We’ll use this page to post some photos and updates about the shipping of the 1st Edition, 1st Printing of Blockade Billy by Stephen King, but mostly we’ll be processing orders, printing labels, packing books, and shipping as fast as we can!

Monday, April 26, 2010, 7:29 AM Update:
As of this morning, Mindy has finished processing all of the “new” US orders since the book began shipping, so we’ll be shipping those orders today and tomorrow.  We are working our way through the thousands of Non-US orders, but it will take time.  Thanks for your continued patience!

Thursday, April 22, 2010, 1o:48 PM Update:
We’re now into “this week” for US orders and also working on the Non-US preorders.  Thanks for your continued patience!

Wednesday, April 21, 2010, 10:31 PM Update:
We are now over 98% done shipping the US preorders and we’ll finish the stragglers tomorrow when we start shipping the “new” orders from this week.  We’ve also started on the Non-US customers.  For Non-US customers, if you originally paid via PayPal you will need to pay your shipping invoice before your copy ships. We will send you that PayPal invoice as we reach your order.  (Credit card orders will be charged automatically as we get to your order. We will contact you if there is a problem with your card.) Non-US shipments will take longer to prepare and process due to the customs paperwork and the additional trips to the post office required to ship them.  Thank you for your patience.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010, 9:44 PM Update:
We are well over 90% done shipping the US orders and we’ve started on the Non-US customers.  We have over 1,000 MORE Non-US orders for this title than we’ve ever had for any book in 22 years of publishing and it will take us time to get through them all.  We appreciate your patience during this process!

Since we were starting on the Non-US orders this morning, it was only fitting that Les Ryan and Ruth Curran from the UK volunteered their services to pack for a few hours since they’re stuck in the States and unable to fly back to the UK.  They were joined by Norman Prentiss again and everyone did a terrific job.


Monday, April 19, 2010, 8:02 PM Update:
Well, we’re not done for the day yet, but I figure now is as good as a time as any to update this page.

The local Postmaster — who, for the record, has always been awesome — went above and beyond today.  He just showed up with a couple of empty mail trucks this afternoon.  We had warned him of how much shipping we’d be doing this week, so he wanted to help make things move as smoothly possible.  In the end, we only had to make one trip in the cargo van and the pick-up truck instead of the 3 or 4 trips we had planned for.  He saved us a lot of time, which we were able to use to process another batch of orders.

Over 5,000 orders went out the door today, but as some people are discovering in their mailbox, we actually snuck about 500 orders to the post office on SATURDAY.  One customer in Oregon somehow received his order this afternoon, which must be a record for media mail.

We couldn’t send shipping confirmation emails for this first batch of orders until this evening, but those emails are sending now.  If you receive a shipping confirmation today, it means your copy has indeed gone out.  If you receive the email tonight and you already received your copy, um… surprise!

Many more orders are going to be shipped tomorrow, which is the official publication date.  In the meantime, here are two shots of Cemetery Dance magazine associate editor (and recent Bram Stoker Award winner!) Norman Prentiss packing in our warehouse.  This is way outside his job description, but he happily drove up from the city to help anyway.


Sunday, April 18, 2010, 9:50 PM Update:
No new photos to post right now, but the tower of shipping containers by the dock door is really impressive.  We’ll make sure we get a shot before we start loading a borrowed cargo van for the many trips to the post office tomorrow morning.  We’ve packed about 4,000 orders now (many for multiple copies) and will be back at it bright and early tomorrow.

Saturday, April 17, 2010, 9:41 PM Update:
We started around 8 AM and most everyone is heading home now.  We are making great progress on the orders (tons of processing is done and over 3,000 copies have been bagged) and we plan another long day for tomorrow.  Please note that it is far too late to combine your orders, etc, and if you call or email asking for an update on where your order is in the process, that only takes away time we could be using to ship your order.  Here are some new photos:

Friday, April 16, 2010 Update:
The books are here, we’re processing paperwork like crazy, and bubble-bagging of the books has begun.  We have over 7,500 individual orders to ship (some for 2 or 3 copies) and we’ll be working all weekend to get them ready for next week.  We have extra help coming in both Saturday and Sunday to assist with the packing process and we plan on working 12 hour days to get a head start on the week ahead.  Below are some photos of the first box of books we opened, a couple of the pallets, etc.