Good Beer Guide 2011

In message , Offramp wrote

CAMRA have always had expensive prices, especially when adding their postage charges, for the GBG - even if you are a member and pre-order and pay direct debit. There is no benefit in being a member when it comes to buying their publications.

Amazon are currently £10.12 incl. postage which is 27p cheaper than it was last month on pre-order.

BTW, for £5 you can now download from the CAMRA web site the GBG2011 POI (Points of Interest) file for popular SatNavs. The POI file also has the locations for the UK breweries.

Unless you get yourself off to a branch meeting of course. Our branch is selling them for a tenner (nice round figure, saves the Treasurer a lot of work).

-- Pat Ricroft, City of Salford, UK ===============================

here, too here hear!

In article , Alan writes

Nonsense. I do that and I had mine delivered in the second week of September for £10 including postage.

So CAMRA are cheaper.

After the motion at this years' AGM, I suspect that CAMRA has taken steps to ensure that Amazon can't undercut members.

Roy.

In message , Roy Bailey wrote

A further reduction at Amazon!

CAMRA (member price) = £12.50 CAMRA (non-member) = £15.49 Amazon = £9.98

All incl postage.

historically it hasnt always been that way though, CAMRA traditionally just discounted their books for members by only a percent or two off the RRP.

which was crazy because no-one has been charging RRP on books since the net book agreement collapsed well over a decade ago

well CAMRA always said that Amazon were loss leading with the GBG, as it was a popular enough book to drive sales of other goods, and it wouldnt be in CAMRA's interests to get into a price war, since its the profits gained from the GBG which actually pay for it and lots of other less popular books to be published.

so the fact CAMRAs price this year, and dont forget that AGM motion was defeated, is more competative may well mean there are consequences for the other books they publish that we have yet to see

Aw

In message , awavey wrote

CAMRA could stop these sales by not supplying Amazon in the first place, I suspect however neither CAMRA or Amazon are losing money on sales of the discounted GBG.

There are local branches of CAMRA that promote the sale of the GBG from Amazon through their own web sites. The branch then gets a commission on the sale for their branch funds.

BTW, the Amazon price has dropped by another 10p today.

Oh dear - that's new!

Apparently not. From what I've been told, CAMRA don't supply Amazon direct, they sell to a wholesaler who then sells on to Amazon, amongst others. And there could be legal ramifications anyway if CAMRA tried to restrict trade in that way. But from the Campaign's point of view, anything that gets more copies of the GBG into the hands of more drinkers has to be beneficial.

-- Pat Ricroft, City of Salford, UK ===============================

In article , awavey writes

Then the fact that CAMRA's price is more competitive this year must lie with the other sellers, because my copy has remained £10 since I started subscribing by DD about 5 years ago.

Roy.

More to the point, is it worth buying at all?

It's generally too cumbersome to be taken about on a day out; it's out of date on the day it's published (by 2011, the year it is supposed to represent, how many landlords will have changed, pubs closed, new pubs opened, new breweries opened, old breweries closed, beers changed etc?); and given the space limitations of the guide, it only scratches the surface of pubs in any given area.

In the years before the Internet, I used to photocopy the relevant pages of my guide - a couple of sheets of A4 being a lot more portable than 800 or so pages of mainly irrelevant information. When I mentioned this once to an CAMRA executive he turned pale, demanded that I immediately destroy the photocopies under the threat of prosecution for copyright infringement!

But now we have the Internet. We have local CAMRA branch pages, often lisitng every pub in the area. We have sites like Beer in the Evening (to be treated with a certain amound of scepticism, but still a pointer). We have individual pub websites, often listing current guest beers. We have far more relevant and detailed information on any specific area than a mere book could provide.

So, if we're visiting an area for a pub crawl, I'll go to the regional CAMRA website, go to the pubs' own websites, look at some of the pub consumer sites, print out a map on Google Maps, and put red blobs where there are promising looking pubs. I'll even suss out bus and train routes. Cost? Nil! Up to date and comprehensive? Certainly better than the GBG!

I once got told off by a self righteous person at the Fat Cat in Sheffield for daring to have copies of the Sheffield pages of the GBG in my pocket.

Nowadays as you say its a lot easier to trawl the local camra branch website, but I understand that they have STRICT instructions not to have a web page featuring their GBG listed pubs.

What I tend to do is read the local camra mag if its on there. The adverts and comments soon point you in the right direction. And it's more up to date.

Anyway looks like it's off to Mr Amazon for me.,

I suppose for the technically au fait, the mobile app might be the answer at £5. It claims to list all the pubs in the GBG and is compatible with most mobile phones.

I'd be interested to know if anyone has had experience of this and whether it's worthwhile.

But, with reference ot my earlier post and your comments, why bother?!!

..and I almost forgot, we also have this site, which is frequented by knowledgeable CAMRA members et al ; )

I have got this for tomtom and all it does is give you the name, address, phone and postcode - no description or beers etc

I recently got the mobile Android version.

Still some glitches to sort out but it has all the pub facilities, address, phone, full GBG description etc. Beers are listed not just with names but with full descriptions too. Useful features include a "Near me" button which lists and maps all the pubs around your current location, a lot simpler than the printed version in London for instance where it is hard to find where you are in relation to the order of entries in the guide.

Cheers!

Users are legally entitled to photocopy small extracts from a copyrighted work for personal use.This is a perfectly reasonable action.

I wonder if there's one jobsworth touring the country telling the [people off.

Or wether there's a whole army of them..

Thinking about it, this being Camra , must be the latter.