Postal Alert:

[Tom Hufford]

I had a card mailed to me in early May, the tracking info showed that it was scanned at my local PO and "out for delivery" (in Marietta, GA) on May 5.

It seemed to have disappeared, and I had the PO check on it on June 10. They couldn't find it. It was finally delivered to me on July 18. No idea where it was for 10 weeks. Maybe IT got sent to the Macon distribution center (about 100 miles away)!!

[jerseygary]

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.