Printing error. A dread phrase, often used incorrectly.
In the case of the cock-up at Clays, whereby Bridget Jones inadvertently segued into David Jason, it really was a printing error, and one that was caused by human error.
It’s an interesting incident for all sorts of reasons. It was described as affecting ‘a small number’ of books and that genuinely seems to be the case. It appears that only some of the pre-publication copies were affected. Unfortunately they are the copies that go out to journalists and reviewers, who were able to make high-profile hay of it all.
If the faulty books had been in the supply chain in numbers, there would be pictures all over the interweb. I haven’t seen any.
It reminds me of an apocryphal tale told to me by a print company owner many years back: irate publisher phones print boss to complain about a faulty copy of their super-duper glossy magazine, which has been sent back to them by a subscriber.
Print boss responds: “Oh thank goodness you’ve found it, we knew there was one copy that slipped through.”
Oh how we laughed.
In the case of the Bridget Jones book, the clever folk at Random House made the most of the PR opportunity by making a joke about it, and the story resulted in a huge amount of additional publicity for both launches, across all the major media outlets.
Whether the behind-the-scenes conversations between the publisher and printer are quite so laugh-a-minute is another thing.
Reputationally, it’s not great for Clays, but as mix-ups go it could have been way worse.
Amid the schadenfreude at the incident, lots of print bosses will no doubt be thinking “there but for the grace of [insert chosen deity here] go I”.
Be it a nuclear reactor, a jumbo jet, a giant cruise ship or a printing factory; no matter how whizzy the technology, when humans are involved there will always be the potential for human error.
We all just need to have a suitable sense of proportion about it.
