Printing Issue

[Gregory]

Not sure if I'm the only one who's noticed this but there's something odd happening with the printing of HCC books. I'm not sure if this is because HCC has been switched to another legitimate printer or there's some knockoff stuff in the marketplace. See images that I uploaded:

https://ibb.co/BrWCzb8
https://ibb.co/9yL0BXp

[Charles]

It's legitimate. Some of our books are printed in the UK and some in the US, and the dimensions for trade paperbacks are very slightly shorter and wider in the UK. When you see a shorter copy like that, it's a UK printing; when you see a taller one, it's a US printing. (You can also usually see the location where a copy was printed on the copyright page.) Why do we print some copies in the UK and some in the US? Well, partly it's because we sell our books in both locations. But sometimes UK copies will find their way to the US and be sold here too, and when that happens it's because at certain print-run sizes, it's actually less expensive to print all the copies in the UK and ship some to the US than it is to print in two separate locations.

I find the variance in height annoying myself -- I'm fussy about such things. But the cost savings matters, especially with titles that might not sell a ton of copies. I'd rather put up with the annoying height variance and get to publish some more eclectic titles with lower sales prospects than only get to publish "big" books by bestselling authors.

--Charles

[Gregory]

Charles wrote: "It's legitimate. Some of our books are printed in the UK and some in the US, and the dimensions for trade paperbacks are very slightly shorter and wider in the UK. When you see a shorter copy like ..."

Thanks for the explanation Charles.

[Brian]

Charles wrote: "It's legitimate. Some of our books are printed in the UK and some in the US, and the dimensions for trade paperbacks are very slightly shorter and wider in the UK. When you see a shorter copy like ..."

Another question in the same ballpark, Charles. Re the numbering system, is 'John Lange' the only author given his own reference codes by your publisher ? If so, I take it that 'HCC MC6' in the case of 'Drug of Choice' refers to Michael Crichton no 6. Thanks.

[Charles]

He's the only author with a unique set of special codes just for him. That happened because Michael's widow, Sherri, called me close to the 5th anniversary of his death and asked if we could bring out a complete set of his John Lange titles for the anniversary, and rushing them out to meet that deadline meant jumping them ahead of other books in the pipeline that had already been numbered. Yes, I could've gone through the hassle of renumbering the later books, but I was lazy and instead chose the solution of inventing a special code for those 8 books.

We do, however, have some other special codes. In particular, there are books HCC-S01 through -S08, again to deal with special cases where we wanted to avoid renumber other already-scheduled titles. Most of these are move or TV tie-in books: the reissues of the first 5 Quarry titles, A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES, THE NICE GUYS. We also used a "S" code for our recent Ray Bradbury 100th-birthday collection, though I can't remember why. (Probably a scheduling thing again.)

[Brian]

Charles wrote: "He's the only author with a unique set of special codes just for him. That happened because Michael's widow, Sherri, called me close to the 5th anniversary of his death and asked if we could bring ..."

Excellent. Many thanks Charles !