The curse of Madhaven and a liteny of delays

[Kevin]

Madhaven seems doomed to a comedy of delays.

Sometimes a particular book seems cursed. Not hideous things like death or disease, but typically cursed with production and/or delivery trouble resulting in one delay after another.

Rifts® World Book 29: Madhaven is one of those cursed books.

First, the rewriting and editing of Madhaven was delayed 6-8 weeks by Palladium’s announcement of its Crisis of Treachery and the ensuing deluge of orders, emails, telephone calls, and things that had to be addressed in the aftermath that followed. This was all wonderful for Palladium and our survival overall, but not good for getting Madhaven to the printer.

Then it took four weeks to rewrite and edit the darn book. It should have taken 1-2 weeks for a book this size, but a lot of rewriting was necessary.

Finally the book was dropped off at the printers. Because our printer is awesome, they can sometimes rush a book out for us, but in the case of Madhaven, they couldn’t.

We expected Madhaven to arrive Friday, July 14, 2006, but it never showed. No big deal, we’d get it Monday.

Monday morning, July 17, the printer calls to tell us there was a delay on the printing press (they're backlogged too) and that the book was on the presses even as we spoke. It would hit the bindery that afternoon, we’d have it Tuesday morning July 18.

Tuesday, July 18, I call to make sure we can expect the book this morning. Yep, the book was out of bindery last night and is being boxed. Heck, it might already be on the truck for delivery.

At 11:30 A.M., and no sign of the book, we call to find out that the printer ran out of boxes to pack the books in, and that someone has run over to their supplier to get more boxes. This is the first time in 25 years that something like this has ever happened, by the way.

Noon, July 18, : The restock of boxes are in, the book is being packed, and we should get them between 1:30 and 2:30 PM. PROBLEM: we can probably box and prep most, if not all, of our Distributor Orders, and maybe even some of our mail order (a record number, btw, thank you everyone) by the end of the day (6:00 PM) – BUT – we will not have them done in time to actually ship out today. Madhaven will not ship till tomorrow, July 19, 2006. It sucks, but it happens.

Some of you ask why books are late, so I'm posting this as a fine example of why.

Furthermore, the delay of one book usually delays all the books in the pipeline. Case in point, Palladium has a logjam of about 4 new titles and several reprints that were all scheduled to come out sooner, but are coming out later than originally planned. Like I said, a big part of the initial delays had to do with the Crisis and dealing with it (in a good way), but continuing delays add to further product shuffling of releases. This is as frustrating for us as you, and has a negative impact on our cash flow. We really, really wanted to have Powers Unlimited 3 (as well as Rifts® Sourcebook One Expanded, the latter being some kind of delusional wish on my part) out in time for Gen Con, but it’s just impossible. Too bad, because PU3 is awesome. (We’ll bring 15-20 autographed photocopies of PU3 to sell like we did of Madhaven at Origins -- available on a first come, first served basis -- but that will be it. Ironically, PU3 will ship out the week after we get back from Gen Con.)

If it’s not one thing, its another. Can’t be mad at the printer, they are great, and have done us many favors over the years. Stuff just happens.

Like I said, some books are just cursed. Considering Madhaven is supposed to be a cursed land on Rifts Earth, all of this seems somehow appropriate. Yep, that’s how dangerous Rifts Madhaven is, even a book describing the place is cursed! The good news is that the next 3-5 books that follow a cursed one usually go off without a hitch. Yes, I know this smacks of superstition, but it seems to work that way.

Just an update and FYI for y’all.

Sincerely,
Kevin Siembieda – Befuddled Publisher