Quick Note
Dear Friends and Fans of The Three Investigators,
It seems that some of the initial shipments of Amazon hardcover editions of the new Three Investigators books may have had a printing error on their spines. The spines are supposed to be all black - i.e. without any color bleed on their edges - but at least a few of them were shipped with thin strips of color pulled over from the front and back covers to the edges of the spines.
I have to say that if you didn’t know they weren’t supposed to be there, you might actually like the look of the strips of color. Still, they are a printing error. It seems to have had something to do with where some of the books were printed, and also when. As far as I can tell from anecdotal reports, almost none of the Amazon paperbacks manifested this error, and there doesn't seem to be a problem with either the hardcovers or paperbacks from Barnes and Noble. Also, an “order test” Steven and I have now conducted suggests that the initial Amazon hardcover problem has been fixed.
That said, if you received an Amazon hardcover (or, for that matter, paperback) with color bleed on the spine, and you’d rather have the spine look all black, be sure to exchange the book within the thirty day time frame. That’s fast approaching now, since I imagine that the first physical books could have been delivered as early as March 6th - and 30 days from that would be April 5th.
On another (but somewhat related) topic, it turns out that Grok was wrong when it reported that both Amazon and Barnes & Noble would ship paperbacks and hardcovers from their US sites basically anywhere in the world.
It seems that although that is true of Barnes & Noble, for some strange reason Amazon doesn’t ship to Australia. Eventually, the books will be available there locally, but for now any Australian fans who want to the buy the books will need to buy them from Barnes and Noble. (The Australian fans who have contacted me about this have been very understanding.)
That’s it for now! Sometime in May, I’ll send out the publication announcement for the three books to be published on June 3rd. The books are called The Mystery of the Dramaturgical Dagger, The Mystery of the Existential Envoy, and The Mystery of The Factitious Falconer, and they mark the movement into the series proper.
In other words, although the first three books needed to establish the setting, tone, and backstory of the new series, (as well as the backgrounds, personalities, and characters of all the major characters), at the start of The Mystery of the Dramaturgical Dagger we’re off and running, with the bulk of that establishing work behind us.
By the way, in case you didn’t notice, since each of the three main characters begins and ends one book out of every three, and there are three colors used on the book covers - teal, sky blue, and dark lilac - in future, you can easily identify the Bob books, the Pete books, and the Jupiter books just by seeing what color the cover is!
All best,
Elizabeth Arthur
P.S. Below is a sneak peek of the cover for Book # 4.
Cover Art By Pashur House