Thanks to all the people who have said nice things about The Lovely Reed over the years.  Though it seems odd to say it myself, people have said that it pretty much covers what needs to be covered and that they enjoy its conversational tone.  I worked hard on it and I think it came out well, and if you're interested in building bamboo fly rods, or merely curious about how they are made and what makes a good one, I think you'll like it.  Hardcover, 191 pages, lots of photos.

 When The Lovely Reed went out of print and the original publisher declined to reprint it, I thought, "Well, I guess that's that."  But, just a few years later, prices for used copies edged past $200, and then $400.  I shopped around for a publisher, but the publishers I was interested in didn't see enough volume, and publishers who were interested in me couldn't provide the assurances or control I needed, so, with the help of Alan Kube, I self-published it.  A lot of books are printed offshore these days, which was a sticking point for me.  This second edition was printed to exactly the same specs as the first edition by Thompson-Shore in Ann Arbor, Michigan who also printed the first edition.

When the book came out, and the initial flurry of orders (the result of nothing more than a PDF order form circulated online) settled down, I put the book up on Amazon for the cover price of $50, started supplying a couple of middlemen who supplied the trade, and thought, job done.  But then books stopped selling on Amazon, and I heard from a couple of people who said they couldn't find it and thought it had gone back out of print.  Somehow the ID numbers that one uses to search for an item on Amazon had gotten changed, and the reprint had been assigned a separate number that was subordinate to the Pruett edition and therefore not directly searchable.  I'm not sure there's a short, non-complicated way to tell the story of weeks of circuitous wrangling with Amazon, where just as one "team member" seemed to understand the situation and agree on a solution, another "team member" who knew nothing would get tagged in and the process would begin all over again, so let's just say that it's a lot harder to find this book at the cover price than I intended it to be.  Some merchants feel comfortable selling the reprint at prices one might expect for the Pruett edition, but after reflection I concluded that since that works only if customers aren't aware of their options and I'm the only one whose responsibility it is to publicize the reprint, it's my own damned fault.  So, I started this site.  

With any luck I'll get to the point where typing "the lovely reed" into your search engine will bring up this website.  It will take some traffic, though (at this writing, it's up to page two from page four), so if you wouldn't mind helping out with a Facebook share or like or by letting fellow builders know, that would be great.  Apparently linking to this site makes more of an impression on Google than just visiting.

To order a copy, just click on one of the "Buy" buttons on the home page, or scroll down to the next page for the buttons, along with a little more verbiage about shipping and such.  The PayPal button is at the bottom, below the picture of the book.  If you're old school and want to write a check, email me and I'll send you an order form.  I don't care where you buy the book, and strictly speaking it's none of my business how much you pay for it, but unless you are a collector who specifically wants a Pruett edition, there's no need to pay more than $50 plus shipping, unless you just really want to.

Book dealers, I'll be glad to discuss volume discounts if you'll contact me by email.  I'm all for small business and for the widest possible distribution, but the cause and effect of of my wholesaling, at least in the past year, seems to indicate presence of the "hoping for A while rewarding for B" error.  I'm trying to work out how to supply the guy who will sell the book for $50 in his shop, not the guy who will put it on Amazon or ABE for $150.