That's pretty typical for academic books. It's just a matter of the publisher needing to recoup their expenses with such a small market demographic.

It would be cool if they were available as ebooks - more economical for everyone - even though "The Hoya Handbook" would be lovely in coffee-table-book-sizes, for sure.

Kloppenburg is very generous about sharing files, so I think they do want to make these resources available to more people. It just might not be feasible using the traditional print medium.

We need a book share program. The "book renter" pays a deposit to the book owner, receives the book by mail, then when done mails it back or to the next book renter and gets the deposit back. I guess I am describing a virtual library for books not available at normal libraries. Netflix of sorts, you know, back in the days when they were mailing DVDs around.

That's a neat idea, GT, but when it comes to these kinds of books, like my C&S books, I want to have it to refer to when I get a species that's new. I know with the internet, you have lots of resources - thank goodness for that! You young'uns are so lucky to have all this information at your fingertips. Back when I started collecting, it was so hard to find ANYthing out there to read about Hoyas, let alone the actual plants... So don't get me wrong - I'm grateful to have the resources I do have!

And thank you, GG, for the little surprise in my e-mail this morning. Bless you, lady!

Denise in Omaha