[INDEXED]World War Z and The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks

[Brian James Freeman]

Do you think/know if i can buy this book from pspublishing.co.uk? Ordering directly from CD is no longer an option for me because of shipping costs as well as ridiculously high Dutch customs costs. They don't have it listed on their website. Should i contact them?

Yep, you can just drop me them a line and ask when they might be listing it. Do you have their email address?

Brian

[Pennywise]

Do you think/know if i can buy this book from pspublishing.co.uk? Ordering directly from CD is no longer an option for me because of shipping costs as well as ridiculously high Dutch customs costs. They don't have it listed on their website. Should i contact them?

[Brian James Freeman]

Hey you guys. Is the signed limited edition of World War Z close to selling out? I've heard good things of this book and the trailer for the movie is freakin awesome. But haven't gotten around to reading it myself. Will be buying a trade edition paperback today to read through the weekend (I'm a pretty fast reader) to see if it is worth getting the S/L. Think the S/L will still be available come Monday or Tuesday in your estimation?

Yep, it will be. We "could" put it out of print today based on a huge distributor order we received, but what we always do is ship to our direct customers first. So if that distributor ordered 200 copies, we might not have 200 copies left to ship when the book is published. (We might not have *any* copies for them.) Our direct customers come first, then our independent retailers, then the chain bookstores and big distributors.[/QUOTE]

Also, is getting The Zombie Survival Guide a must if I purchase World War Z or can it pretty much stand well on its own because I don't seem to be that interested in TZSG from what I've read here on the book's description page.

Thanks in advance.

Nope, no need to get The Zombie Survival Guide if you're not interested in it.

Brian

[sunnyckf]

Hey you guys. Is the signed limited edition of World War Z close to selling out? I've heard good things of this book and the trailer for the movie is freakin awesome. But haven't gotten around to reading it myself. Will be buying a trade edition paperback today to read through the weekend (I'm a pretty fast reader) to see if it is worth getting the S/L. Think the S/L will still be available come Monday or Tuesday in your estimation?

Also, is getting The Zombie Survival Guide a must if I purchase World War Z or can it pretty much stand well on its own because I don't seem to be that interested in TZSG from what I've read here on the book's description page.

Thanks in advance.

[Teriw]

Oh and I mean the ebook, of course. I didn't READ my 25th IT...I'm sure you guys did a great job. lol

[Teriw]

Some fully published books are a complete mess. Since i've been reading ebooks mostly I am going to hope it was just in that version and not the actual book. "It" was the worst. I was tired of reading Bewie instead of Bevvie and there were many others but that one was so repetitive I wanted to strangle whoever proofread it. It's amazing what people can miss. I'm not the best speaker or writer grammatically(Which I spelled wrong until firefox corrected me) so I don't think I could do it that well but I sure as hell wouldn't miss Bewie about 30 times.

[Brian James Freeman]

Interestingly enough reprints are actually typically harder to work with than original pieces, as we have to rely on files from the NY publishers instead of just the authors. Lately the files from the NY publishers have been notoriously hard to work with requiring us to have them scanned or converted in some fashion or another, which causes all sorts of errors that need to be corrected before it can be designed.

I won't name names, of course, but we're dealing with a REAL MESS on one of the reprints right now. The New York publisher sent us their final PDF of the book (because they're using some fancy new design program that doesn't create workable files that we can use) and we had to have that PDF OCR scanned because it wouldn't export the text correctly, no matter how many different tricks we tried.

When we received the text file from our scanner, but he said, "You'd better give this one a close read." We always have the books copyedited and proofread multiple times, even when the text comes from the original New York edition, so I didn't think much of it... until I received the report from the copyeditor. The New York edition was a MESS. Typos, missing words, sentences that just ended in mid-sentence. Ugh.

Brian

[Brian James Freeman]

Sorry, I'm just being honest. I hesitated quite a bit before preordering this time precisely because the last preorder's timing was bad.

Thanks for the feedback. I completely understand where you're coming from. Nailing our publication dates is something we're working on improving. In many cases, we're waiting until deeper into production to announce books, for example. That way we've worked out all of the kinks in the files we were sent by the New York publisher and also, if possible, have all of the signature sheets already signed!

Here's a good example of the unexpected delays we something struggle with. I once sent signature sheets to an author in JULY and still didn't have them back by spring of the following year. He's a great guy, and he has about a million projects on his plate, and I know his assistant was doing his very best to get the sheets signed. There isn't much we can do to encourage the author to make the time, we just have to hope it gets done in a timely fashion. And usually it does! I've had anthologies with 20 authors where it has taken two years for all of the sheets to be signed, but once I had an anthology where 20+ authors signed in six months thanks to some lucky timing with conventions where we had group signings in hotel rooms.

So we're trying to do better at hitting publication dates and we'll keep doing everything we can to provide reliable information. I definitely understand how frustrating it can be when something doesn't arrive on time.

Thanks again for your feedback, and don't worry about being honest here. You said it very nicely. Dan and I (and Mindy in the office!) have dealt with people who have been screaming mad about things that weren't even our fault. For example, once a customer gave us his old address when he ordered a book and was mad that we didn't know he had moved!

