Friday, January 28, 2011

News from Book Palace Books

We're pleased to announce that the latest batch of Book Palace Books are now in the hands of our printers and will be released as soon as they're shipped to the UK. There have been a number of delays that have caused a slight slippage with the schedules. It started in December with the proofs... it took longer than expected to get a sample of the Wulf the Briton leather slipcase and this delayed the proofing of the book; there was a second delay because the proofs sent were not on the paper requested, which meant a second set of proofs on the correct paper had to be shipped across from Hong Kong.

Peter Richardson, who has put the Wulf book together, made some corrections to some of the colour pages, ironing out small defects and making some further colour correction.

Hopefully you'll applaud our efforts at quality control and save your boos and hisses for the postal delivery company who refused to do any pick-ups in the area Peter lives during the snowy weather.

Once the proofs were returned to China, the printer insisted on sending out a second set of proofs on the pages that had been corrected; these were duly signed off. One bit of good news is that the delay has meant some additional scans from original artwork have been included in the Wulf book

Even after the proofs were returned, a further additional page surfaced courtesy of Paul Stephenson of PS Books. As a special thanks to those of you who have pre-ordered the book, the first 200 copies will therefore have an additional print, the same dimensions as the original Express Weekly comic, of this stunning piece of original Ron Embleton artwork depicting Wulf and his companions in the thrall of Viking invaders.

As many of you will be aware, Chinese New Year begins on 3 February and the celebrations last for 15 days during which time many businesses close down or are working with skeleton staff. For us this means that our books will not ship until the end of February and their arrival in the UK is expected at the end of March. It usually takes 2-3 days to clear customs and ship from the port to the Book Palace warehouse in Crystal Palace, so we are expecting copies to arrive around 31 March.

With this in mind, the pre-publication discounts for anyone ordering the books has been extended. For more details visit the Book Palace Books webpage.

As I'm involved in two of the books and straining at the leash to see the third, I can appreciate the frustration felt by everyone at all the delays. We're all looking forward to getting our hands on the books and I'm convinced that, thanks to the efforts everyone has put in, they will be well worth the wait.