Reprint date & other news

I've been given a date for delivery of the reprint. It'll be arriving here in Norfolk on 30th December. I am going to looking to find a fulfilment company to send it out because at the rate things are going the whole 3000 run is going to sell out by then and I want to make sure it gets out promptly for everyone to receive their books at the beginning of the New Year. I couldn't order a bigger run because there wasn't enough of the right quality paper available. So I have already ordered another reprint for the New Year - it's just a question of how big to go. I'd like to get ahead of the game so that I can get Amazon and booksellers to handle all this and enable me to get my life back! As soon as I know the plan, I'll put it in another post.

And now a big Thank You. Over the last couple of days I've sent out emails to thousands of people who have ordered the book in order to let them know what is happening with their order. This task has been made easier by the hundreds of supportive replies - really a wave of warmth and enthusiasm and encouragement that has carried me along. Thank you all so much - I'd love to be able write and thank you all individually (and maybe I will once this tsunami has flattened out) but for now I would just like to let you know how enormously grateful I am.  I am getting regularly overcome with emotion at the kindness and the lovely things that people are writing to me - it is what is getting me through what is an incredibly exhausting time. Something that particularly moved me was a man wrote that he was happy to wait - and that it is the first book that he has bought for himself - at the age of 65! Now that is quite an honour for me as a first time author.

If you have made an order and haven't heard from me with a note of when you can expect your delivery, please email me at andrew@groupphoto.co.uk - there have been several email addresses that have been incorrectly typed into Paypal which has rather slowed things down with emails not going out or bouncing back.

I'm behind with dealing with enquiries and modifications to orders and refunds for a small number of people who needed the book as a Christmas present. I've got to spend the next couple of days getting out the books that I have now. Things have been hampered by problems with getting supplies of cardboard book envelopes - our supplier sent 1500 which were too small and then the replacements were also too small - we'd sent the right measurements but their database had inaccurate measurements from the manufacturers of the products. Anyway, we're on it now and a load of books are going out on Monday 14th & Tuesday 15th. The pallet of 500 books from the Museum is being delivered on Thursday morning and I'm aiming to get them out for the last posting date before Christmas which is Saturday 19th.

Finally, some more Thanks:

• Jeremy Vine, of course, for his genuine and wholehearted support for what I'm doing.
   
• Manu & Petra at www.bad.be for seemingly doing the impossible and arranging the reprint for 30th December.
  
• Mark at www.panelagency.com for organising getting the pallet of books over from the Museum.
  
• Piet & Annick at inflandersfields.be/en for their generosity and arrangements at the Museum.
  
• Jane & Martin at www.norfolkpaintingschool.com for their decision-making & problem-solving & inspiration & facilities & contacts to get everything worked out.

Better get back to sorting out some issues that have come in via email...