Journey Press launched in 2019 with volume one of what has become our flagship series: Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women. Our mission was and is to spotlight the superlative female science fiction writers of the 20th Century, whose work has largely been lost to time and/or eclipsed by that of their male contemporaries. It has thus been critically important to ensure that the Rediscovery series is of the highest quality—from the stories inside, to the commentary by modern authors, to the perfection of their presentation and format.
This is why we were horrified to discover that the third volume of Rediscovery, covering the years 1964-1968, had a fatal, inexcusable error in it.
We included two stories by Hilary Bailey, a terrific author from the United Kingdom. One of them is “The Little Victims”, a tale of mutants and mother love; the second is “The Fall of Frenchy Steiner”, an alternate universe story from a world where the Nazis conquered Great Britain in World War Two.
The only problem: due to a formatting error, “The Fall of Frenchy Steiner” was credited to Margaret St. Clair.
Once this error was discovered, conscientious business practices dictated just one option—we had to destroy all existing flawed copies and replace them with corrected ones.
Thankfully, we have a terrific set of partners in our constellation of bookseller friends. Once we put out the call, they quickly destroyed their existing copies so we could send replacements and notified (to the best of their ability) patrons who had purchased flawed copies.
E-copies are even easier to deal with: books bought via Apple/Ingram affiliates/Amazon are automatically updated with new versions (at least, they should be—folks who bought via Amazon should make sure “download latest version” is turned on). Those who bought directly from our Journey Press online shop have already gotten an email with a corrected version.
The only books we have not been able to replace are the print copies purchased online and the ones purchased from bookstores before they could stock fixed copies. We will replace these as well. Simply send us an email with a photo of the book with the cover destroyed as well as a mailing address, and we will send you a replacement copy, free of charge.
Note: this error is not a collectible or “cute” one—we must destroy all the flawed copies we can to do right by the legacy of Hilary Bailey. If you have a flawed copy, please ****@**********ss.com” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>let us know so we can get it out of circulation.
Of course, every cloud has a silver lining. We were able to evaluate our processes, identify what caused this error, and ensure that it won’t happen again. In the future, the editing and publishing process will be smoother, less prone to error, and produce books of consistently high quality.
And so we go forward, embarrassed by our mistake, but resolved to make good on our promise to honor the memory of the legendary authors who paved the way for the luminaries of today. Thank you for your support in this mission.
~Gideon