Feel free to ask away when you have any questions, and you can also email me privately if you have something you don't want to ask on the board. Thanks!

Brian

[jigertz]

If the person you're giving the gift to would like it so much, I'd think s/he wouldn't mind waiting for publication.

[Dan Hocker]

In this case, with a reprint of an already published book without many changes (I assume), I would hope the process would go a little faster and be easier to predict. This order is also a gift -- for the same person, ironically -- and I don't want to go through the late-gift thing again if I can help it. Once was all right, but twice will make me more than a little hesitant to preorder anything.

Interestingly enough reprints are actually typically harder to work with than original pieces, as we have to rely on files from the NY publishers instead of just the authors. Lately the files from the NY publishers have been notoriously hard to work with requiring us to have them scanned or converted in some fashion or another, which causes all sorts of errors that need to be corrected before it can be designed.

We try to do what we can for people that purchase things for gifts, however due to the process we really can't promise anything for preorders, because well things happen and projects get delayed.

[Linda M Au]

I've ordered from them several times before, so I'm aware of the quality. But, as an example, a book I ordered as a gift that was scheduled for a shipping date two weeks before I needed it arrived a month and a half too late.

I am perhaps a bit skittish then about inexact dates.

Also, I've worked in small publishing houses and as a freelance proofreader all my adult life. So I know about the ebb and flow of the publishing process firsthand. (And usually the rushing ends up in the lap of the proofreader, one of the last people in the chronology, yikes!)

In this case, with a reprint of an already published book without many changes (I assume), I would hope the process would go a little faster and be easier to predict. This order is also a gift -- for the same person, ironically -- and I don't want to go through the late-gift thing again if I can help it. Once was all right, but twice will make me more than a little hesitant to preorder anything.

Sorry, I'm just being honest. I hesitated quite a bit before preordering this time precisely because the last preorder's timing was bad.

[Teriw]

Agreed BW. Even the books I got from them that I dont really want (Grab Bags, I only collect king(and now zombie books) so the new girl knows) are Amazing!! All their books are taken care of and made with great care. I love it. I wouldn't even have a zombie collection if it werent for the quality of CD books. I ordered NOTLD from them (not even for myself) then couldnt help but order the Traycased undead and now here I am ordering two more and buying all the romero movies I can find. lol. Assuming Dan can get my Visa gift cards to go through. I think I got er figured out though.

[bookworm 1]

Don't worry the guys and gals at CD will take good care of you. The high quality of their work is worth the wait.You will not be disappointed when the book is done.

None of those links, by the way, really give very specific information (for instance, neither of them for WWZ mention summer, just "Forthcoming" and "2013,") which is how I got into hot water with the Russo book. So, clicking on those links in the future months to check on progress might not help me very much if I am hoping to have this in hand by mid-August for my son's birthday.

I'm not griping, honest. I just am used to publishers from whom I order things being more specific about these things. And I'm also used to them not taking my money until the item ships. So, effectively, this will be twice you'll have my money up front for months before I ever see the item in question. These were both items I wanted, though, and can't get elsewhere, so I'm all right with it.

But it's just not what I'm used to from other publishers/vendors.

[Brian James Freeman]

None of those links, by the way, really give very specific information (for instance, neither of them for WWZ mention summer, just "Forthcoming" and "2013,") which is how I got into hot water with the Russo book. So, clicking on those links in the future months to check on progress might not help me very much if I am hoping to have this in hand by mid-August for my son's birthday.

I'm not griping, honest. I just am used to publishers from whom I order things being more specific about these things. And I'm also used to them not taking my money until the item ships. So, effectively, this will be twice you'll have my money up front for months before I ever see the item in question. These were both items I wanted, though, and can't get elsewhere, so I'm all right with it.

But it's just not what I'm used to from other publishers/vendors.

I understand where you're coming from. We don't always have an exact date when announce a book because certain parts of the process are still in motion -- for example, the author might take two days to sign the signature sheets or he might take two months -- but we'll definitely try to post more specific dates as soon as we have them.

Thanks again for your order and please don't hesitate to ask if you have any other questions!

Best,
Brian

[Dan Hocker]

None of those links, by the way, really give very specific information (for instance, neither of them for WWZ mention summer, just "Forthcoming" and "2013,") which is how I got into hot water with the Russo book. So, clicking on those links in the future months to check on progress might not help me very much if I am hoping to have this in hand by mid-August for my son's birthday.

I'm not griping, honest. I just am used to publishers from whom I order things being more specific about these things. And I'm also used to them not taking my money until the item ships. So, effectively, this will be twice you'll have my money up front for months before I ever see the item in question. These were both items I wanted, though, and can't get elsewhere, so I'm all right with it.

But it's just not what I'm used to from other publishers/vendors.

This is pretty much how the small press works overall. Larger vendors have the luxury of being able to operate on a charge at the time of shipping method. As far as actual dates of things being published we can't really know that until we send the books to be printed, which depends on a vast variety of things such as design and proofreading. As Brian said though the best play to look for updates on when a book is coming is on this page:

http://www.cemeterydance.com/page/CDP/PRODUCTION

Which we will update as soon as we have more information to provide.