This you won't believe

WHY NOT? Well, it's never happened to me before, but of course it must have happened to someone else this week.
WHAT HAPPENED? It's always one of those great moments when, after all the work, the writing, the design, the proof checking, the arguments and discussions, the finally assembled book arrives from the printer. I had one of those about 10 days ago with TYFOON'S TALE - 1000 copies, to be precise, all lovely and shiny and apparently just the way I wanted them. So I sent off the 50 copies ordered by the wholesaler, plus 30 press review and advertising copies, plus a few that had been ordered by individuals. Then someone - well, two people actually - who were reading it contacted me and said that pages 63 - 85 were the wrong book - someone else's pages bound into my lovely book. FLAT PANIC (I tend to do that). How could that have happened, with all the checking we had done? Then it emerged that the rogue pages were only present in about 40 copies, spread randomly amongst the other 960. And what was most awful was that I DIDN'T KNOW WHICH OF THE COPIES I HAD JUST DISPATCHED WERE GOOD AND WHICH WERE NOT!
Ever spent a whole Saturday afternoon with a frantic author and an equally frantic and furious publisher's agent, checking and re-checking the page contents of 1000 books? It does nothing for the stress levels.
Come Monday morning and the printers (somewhere in Norfolk)at first refuse to believe what has happened then faced by the evidence launch a major enquiry, while I get down to re-mailing my orders with errata slips and many apologetic phone calls.
The matter is still sub-judice with the printers so far as compensation is concerned, though I doubt they have any idea just how I felt about it all.
And what about the author waiting for his book on European politics, who gets 20 pages of cat memoir stuck in the middle of it? If you are out there, do let me know.

Meanwhile I now have 900 lovely copies of Tyfoon's Tale ready for the launch date on 30th June - either through my website or through Amazon, or your local library or bookshop - please read it after all that effort!