Recently I was reading a book (surprise) I’ll call it Book A. Depending on what is going on around me I’m a pretty fast reader, I had been reading this book on and off for maybe two days. I was about 300 pages into it. Well I got another book (Book B) during the work day that was I very anxious to read so I pretty much decided I would go home, do what needed to be done and settle in to finish Book A so I could jump right into Book B.
Well I’m happily reading a long page 320 and there is a pretty major plot point, joy, happiness, excitement (yeah, feel good stuff). Next page discussing the funeral of joy, happiness, feel good stuff moment. POV had changed, there were 3 in the story so I had no reason to question it until the joy from the previous page was shattered. I look up, start flipping pages and generally freak out. Right page 320, Left page 353. OMG. I was devastated. I’d just invested 320 pages into a book and had no clue what HAPPENED! Maybe it had only been a couple of hours of my life but again, it didn’t matter I was devastated. Completely utterly horrified.
I got the book new from Sam’s Club, it’s a HQN copyright is 2006. My TBR mountainous range is huge, I don’t know when I bought it, only know it had a Sam’s sticker on it. Returning it for exchange was not an option. If you read this blog (and I sometimes wonder if anyone does) you know I have issues with ebooks. I buy the ones I must have (friends, favorite authors – who are sometimes one in the same) otherwise I am a complete ebook dork. So I go look for the ebook so I can finish this book. Well I did, but I personally couldn’t find it – ebook dork again, but a wonderful person on a readers loop I am on (because I freaked out and had to complain vocally and immediately before I imploded when this happened) found it in e-book format online and gave me a direct link – which is the ONLY way I would have been able to get to it, because my efforts only came up with a Kindle version – which Kindle’s are looking better everyday to me.
My question is how far would you go? I bought the book once. I could have ordered it from Amazon or Eharlequin and gotten it in a few days for about the same price I’ve paid for it once. Or I could have ordered the ebook for even more than I paid originally. Or I did find it on paperbackswap.com – which signed up for a long time ago and have used exactly once. Or I could see if the library has it. What would you do???
I went the library route because one I pass daily happened to have it on the shelf and sorry but I’ve vested time and energy into the story and I had to know the rest of the story! Oh and I did email the author because, again if you read this blog, you know I hope to be published one day and well I KNOW it is not her fault, but I was really enjoying the book and wham, bam my joy got squashed. If and when I am published I would really want to know if a reader came across a misprinted book, sure there is nothing she can do or that I expect her to do but I would want to know. Would you???