I had a signing this past Saturday for
my book in Santa Ana, California. It was a private event so I supplied the books. I had a few weeks so I decided to save and ship via USPS. I packed 3 exactly the same boxes of 20 books well ahead of time so it would arrive on the Tuesday before. Tuesday came and went and 1 box showed up Thursday, still ahead of the event. I checked the tracking on the other 2, and boy was I amazed!
One box sat in Newport, Kentucky for 2 days before going all the way to LA County, just miles from the final destination. Then it was sent to Atlanta, Georgia for a few days and then it took a side-trip to Memphis where it sat for another week before arriving in Santa Ana 6 days after the book signing was over.
The other box sat in Cincinnati for 2 days before being shipped to Des Moines which it apparently liked because it remained there until the Monday after my event had ended. Added bonus was that 9 out of 20 books were completely destroyed due to the box looking like it was dropped off a mountain.
As completely upsetting as this was, the book signing turned out great thanks to my editor at Simon & Schuster who ran around on Friday gathering up spare books around the office and over-nighting them to California for Saturday and a few friends who scoured Los Angeles bookstores for copies of my book.
I think I'll spend the extra cash and send books Fed Ex or UPS next time. At least they are accountable for screw ups like this.