We have received several questions lately from members on how to order the hard copies of the Korean Philately (KP) magazines. It is currently explained on the website on how to order through Blurb, but we thought it would be good idea to do a refresher article on how the new KP’s came to be issued, why we offer the KP hard copies through Blurb, and how to order them.
For long term members of the Korea Stamp Society, we remember when the hard copies of the KP magazine were mailed to members as part of the membership fees. When the KSS was revived almost four years ago with a new website, it was decided that we would offer free memberships in order to grow the membership. As many of you know, we were successful and the membership grew from 20 to nearly 350 members today. At the time, we were not publishing the KP magazine.
Our new Chairman and Publisher at the time, Ivo Spanjersberg, wanted to start the KP back up and with a tremendous effort by Ivo, we launched the KP again, online in 2020, the first issue since 2013. We have been fortunate that we have generated enough articles to be able to have published a KP for each quarter since 2020. Whether we are able to continue to issue KP’s on a quarterly basis is up to the members by helping with new articles and lessening the work load on Ivo. Since membership for the KSS is free, so the far the costs of publishing the KP’s have been due to donations to the KSS by some generous members in order to keep the KP’s being issued on a regularly basis.
The online version of the KP’s since 2020 can be downloaded online for members of the KSS without any charge. We recognize that many members, in this age of technology, are very comfortable with reading the KP’s online. On the other hand, some members would like to have hard copies of the KP’s. In fact, the hard copies of the KP show the images more favourably then the online versions and people who have ordered them have complimented us on how good they look. The author has ordered hard copies of every issue and the graphics get better with every issue.
Since most members are happy with the online version, but some members want the hard copies, to keep costs down, the KSS made the hard copies available through the self-publisher Blurb. The KSS does not make any money on the selling of the hard copies of the KP magazine and the copies are sent directly from Blurb to the member ordering them. The cost varies, because of postage, depending where the members lives. There are a number of Blurb publishing sites and they are printed in different areas of the world.
Some members have asked if they can make a subscription to receive all of the KP magazines. While this would be good idea, it probably would not be popular, because of the cost, to most members might be prohibitive, and we do not currently have a method to do this through Blurb.
As a refresher on how to order, as an example we will use the latest KP that was made available on July 1, 2021:
1) Click on the “Individual Issues” tab below the image of the KP you would like to order.
2) Then scroll down below past the examples of what is in that issue and you will see:
3) Click on:
4) You will be directed to the Blurb site that shows the KSS site with all the KP magazines you can order.
5) If you are not already a member of the Blurb site you will have to register.
6) Once you are logged on, you simply click on the issue you want to buy, you can go all the way back to the KP 1st quarter of 2020, if you wish.
7) Clicking on this latest issue you will see that this latest one, with the large number of pages, costs US$19.99 before postage. Postage will vary depending on where you live. For example, postage to Australia is US14.99, to the Netherlands is $11.99 and to the USA is $3.99 plus a USA tax of $1.74.
This is was one of the largest issues and is a bit more expensive that previous issues plus the postage is higher due to the weight.
Our special KSS 70th Anniversary Issue will be very large and will be the most expensive issue, but should be a keepsake worth ordering a hard copy for the serious Korean philately collectors and researchers.
