Important Info for Uncle Hugo Pre-orderers

[rolanni]

How to say this?

I'm very sorry, but the odds are good that, if you pre-ordered a copy of Alliance of Equals from Uncle Hugo's, you will not have them in hand before-or-on the official publication date of July 5.

This is not Uncle Hugo's fault

Simon and Schuster, which is Baen's distributor, has, for the entire month of June been assuring Baen, us, and Uncle Hugo that the books are on the truck, and should be arriving here at the Confusion Factory at any moment.

In fact. . .the books went onto the truck today, and (according to the tracking information from UPS) will arrive here in Maine tomorrow, Wednesday, June 29.  Even if Steve and I sign books like Mad, Signing Things (which I promise we will do), we're talking in excess of 200 books, many of them requiring personalization -- so, best case, we can get them on a truck to Minneapolis on Friday, July 1.  July 4 is, of course, Monday, so -- you see where I'm going with this.

To forestall -- No, I don't know why S&S behaved in this really frustrating manner, since I don't work at the S&S warehouse.

Again, apologies for the delay.  I promise it'll still be a good book, even it's mailed a couple days late.