"6 - 7" and O. Henry: eBook and Paperback

Marketplace
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About a month ago I caught part of a 1952 movie, O. Henry’s Full House. I’ve watched the whole thing before, but this time a plot development in one of the five stories depicted—“The Clarion Call”—caught my attention, and I wanted to go back to the original O. Henry short story.

In the process of searching for it, I learned that one of O. Henry’s seventeen collections of short stories is called Sixes and Sevens. I went to Amazon and searched the title, and found only one version for sale: it was part of an omnibus of several of OH’s books, and fairly expensive. Looked as though it had tiny font in the paperback edition, too: a common issue with self-published public domain works.

Since there didn’t appear to be any competition, I decided to create an edition that would include extras, such as an introduction that would discuss the current “six-seven” craze.

KDP (Kindle Direct, the self-publishing division) told me I had to add more than just an introduction and editing, so I added ten illustrations. They found this acceptable and published both a paperback (size 13 font!!!) and Kindle eBook.

The downside: as soon as I was published, Amazon started showing about a dozen other self-published editions of Sixes and Sevens, most of which had been put up on the site a decade or so back. And annoyingly, neither of my two versions is linked to the other: my paperback is linked to someone else’s eBook, and my eBook is linked to someone else’s paperback!

GRRRRRRR…

At any rate my editions are nicer than the others: more readable and with better additional features.

PAPERBACK: Sixes and Sevens: Edited, Illustrated, & with an Introduction by: Henry, O., Lowry, K. Sherrerd, Lowry, K. Sherrerd: 9781945939082: Amazon.com: Books?

eBook: Sixes and Sevens: Edited, Illustrated, and with an Introduction by K. Sherrerd Lowry - Kindle edition by Henry, O., Lowry, K. Sherrerd. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

Inexpensive, and worth a look if you’re an O. Henry fan!

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How is this different than the half-dozen versions of this book that have been available for free on Project Gutenberg ( Sixes and Sevens by O. Henry | Project Gutenberg ) for the past 25 years?

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Am I the only one who thought the thread was about the stupid 6 - 7 thing the kids are doing?

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No, you are not. I was hoping to find an explanation for the whole stupid thing. I know a couple of kids who will, unrelated to anything else, just answer in response to a prompt, “six seven”, then break out laughing as if it was the funniest thing they ever heard. It doesn’t matter what you ask. If they’re trying to get me to ignore them, it’s working.

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It tangentially is:

We have had a thread about it:

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Thanks, @Thudlow_Boink —yes, the connection is that I discuss the craze in the introduction. Obviously I acknowledge that O. Henry’s work has nothing to do with the craze, but it did seem reasonable to note that the reason that kids love screaming out “six seven” is related to the human propensity to want to stick a finger in the eye of Authority. And O. Henry does treat that aspect of human nature in several of his stories.

Also as mentioned in the OP, I did a search of Amazon before embarking on this project and at that time they offered for sale ONLY a huge compendium of O. Henry books-in-one, with tiny font. Because of this a new edition seemed like a fair idea. Amazon chose to start promoting all the editions published in 2016 etc. only AFTER they accepted my version for publication.

As to what’s different in my edition: as mentioned I created not only an Introduction but also illustrations. I used a readable font size, too (13-point) unlike that found in other versions up for sale.

I also did some editing—always a fraught topic. Most of it consists only in changing spellings; for example he consistently wrote “to-day” and “to-morrow,” and I removed the hyphens. There were a lot of British spellings, too. I was unable to confirm that the American Mr. Porter DID submit his manuscripts with “colour” instead of color, etc. Regardless of the facts of the original printings, I did change all those to the American usage.

More controversially: O. Henry used “dialect” in the vast majority of his stories. Sometimes he was trying to render the speech of various boroughs of New York City; other times his characters were immigrants from Germany or Italy. Most common were his “cowboy” or Western characters. I didn’t make any changes in any of these.

However, one story contained “dialect” that would not only offend many readers, but that was almost unreadable. This was a character in the story “The Duplicity of Hargraves.” Any search of that title will yield hits that at least hint at the particulars.

I noted at the end of the story that the editorial changes I’d made–both for readability and to reduce what could be seen as hatefulness–may be compared with the original, at Gutenberg.

So to sum up, the main reasons for accessing my versions are: readability, and the extras.