We have been getting this question a lot. Tonight, from a sweet guy in Baltimore. I’m a little “excited” still from Stephen’s book party tonight (the paperback of The Adderall Diaries is out — no, not that kind of excited!) and so I wrote a longer reply than I normally get to in the middle of my day-to-day. Anyway, here is that and here is my way of saying, I want all of the books to you, NOW, and here is why they may not be:

Hi, David,

I feel your anticipation — and we’re trying to figure out what’s been delivered and what hasn’t through following the updates our backers are giving us. Folks have blogged and posted to Twitter (I cannot bring myself to say “tweet,” even now, in 2010) about when they got their book, and some of the inconsistencies are maddening!

Like, for instance: we sorted our books into twelve different bags. I think 6 were mixed bags (literally) of zip codes all across the US. Six were limited to one zip code per bag, based on where we had the most backers — and those were New York City (100xx), Brooklyn (112xx), San Francisco (941xx), Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, and Minneapolis[1]. Which, at the last minute I think, after we had been on the loading dock at the business bulk mail center on 10th Ave at 31st for four hours, was mixed into the mixed bags.

So as far as we can tell, from divining the blog posts like very adorable entrails, books to those six-now-five distinct zip codes arrived first, as they were all presorted and the post office had basically nothing to do with them but stick them on a truck or plane or whatnot.

And as for the mixed bags —- well.

I am sorry you are in a mixed bag and that more people from your zip code (I mean, Baltimore, come on people!) did not back the book. We needed at least 10 to get you your own bag. Next time we will market in a more focused way? That almost makes sense, here at this late hour.

Know that Meaghan and I each read each of these plaintive emails about the status of books and we are hoping that EVERY SINGLE BOOK is in our backers’ hands by the end of this week.

After then, we will bring in the search party.

Stay strapped in until Friday at least? And after then, we’ll re-assess with our post office ladies, whose names are Dora and Estelle. I guess Dora is Small Press World Famous for being one of the only people at the post office in all of New York who actually picks up the phone? We have her on our side. We’ll see what we can do if we have to recover or resend books and be in touch if (ahhhhh god I hope not) need be.

Thank you again for the eight months of patience you have already extended us.

love and non-returned bulk mail items weighing slightly less than 16 ounces,

melissa

[1] Minneapolis did get mixed in. I am sorry to all of you, Minneapolis.