When author Tad Williams received copies of his book Rite, he noticed a very unusual printing error in the book: in italicized text, the letter “v” had gone missing. Tad informed us of the error, and we set out to understand how this error had happened. For some reason, this error only occurred in the printing process itself; as our outside proofer can tell you, the page proofs of the book had all “v”s in the right place. Subterranean, our proofer and our printer are still looking into what went wrong, so we can avoid this sort of problem in the future.

If we had been able to catch this error during the early stages of the printing process, naturally we would have stopped the run and made a correction. At this point, however, 90% of the print run has been sold; recalling and reprinting is, at this late date, a moot point. Be that as it may, I am aware that any error in our books reflects on all the work we do, and ultimately I am responsible for making sure that every book we print and sell meets our high standards. I take full and personal responsibility for this printing error.

I want to apologize to Tad Williams for this printing error; it’s marred what is otherwise a truly wonderful book. Tad has been nothing less than a gentleman through this entire process, and I’ve been grateful for his courteousness. I hope to be able to make this up to him in the future.

I also want to apologize to Subterranean’s readers. We slipped. I will, and Subterranean will, do what we can to make sure this is one slip that won’t happen twice.

Sincerely,

William Schafer

Posted on Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 at 2:36 pm.