Brian James Freeman here, General Manager of Cemetery Dance Publications and Publisher of Lonely Road Books. Sorry, I didn't get a chance to stop in sooner, it's been a crazy day!
* If you didn't get a chance to read Bev's column yet, his "little history" of Castle Rock is amazing:
Stephen King: News from the Dead Zone #195 - Cemetery Dance Online
Bev's interview with King and Chizmar tomorrow (Wednesday) will answer all kinds of questions about how this book came to be written.
* The Lonely Road Books special editions of GWENDY'S BUTTON BOOK will first be offered to the collectors who ordered the most recently sold Lonely Road Books title, which was THE WILLIAM PETER BLATTY SCRIPT SET. A limit of one copy per customer will be strictly enforced. The remaining copies will be offered via a lottery system.
** Thoughts on how to sell a signed Limited Edition book (if you're the publisher)
HOW to offer a new Stephen King signed Limited Edition for sale is actually a rather stressful decision. Here are the three most common options:
1) One way is to offer each new book to the collectors who purchased the previous book your press announced or published. This allows your supporters to lock in the same number/letter and keep their set "complete" if they've been purchasing all of your books.
The downside to this approach when it comes to a new book by an author such as Stephen King is, of course, he has many collectors who are interested in his collectible editions. To those collectors, this policy makes them feel left out, which is totally understandable. You can't be expected to buy every book from every small press just in case they someday have a Stephen King Limited Edition!
On the other hand, if you were a collector who had previously supported a press by buying all of their books, and then you were told you had to compete with everyone else in the world to get the next book by that press because it's by an extremely popular author, how would that make you feel?
1A) The corollary to this approach is, you CAN offer a "lottery" drawing for the right to purchase any remaining copies. This allows some new collectors or long-time fans to order a copy at the retail price instead of depending on eBay, etc. It's definitely a far from perfect method and there aren't a lot of copies to go around, but it's at least a chance to get a copy.
2) You can go with the "Land Rush" approach of selling a new title. You tell everyone the time and place (website) to be at, and then everyone tries to (virtually) cram into the shopping cart at the same time since the books are sold first-come, first-served. This places a lot of stress on the collectors, of course, and also your server. It's a great way to bring down your website even with a lot of preparation. (Been there, done that!) This approach also allows people to have their friends and family place orders for them even though it's supposed to be "one" book per person. And again, your long-time supporters are left in the dust, possibly missing out on a key title to their collection from your press.
3) Or... you can tell no one in advance, just announce the book out of the blue one day, and then people who were on the road or not randomly watching your website that day miss out. Long-time fans of the author miss out and are angry, and your long-time collectors miss out and are angry, and your server probably crashes as word spread and collectors panic and try to get their order in.
So... There's no perfect system for this sort of offering, but I totally understand if anyone isn't happy with the approach I selected. I just wanted to give you my thought process in case that information was helpful.
Brian