Collectors paying premium prices for special editions are learning the same lesson twice in one year: leatherbound and deluxe hardcover production is genuinely hard to execute at scale, and a lot of publishers taking Kickstarter money right now aren’t equipped to deliver on it consistently.
Brandon Sanderson’s Dragonsteel already had to halt production and fulfillment of its Eye of the World leatherbound edition after a wave of stamping defects, muddy debossing, and inconsistent gold foil work hit the first batch of shipped copies. Now Joe Abercrombie’s First Law trilogy, funded through a Kickstarter run by Lit Escalates, is generating its own wave of complaints, and for a $200 price tag, backers are not inclined to be forgiving.
A YouTube unboxing of the Kickstarted Long Steel tier books lays out the presentation pieces first: a free tote bag, a trifold print of Joe Daniel Phillips’ dust jacket and endpaper art, a sticker decal, and a business card for contacting customer support if something goes wrong. That last item turns out to be relevant fast.
The optional $10 slipcase looks good but runs into an immediate design problem. The books are packed so tightly that removing and reinserting them is a struggle, and the reviewer noted visible damage on the slipcase in the exact spot where Before They Are Hanged slides in. That’s not a one-off. It’s a packaging tolerance issue baked into the product.
The books themselves fare worse. On the reviewer’s copy of Before They Are Hanged, the dust jacket’s sandpaper-textured finish had already started scratching down to bare white cardstock in multiple spots from ordinary handling. Last Argument of Kings had it worse with the endpapers visibly rubbing off and disintegrating on one side, and completely ripping away on the back.
Three specific issues came up repeatedly across backer complaints: the bookplate is a sticker rather than an actual signature, and the glue used to affix it is bleeding through the paper. The paper stock is standard hardcover paper, not acid-free, which matters for anyone treating this as an archival collector’s edition rather than a reading copy. And the binding is glued rather than sewn, which raises durability concerns for anyone actually planning to read these rather than shelve them.
One buyer laid it out on Facebook:
“I knew going in about the bookplate, glued binding, and paper quality, but I was expecting better quality control than what I got. The packing material is minimal. It’s just the cardboard box and two thin pieces of cardboard holding it in place with the least amount of protective wrapping they could get away with. My slipcase came slightly damaged, the dust jacket for Before They Are Hanged is scratched down to white in places and damaged in others, and the endpapers for Last Argument of Kings are ripped.”
That’s a customer who did their homework, accepted the known tradeoffs going in, and still ended up disappointed by execution rather than design. When Lit Escalates was asked about the packing complaints, their response was less than reassuring:
“We have adjusted our packing method for slipcases after reports of some damage like this, but I suspect your package was already in the mail at that time!”
Others requesting damage repairs did get prompt responses on Kickstarter:
And some noted they did arrive in fine condition:
Many of the comments list simply not being fulfilled yet, with given how many books Lit Escalates has to provide, it makes sense they will be spending a lot of time going through these orders.
One commentor on YouTube defended the company for selling $200 books that don’t have premium elements as “it’s made by humans”:
However, one should expect that acid-free paper and sewn binding should come at this level of price at a minimum. These are not general retail-priced or slightly above hardcover books. $200 is an insane amount to spend on something of this price point and needs to be built to last.
What’s notable is how similar these complaints are to the ones hitting Dragonsteel’s Eye of the World leatherbound run at the same time. Different publisher, different binderies, same fundamental problems: inconsistent quality control at volume, packaging that damages product in transit, and premium pricing that isn’t matched by premium durability.
Leatherbound and deluxe hardcover production is a genuinely difficult manufacturing process, with stamping, foiling, binding, and packaging all having to hold up at scale, and there are very few facilities in the world capable of doing it consistently well. It’s a much weaker excuse when the same defect categories- damaged slipcases, scratched jackets, and degrading endpapers all show up across multiple backers’ unboxings for the same product.
Collectors are increasingly paying two to three times the cost of a standard hardcover for editions marketed as heirloom-quality. At that price point, “we’ve since adjusted our process” isn’t an acceptable response to a customer holding a $200 book with ripped endpapers. It’s an admission that the quality control should have existed before the first units shipped, not after the complaints started rolling in.
What do you think, is the premium book Kickstarter boom outpacing what these publishers can actually deliver?
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Castalia has phenomenal books. The leather are premium quality. The hard cover and paperback books are also very well made.
I've had enough subpar results from crowding backings that I am very picky now. *It's cool, I want it* is not enough to part me from my money any more.
Even those with a history of delivering run into challenges. Those with no track record of satisfactory delivery are going to make it worse.