He’s playing by the (biggest) book

THE PRINCIPLE

There’s always interest in what is the most (anything)

The books published by Kraken Sports and Media are extreme. How extreme? Well, they weigh upwards of 40 kgs, measure nearly 2 feet square and are 850 pages long. And, oh yes, they cost between £1400 (their cheapest title) and £70,000.

The publisher, Karl Fowler, doesn’t call it a book, he calls it an Opus. One example is History of the Saatchi Gallery, featuring more than 1000 images as well as essays by eminent art critics and collectors, and protected in an inlaid wooden case. It’s an exclusive limited edition of 950, each individually numbered and signed by Charles Saatchi. The price was £2250, but all the copies were snapped up. As of this writing, you can still order their F1 Opus, Champions Edition, for £20,000. If you don’t have that much in your wallet, not to worry, they have easy payment plans.

‘We’re doing something that’s never been done before,’ Fowler told The Times. ‘It’s something iconic.’ That’s not an overstatement: The Times reported that the Opus on Manchester United changed hands for £1 million.

These prices may sound like madness if you think of these as books, but in fact they are works of art containing many one-of-a-kind images. Fowler has said they fit in a niche that is resilient to almost any economic downturn. This makes sense when you hear that the million-pound Man U volume was number 777, bought by a collection of investors in the Middle East, where that is a lucky number.

The message is that there is always a lot of potential at the margins – certain people are willing to pay a lot to have the biggest and the best, or just something few other people have.

However, Opus aren’t ignoring those of us with thinner wallets. They’re making many of their titles available for the Kindle and the iPad. As of this writing, the Official Ferrari Opus HD for iPad, for instance, is available for about £5.

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