FAQ

 

1. When will I receive my order?

Orders are usually sent within in 1-2 business days and take anywhere from 2 days to 4 weeks (in extreme cases) to arrive depending on the destination. Average delivery time is two weeks. Orders for books which have not yet been published are shipped immediately once they are published.

2. How is my ordered shipped?

It's shipped via regular mail (some European orders via UPS).

3. How much is shipping?

Shipping to European Union countries

Shipping to the rest of the world

4. When will I be charged for my order?

Please note, Your credit card is charged when we receive your order, not at
shipping.

5. Can I use your images and text on my website, or is it copyrighted?

Yes, you can use all images, text and pdf ebooks from our website on your website or blog.

6. Where are the free pdf downloads (ebooks) or torrent downloads of your books?

On our Free e-Books page

Q: Are the international shipping rates the same for the Hardcover books?

Yes.

Q: I live in the US. Why can't I get the books at the same time as in Europe?

The answer has two parts.

Firstly, the books have to go through the Panama Canal to make it to our main US distributor. It takes about 45 days, at best. Then the books have to be sent to other wholesalers and distributors. It all takes time.

Secondly, we are trying to make our books available at the same time. We have partnered up with Chess 4 Less, ChessCafe and USCF Chess Sales to get the books to the US with air freight, available to the public at publication. This will probably not always happen, but we are trying to satisfy everyone.

Q: I have ordered a book on Amazon, but it has not been sent. Why is this?

 The chess industry, Quality Chess included, earn their main income from sales made by small, specialized chess book dealers. If everyone bought their chess books on Amazon, there would soon be no chess industry and no chess books.

Why has the book not been sent? This is what happens when you buy at a discount -- you get less service. Amazon and other websites demand that publishers work through specialized distribution companies. This, on top of being less profitable for us because we have to use a middleman which forces us to ship the books only when it is most cost effective, simply takes more time.

Q: When will the hardcover books be available on Amazon?

They won't.

Q: Will the hardcover versions generally be published after the softcover version?

No, both versions will be released at the same time.

Q: Why does Quality Chess struggle to give an exact publication schedule?

Because we don't sit on the books when the authors deliver the final text. Having checked three recent publications from a rival publisher, we found that although the forewords claim April and May 2010, the most recent game references were from August 2009. If we took nine months to get an opening book out, we too could easily predict the publication date. Instead we choose to get the books out in sometimes as little as five weeks from when we received the final manuscript, making it harder for us to anticipate the exact publication date.

Q: Why are books from Quality Chess more expensive than some other publishers' books?

There are a number of reasons:

• Our books are longer.
• Our books are published on higher quality paper than our main competitors.
• We pay our authors more than our main competitors.

 

Q: Have chess books been superseded by DVD's and Databases?

No.

A database with millions of games, many of them annotated, is a useful tool and a challenge to chess literature. Some authors have chosen to see it as an opportunity to copy&paste material, creating the so-called database dumps. At Quality Chess we see the databases as a starting point for our work, not an ideal. The chess author's responsibility is to apply experience, clarity, analytic skills and basic hard work to offer the reader something that cannot be matched by a computer program. We aim to do this, and think we succeed more often than not.

Also, we have a lot of time for the DVD's produced by ChessBase and others, but see their limitations too. A five hour video will only cover enough material to fill 10-15 pages in a book. So, although we admire this new development in the industry, they are not a replacement for books when it comes to true knowledge and depth.

Q: I have heard you are doing a new book on my favourite opening -- why will you not tell us more about it?

Because we don't want to disappoint anyone by saying something that turns out to be untrue.