Dear CRC Press,

I am writ­ing to say that I am forced inter­pret your recent postal offer of “deep dis­counts” on sev­eral dozen poorly-​​written, shoddily-​​manufactured, untimely and obso­lete van­ity press offer­ings in fields for the most part unre­lated to my work or inter­ests, said “deep dis­counts” reduc­ing the price to a mere $99 per use­less vol­ume, as a telling symp­tom of some sort of neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive or psy­chopatho­log­i­cal disorder.

In you, I mean.

I hope you take the time to see a doc­tor, and you may want to set your affairs in order.

My deep­est con­do­lences, in any event, to the authors of the poorly-​​written, shoddily-​​manufactured, untimely van­ity press offer­ings you have been foist­ing for decades. They will inevitably be forced to seek actual edi­tors among their peers and read­ers, and rework their pecu­liarly iso­lated notions in order to appeal to an actual audi­ence, and I am sad­dened to observe that you have given them lit­tle or no cul­tural sup­port in those skills through the years.

That said, if you have any more 1980s-​​vintage Hand­book of Chem­istry and Physics, I am inter­ested in tak­ing them off your hands. Ever since I grad­u­ated (with my first degree in the sci­ences), I have found they are excel­lent for press­ing flow­ers and leaves for art & craft projects.

The lat­ter offered by way of solace, if you were feel­ing com­pletely use­less. Buck up!