Huge printing error in my Eberron!

[baseballfury]

Glad I decided to save my money this month for the Trojan War campaign setting! I'm interested in Eberron but I'll wait for the reprint.

 

[Tarrasque Wrangler]

UPDATE: Luckily, I called my FLGS before going down there today to return the book. Apparently, all the Eberrons they received on Friday had the printing error. He said I could return it for credit or hang on to it until corrected copies come in. Not wanting to part with it just yet, I'm stuck with it until the distributor coughs up good copies.

This must have been a pretty monumental screwup.

PS: I don't know if my FLGS has pulled the copies or not. Just to be on the safe side, don't buy Eberron at Games Unlimited in Concord for a week or two, and ask if they're good copies if you do. Feel free to buy just about anything else there though.

 

[~Johnny~]

Agh, this really sucks. I didn't hear about it being a problem with any of the people who got it early (both overseas and in the US). I hope this doesn't turn people off of what I think is an excellent setting.

I hope WotC publicly addresses this, so people who get the book screwed-up know they can return it for free and don't think they're just screwed.

I can tell you this; buying an Eberron CSB on eBay is going to be treacherous.

 

[fnork de sporg]

I thought the forty percent onf the rpgnet thread was about a specific store's order, not the entire print run.Though I could be wrong. I certainly hope it isn't forty percent of the print run. And I had to mail order mine! I won't know if it's messed up or not until it gets here. Tension.

How do we return the book for free? Where would we send it?

 

[Dravar]

A good number of the stores in Greenwood, IN have defective copies. I suppose it's a good thing I can't afford to pick myself up a copy until this Friday, or else I might have been annoyed by this.

 

[Belen]

Its a common publishing error. Pages are either missing or in the wrong place, or sometimes upside down, most likely in sets of 16 or 32 pages which is how they are printed and folded. The flats get inserted in the wrong place or missed. It is actually harder to catch this mistake than you would think because the last of the proofing work is done while the flats are being printed. Usually only the first assembled books are looked at, so if the error comes up after the first assembly it may not be noticed until irate customers bring it to their attention. Nobody has the time to examine each book as it gets assembled, it would be cost-prohibitive. I would not really call it a quality issue as much as a production systems problem; ideally they should have a system in place so that this is not likely to happen at all, but many printers do not have these good systems.

Uh...bull hocky. This is a printer error and it should have been caught. As I work for a publisher, I know that we demand that the printer pulls 1 out of every 200 copies to check in order to make sure that no large scale problems appear in the print run.

This is negligence on the printer, pure and simple. It sounds like no one took the time to check that the books were printed correctly. This stains WOTC just as much because they should have gotten an advance set of copies that they would have checked. The problem, if it is that widespread, would have appeared in the advance, unless the printer purposely waded through the copies in order to send them non-mussed copies.

I have long said that WOTC, Paizo and others use less than stellar printers. They should find someone new. Cadmus, or Dartmouth (Sheridan) Press would be a good start.

 

[Pseudonym]

I intended on purchasing Eberron, after the inevitable errata had been incorporated into the next print run. I'm glad I resisted the impulse to run out and grab a copy, given the unfortunate printing screw up. After reading a few posts from folks who have the book, my resolve was starting to slip, but this steels me once more. Hopefully this will get squared away promptly.

 

[The_Universe]

Well crap--now I have to check my copy when I get home. I *think* I got a good copy, but I can't be sure...

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Uh...bull hocky. This is a printer error and it should have been caught. As I work for a publisher, I know that we demand that the printer pulls 1 out of every 200 copies to check in order to make sure that no large scale problems appear in the print run.

This is negligence on the printer, pure and simple. It sounds like no one took the time to check that the books were printed correctly. This stains WOTC just as much because they should have gotten an advance set of copies that they would have checked. The problem, if it is that widespread, would have appeared in the advance, unless the printer purposely waded through the copies in order to send them non-mussed copies.

I have long said that WOTC, Paizo and others use less than stellar printers. They should find someone new. Cadmus, or Dartmouth (Sheridan) Press would be a good start.

You are right. Pulling 1 in 200 books is the system that obviously was missing. In my very limited publishing experience we did not do this either, after checking the proofs we took it all for granted, we just had a printer who did a good job. WotC, as a large scale publisher should do better, but they apparently did not. Of course this reflects on WotC poorly, but how they handle this and future printings will say a lot more about them than what this mistake does.

New printers are probably a good idea.

 

[Waylander the Slayer]

They usually will replace it.