posted
I recently read “First Meetings” and was discussing it online with a friend. I mentioned that I was a little disappointed that the story “The Polish Boy” ended without introducing Theresa. He then informed me that, in fact, she was the “super-smart teacher” John Paul met when he moved to America. I didn’t remember reading this at all, so I told him I would go back to the library and check to make sure I read the whole story.
I went to the library this morning, and sure enough, it still was not there. The story ended with Graff leaving John Paul’s house after offering to move his family to America, and then there was a conversation between Graff and the woman who came with him to meet John Paul. Graff explains to her his hopes for John Paul’s children, and how graff thinks the children could have the potential for Battle School if John Paul marries someone as brilliant as he is. And that’s the end of the story. John Paul does not travel to America. He does not meet this “super-smart teacher”. I turned the page and it’s the title page for “Investment Consoler”.
Did I miss something? Are there two versions to this story? Is it possible that the copy I read didn’t print the rest of the story? Or am I going nuts?
That last option is quite possible and maybe even the most likely.
To top that off I went out and bought “Heartfire” today and started reading that. I get to page 20, and then the next page is 53. It goes from page 53, continues numerically to page 83, and then back to page 53. I flipped through the rest of the book and from what I can tell it doesn’t jump around anymore.
Is this a common misprint? If it’s special I’m keeping it. If it's not special I will still keep it because the nearest bookstore is half an hour away.
Or I could be going crazy.
Posts: 43 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
No you are not going crazy. The Polish Boy is when John Paul is a little boy- much to early for dating material. There's another story in the First Meetings- I believe in the newer one- that includes "Teacher's Pest" in which John Paul and Theresa meet. I like what ENder's granddaddy does- must run in the family....
Posts: 30 | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
Hm, it wasn't in the copy I read either. It just had Polish Boy, Investment Counsler, and Ender's Game short story.
Posts: 1831 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
Go back and get the same book. Then write down the ISBN number. I would suggest either sending a letter to the publisher explaining it along with the number, or you might even be able to just give it to Mr. Card since he's friends with the guy.
Posts: 51 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
The copies of "First Meetings" that were sold at Endercon and on Hatrack back in the summer of 2002 don't have the story "Teacher's Pest" The editions which are available now (since summer 2003, actually) in wide release, have all 4 stories.
Posts: 1569 | Registered: Dec 2004
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quote:To top that off I went out and bought “Heartfire” today and started reading that. I get to page 20, and then the next page is 53. It goes from page 53, continues numerically to page 83, and then back to page 53. I flipped through the rest of the book and from what I can tell it doesn’t jump around anymore.
Is this a common misprint? If it’s special I’m keeping it. If it's not special I will still keep it because the nearest bookstore is half an hour away.
It is a common enough misprint. I have found that type of misprint in at least 4 differnt books in recent years. One was in my red leather bound edition of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The bookstore replaced it for me free of charge. The other three were in paperback books including "The Ships of Earth" by OSC, "Diaspora" by Greg Egan and another book by an author that I was trying out for the first time whos name escapes me now. In the cases of the paperback's I ended up buying new copies because I had bought them originally on vacations and was nowhere near the stores that I had bought them at, though I suspect that my local bookstore would have replaced them for me had I asked.
Basically what is happening is that groups of pages are printed together on single sheets called a signature and the signature is folded and cut into a set of pages to be bound with other signatures into a single book. Sometimes two copies of the same signature end up in the same book and another signature, usually an adjacent one, is missing. Presumably if the wrong number of signatures end up in a book it is easy to spot, but it is much more difficult to detect if a particular book ended up with the wrong mix of signatures.
Posts: 148 | Registered: Mar 2005
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My book of mormon has that problem. a whole section of the book (most of second Nephi and part of first Nephi) was printed in the book twice.
Posts: 147 | Registered: Aug 2003
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The friend I was originally discussing the book with is going to let me borrow his copy of First Meetings which does include "Teacher's Pest."
Thanks for all that information David. I was wondering why, if the book was mass produced with this error, had no one caught the mistake before. I did not know individual mishaps like that could occur on the printing line.
Catseye: How long did it take you to notice you were re-reading it? It took a paragraph before I was sure I had already read the passage.
Posts: 43 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
We weren't intending to cheat anybody out of a story <grin>.
