Our colleague and friend, Ann DeVere - Plaza Books - and her henchwench, Maryann, mentioned at the dinner table last night that a customer came in to her store with a collection of Elvis-iana, which all of us would cheerfully buy. Ann bought most of the books, but passed on the Elephant Folio - 24 x 32 x 3 inches - piece. The book was quite pricey, but the problems inherent in preserving the quality of the book in a store are almost insurmountable. Selling the book on-line, as Ann does, poses truly insurmountable problems - the damn thing is so big and heavy, and consequently fragile, that it would almost have to be shipped by truck. Ah yes, the problems of bookstore ownership. Believe it or not, there is a bigger book - the largest in the world:
How about 5 feet tall, 7 feet wide, and weighing in at 133 pounds ? That's Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey. And this from the country that placed itself on the map by issuing postage stamps !
It's interesting that Amazon lists the shipping weight for this book at 5.6 pounds. The lowest used price is $777.77 with the highest, maybe to help cover the free shipping, at $300,131.36.
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