just wondering if there are any plans to release the 'definitive edition'(the one hill house are publishing)in a more affordable volume for those of us lacking in funds, eg as a regular paperback/hardback?

no. At a recent convention, Neil mentioned that he gets this question frequently. I liked his observation. Hill House send their subscribers so many cool extras, that if one sold the extras on ebay, it would cover the cost of the subscription.

I would so love to have this thing. I just don't know if I can swing it...but we'll see what the future holds.

Speaking of Neverwhere & Hill House & "definitive" editions, they recently announced (with more details & price forthcoming), another edition of Neverwhere, this time, a book of the original teleplays.


For info, click
here.

They continue to be full of surprises!

Does anyone know if it matters whether you buy the definitive editions through Dreamhaven's neilgaiman.net store instead of the Hill House site? I find the Hill House site a little difficult to browse through, but I want to make sure I get all the bells & whistles if I buy the books.

(I got my Christmas bonus today and am feeling very reckless)

Congratulations on the bonus. I think you'll really enjoy the books. The publishers really go the extra mile, and what you get for signing up for the series subscription keeps growing & evolving. (They seem to keep announcing new books, and if you're a member of the series, you get first dibs, and a matching number for all your books. And beyond that, there are cases like A Screenplay, or the Neverwhere teleplays, which supposedly will never be available to non-members for thorny legal reasons.)

If you have a choice in where you sign up, I'd advise signing up directly with Hill House. I like Dreamhaven a lot, but I signed up with a bookseller/reseller (not Dreamhaven, though), and in hindsight I wish I'd subscribed directly through Hill House. I believe that you will get your books much more quickly from Hill House: as soon as they are available. My experience has been that Hill House mails the books to the bookstore through which I subscribed, and then the bookstore mails me my copy, so there's a built in delay.

And in the case of the bonus Screenplay, there was an availability problem with the white boxes which house the book. Hill House mailed out what they had to their own subscribers immediately, and mine didn't go out until a month later.