Midnight Under The Big Top edited by Brian James Freeman

[RonClinton]

Lettered editions of this title are now out in the wild! Glad to see more lettered traycases getting finished.

However, it has been noted that the signature page is a little lacking (photo credit to David on Facebook).

Were these replacement signature sheets? The numbered sheets were fully illustrated and signed by Freeman and the artists, while the lettered sheets are mostly white space and only signed by Freeman.

Very odd!

Do I understand correctly that the lettered version of a multi-author anthology was only signed by the editor?

[Splync]

Do I understand correctly that the lettered version of a multi-author anthology was only signed by the editor?

Yes, but it was never advertised as being signed by the authors. The page still says that it'll be signed by Brian James Freeman and the artists, but only the numbered edition has the artists' signatures.

My suspicion is that the lettered sheets were lost or damaged somewhere because the sheets used are very bare. The numbered sheets were fully illustrated, while the lettered sheets have a little snippet of the cover art, but are mostly blank.

[RonClinton]

Yes, but it was never advertised as being signed by the authors. The page still says that it'll be signed by Brian James Freeman and the artists, but only the numbered edition has the artists' signatures.

My suspicion is that the lettered sheets were lost or damaged somewhere because the sheets used are very bare. The numbered sheets were fully illustrated, while the lettered sheets have a little snippet of the cover art, but are mostly blank.

Interesting, thanks for the info.

[Marmaduke Grigsby]

The numbered signature sheet for comparison:

MIDNIGHT UNDER THE BIG TOP SIG SHEET.jpg

[Sock Monkey]

Here’s an explanation I found on the product page:

Please Note: We originally had the editor and artists sign signature sheets for both editions, but due to a problem at the bindery, all the Lettered Edition books and a significant number of the Limited Edition books had binding problems. To fix this, they had to strip the bindings and bind them again. This process destroys the endpapers and front tip-ins, unfortunately. So, we printed new sheets that the editor quickly signed so the binding could be completed, but there wasn't enough time to send the new sheets to England and Maine for the artists to sign.

[Splync]

Here’s an explanation I found on the product page:

Please Note: We originally had the editor and artists sign signature sheets for both editions, but due to a problem at the bindery, all the Lettered Edition books and a significant number of the Limited Edition books had binding problems. To fix this, they had to strip the bindings and bind them again. This process destroys the endpapers and front tip-ins, unfortunately. So, we printed new sheets that the editor quickly signed so the binding could be completed, but there wasn't enough time to send the new sheets to England and Maine for the artists to sign.

Ah, that'll explain it. So there must be numbered edition copies out there with the same issue.

It's a bit ironic that it happened to all of the lettered copies. They had to rush to get the signature sheets back for an edition that ended up sitting in the warehouse for two years waiting for traycases.

But such is life sometimes!