As I mentioned the other week, the slipcase maker is running more than two months behind on the slipcases for the William Peter Blatty Lost Screenplays set for Lonely Road Books.

Now… I also want to show you why so many small press publishers go out of business, pull out ALL of their hair, and/or die young:

HOW could this trusted vendor who has made cases for me for three or four dozen different books, and who works with MAJOR corporations on special display boxes that cost thousands of dollars each, not notice how off center that stamping is???

To make matters worse, this should have been easily fixed. I receive the sample, I say “Woah! What’s the deal??” and they correct the alignment for the rest of the run. (And then this sample goes into my closet of Unholy Objects!)

Unfortunately, they had already gone ahead and stamped ALL of the “wraps” for the slipcases like you see above before getting approval. (The “wrap” is what you call the material that covers the slipcase, which is 99% of what you see when you hold a slipcase!)

THEY. STAMPED. ALL. OF. THEM.

Which means now they have to order all of that special order material again, wait a few weeks for it to arrive, and then hopefully get things right the second time.

AND they’ll probably ask us to pay for it even though it was their mistake. (Why? Vendor logic, I guess. Make the client pay for anything you can!)

So, this means more delays for the Limited Edition.

Sigh.

The good news is… this can be “fixed” in the sense that they can order a new batch of the special order material and stamp it correctly.

The bad news is… I’m getting kind of worried about how completely unsurprised I am by this sort of mistake after 16 years of dealing with them on regular basis! That seems like a bad sign. 🙂