Aqua, abebooks.com has been the go-to site for book collectors, where used and antiquarian bookstores have listed their stock since the early days of the internet – including lots of hard-to-find and rare books. Especially if you are looking for an older edition of a book, the books are better classified and the descriptions are much more accurate than in many of the used book listings that get uploaded to Amazon or put on eBay, plus the sellers are bookies who will respond to specific questions about their stock, understanding the needs of specialists and collectors. The trick with SoS seems to be that there are multiple printings of the first edition, apparently including an early typed manuscript version, and the later printings have the dedication changed, so if you’re willing to spring for a first edition you will still need to be sure that it’s a version that has the dedication you’re looking for – but the ABEbooks booksellers can help you with that!

I’ve long collected some books from the era of self-help and personal development, metaphysics and the occult that preceeded Hubbard – and from which he obviously borrowed a lot – and also have earlier versions of some of the first Dianetics and Scientology books, so that I can refer to some of the whacky stuff, including some of the worst of it that got cut out later. It would be amusing to have one of those first editions of SoS with the dedication to Alexis, but they go for too much to justify given my mostly functional interest in the subject.

Thanks, PeaceMaker, as or a specific reason involving a specific person, I do want one.

Great business idea there, Donald King… buy that Hubbard shit for a few pennies and then sell it for a few thousand to the drooling mouth breathers who still remain in scientology.

So many trees gave up their lives for the turd sandwich of scientology.

Did you know trees scream when they are cut? LRH says so. So it must be true.

Aqua, they’re available, but unless you luck into one, they cost a couple of hundred dollars. I’m a bit surprised, but booksellers are pricing the first edition as if there are some serious collectors out there, though it may be that books like that are of interest to bibliophiles in some categorical specialty like mid-century pseudo-science. I notice that in later editions, the dedication was changed to Diana Hubbard.

Generally the pattern with items like this is that as the generation to which it was most relevant – which would be baby boomers – passes into old age, more of them come on the market and demand drops. If you can wait a few years, you might get one cheaper.

I’d like to have a first printing of “Science of Survival” within which LRH dedicated the book to “Alexis Valerie Hubbard”.

Oh, yeah!

I retorted once. The smell was terrible.

We Stand Tall! We have our cretes, isn’t it great!

This cult continues to blow my mind to what they get away with and they seem to be untouchable. Just floors me.

Mary, great story. The cult money schemes seem endless now that I’m out.