The Book of Mormon. If this isn’t an opportunity I don’t know what one is. Why don’t you come work for me? You’ll never get to meet a real writer or wear out a blue pencil, and I don’t figure we’ll ever get rich, but I bet we have fun.”  —The Devil Knows You’re Dead, chapter 14

The speaker quoted above, the former employer of murder victim Glenn Holtzmann, is a bit player in the eleventh Matthew Scudder novel. She never appeared in later volumes, but I’m apt to think of her when the subject of Large-Print books comes up. And it came up just the other day when a reader emailed wondering what books of mine were available in that format.

Many of them have been at one time or another, I told him, but most have gone out of print, and can be hard to find in the aftermarket. And then I remembered that I had a box of LP editions in the storeroom, and got David on the case. We now have over 25 Large-Print volumes on offer at LB’s eBay Bookstore. They’re all signed, all fresh and new and unread, and with few exceptions we’ve got only single copies. Some are hardcover, some are trade paperback; most are US editions but some are from the UK. Some make use of the cover art from the original editions, while others sport new covers that arguably make them collectible.

We decided to keep it simple, and priced everything at $9.99 plus shipping. If you buy several titles, rather than pay on the spot, request that we send you an invoice. That’ll reduce your overall shipping charges.

I expect most of these will go in a hurry. As a blog subscriber, you’re getting first word, but I’ll repeat the announcement in the next newsletter. So, if you’re one of those presbyopic folks with whom the world is filling up, you might want to strike (or press your shirt) while the iron is hot. Here’s that link again: LARGE-PRINT BOOKS

LB