…but on the other hand: What’s the problem with being one book short? If some comic book store was going to get one copy a little later, would that result in any penalties? I mean, if the original shipment had been insured, it wouldn’t have arrived in time, either, wouldn’t it? And I suppose that the distributor is used to dealing with delayed shipments, so it stands to reason they’d have a tried and tested way to solve such issues.

Worst case, I’d asked them for the address of one of the book stores and sent them them a signed copy directly. Yeah, it might arrive a tiny little bit later, but it’s special!

Mind, if this had been my story, it would have involved noticing at this stage that all of the books were missing a page, or something had been printed in the wrong order or somesuch…