My PHB2 shrivelled like cooked bacon

[Flobby]

Mine looks like that too... with smudges... They obviously went with cheaper material for 4th...

 

[TwinBahamut]

Half of the WotC books I have ever bought, or even more than that, have started off as extremely wavy. Everything from various D20 Modern books to all three of the initial 4E core books were like that when I first bought them. They are all perfectly straight and normal now.

People calling this "water damage" are mistaken. This kind of waviness is minor and temporary at worst. From what I hear, it is just a temporary phase they go through when moved between different climates (from a wet climate to a dry climate or from a dry climate into a wet climate).

 

[Cadfan]

Huh. Thanks for posting an image. I've heard people complain about wrinkled pages, but I'd never seen it before. I couldn't tell if it was regular wrinkled pages from humidity, or some horrific cthulhoid mind bending monstrosity like some of them claimed.

I don't know what caused it, but that really, really, REALLY looks like an issue related to moisture. Its exactly what some papers do when you put them near a hot bathtub, but don't actually get them wet. Except not really as extreme. There's got to be some good advice online about fixing that, since people have been getting books wet (dropping them in swimming pools, etc) since the beginning of the written word.

 

[Mark]

There's got to be some good advice online about fixing that, since people have been getting books wet (dropping them in swimming pools, etc) since the beginning of the written word.

Are you kidding? You don't fix that. You return that. I'm not sure how someone managed to sell it in the first place. Do they start off in shrinkwrap?

 

[jdrakeh]

That's not at all abnormal. I've seen books from a lot of publishers (including old AD&D 1e books) look like that after brief exposure to humidity or after being transported from one area of the country to another. It has little to do with the construction quality of the books and much more to do with weather and handling issues.

Having had my entire collection of games experience this at times due to cross-country moves, I've found that the quickest and easiest solution is simply to gather up the effected books in stacks of ten or so, then drop a heavy, book-shaped, weight (even if it's just a larger stack of other books) on top of them in a dry, humidity-free, environment for about a week.

 

[Lancelot]

Picked up my PHB2 today, way down here in New Zealand. It looked exactly like the photos... and exactly like most other imported hardback gaming manuals I've purchased here over recent years. Shipping... moisture... climate change... etc.

I can confirm, like other posters, that it self-corrects over a relatively short period. I can also confirm that it's not 4e specific. I've noticed the temporary "wavy pages" on most glossy-page gaming hardbacks (including most of my 3e and 3.5e hardback manuals, Star Wars, etc). It's not a big deal. A week on my bookshelf and it's gone.

 

[Henry]

I've been doing some reading on "cross-grain printing" and books printed in China having this problem increasingly over the past few years... I wonder if this is what we're seeing here? Though the problem does fix itself over time, it is disconcerting, and far more common over the past two years or so among many publishers.

How to fix a warped book? | Ask Metafilter
Beware of Cross-Grain Printing

 

[jdrakeh]

I've been doing some reading on "cross-grain printing" and books printed in China having this problem increasingly over the past few years...

It is possible that the issue has only been widely noticed in the last few years. I had this issue with pretty much every game book that I bought during the late 1990s, when I lived in Eastern Kansas (which is fairly humid).

In fact, come to think of it, this issue was a huge contributing factor to my later dislike of perfect-bound books and my current preferences for hardcover books, saddle-bound (i.e., stapled) booklets, or spiral-bound booklets.

I still don't like perfect-bound books too much, though since I'm no longer living in a climate as humid as Eastern Kansas, it's not as big an issue as it was back then.

 

[Scott_Rouse]

I've been doing some reading on "cross-grain printing" and books printed in China having this problem increasingly over the past few years... I wonder if this is what we're seeing here? Though the problem does fix itself over time, it is disconcerting, and far more common over the past two years or so among many publishers.

How to fix a warped book? | Ask Metafilter
Beware of Cross-Grain Printing

D&D books are printed in the USA or Canada. The only exceptions are Dungeons Tiles and the RPG Starter

 

[Scott_Rouse]

Is this normal?

ImageShack® - Gallery

I posted on wizards.com forums and people are saying its just a local climate issue? I don't want to pay $35 for a shriveled-up ass book. None of my other books are all shriveled up.

At my local, every single PHB2 is shriveled up. All the other books look normal. Even at the Bookstar, the book was shriveled. Is that a printing issue or climate?

Sorry If you are un-happy please take the book back or contact our Customer Service folks.

It should solve itself as others have pointed out.

FYI These were printed about 2 months ago in the mid west (where tonight it is 49F and 69% humidity) then spent a few weeks in Dallas (where tonight it is 61F and 78% humidity) and the possibly another week or so in another west coast distributor and on various trucks and DCs so they seen some fairly diverse climates. Paper is a such a porous substrate that it reacts pretty quickly to humidity so it can get this waviness pretty quickly