When I wrote The Polish Boy for First Meetings, the book was going to be a special publishing event for EnderCon. Including the new story and Investment Counselor and the original Ender's Game seemed like a good slim special-event book.
But then my publisher saw it and wanted to reprint it, only we all knew instantly that as a commercial book it was too short. So then, and only then, did I even THINK of writing Teacher's Pest, as an obvious "first meeting." Usually stories written to "fill a gap" are dreadful (hence some of the worst stories in the original Capitol); I'm lucky that Teacher's Pest turned out to be better than that.
But then we were left with the fact that those who bought the original event book were being "cheated" out of a story. BUT what could I do? That story didn't exist when we published the first version of First Meetings!
The consolation to the buyers of that first book is that it is the rarest state of the book. It was also the first publication of The Polish Boy. Plus, you got it first. So ...
Meanwhile, we have a few dozen more of that first version of First Meetings in the Hatrack Store - but how can we, in good conscience, sell them, when we have two hundred copies of the COMPLETE book that were just remaindered and which we're selling, signed, for cheap.
In fact, that's another "cheat," isn't it? You pay full price for a book, and then a year later, here it is for five bucks, and pre-autographed, no less.
But you can't count on getting a remaindered copy if you just wait. Remainders aren't about whether a book "did well" or not. In fact, if a book came out in a hardcover edition of 5,000 and only sold 1,000, you'll see no remainders of the 4,000 copies left over, because nobody will BUY the remainders to sell them - no, not even Barnes & Noble. Because they know that a book that almost NOBODY bought is not going to do much better as a remainder, so they won't pick it up.
So the remainders that you see at B&N are generally for books that were bestsellers, and the remaindered copies are the leftovers. They printed 1,540,000 copies, and then when the paperback came out and the hardcover's market life was over, there were 20,000 unsold copies. THOSE will make a profitable remainder. The publisher will recover a part of the actual printing cost (the editorial costs were long since recovered) and the bookseller can make the profit on the difference between the wholesale remainder price and the retail remainder price - which is actually MUCH HIGHER (as a percentage) than the profits available to the bookseller on the original edition.
Economics of it go like this: Hardcover with a cover price of $30: Cost to bookseller, traditionally 60% of that, or $18. Net to bookseller, 40% (higher for the chains, actually), out of which they meet all their bookstore expenses.
Remainder with a unit price of $2.00: Cost to bookseller, $2.00. Selling price, maybe $8.95, maybe $6.95, whatever they think the market will bear. Profit: Three or four times the cost. Bookstore expenses - less than the cost of a new book, because they don't alphabetize it or shelve it nicely or use prime space in the store for it. They just stack it up in bins and let the buyers sort it out for themselves. Less employee time=less cost.
So the bookseller can make a lot of money on remainders - IF it's a book people ever wanted in the first place.
So the remainders of First Meetings that we're selling? Yep - we're actually hoping that people will buy enough of them to help offset the costs of maintaining this site. Of course, even if every copy sells (and we hope they will) it won't begin to meet the expenses. But it will make it less of a financial drain.
(And don't feel sorry for us - we think it's worth the cost just to keep this meetingplace for a wonderful community going and to have a place where people can find answers to questions and help for school papers etc. without my having to devote large amounts of my time to answering each inquiry as it comes in.)
(And don't feel sorry for yourselves; the only people who will buy the remaindered copies are those who want them, at that price, which includes our net; they'll have a cheap copy of the book, with an autograph, and so everybody wins.)
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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Since we're talking money here, I have a rather impertinent question. Which copy of a particular book nets you (OSC) the most money? Am I helping out the Card Family by rushing out and buying the book the day it hits the shelves or should I agonize for a year to wait for the paperback copy? I know that it isn't as simple as that - the number of paperback copies printed is probably set by the number of hardcover copies sold - but do you have any idea which brings in more money for your family? Does it matter where we buy it (online/large chain/local bookstore)?
Of course, since OSC has said that he only writes a book when he is financially forced to, we should all limit ourselves to checking his work out from the library for free...
posted
Now I kinda want to add a remaindered "First Meetings" to my original hardcover purchase, just because it's a good deal for everyone involved. I'd rather my profit margin go to Hatrack than B&N (they already get a sizable portion of my income).
And to add to OSC's breakdown, it seems like remaindered books are a lot like used cars. They make the dealer a lot more profit than the new cars, and everyone involved gets a better deal.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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