Finding Lost Season 4: The Nik at Nite Special Offer

This post first appeared a week ago, but I've bumped it up to the front again just to add the shipping update at the bottom.

As I've said on the blog before, my life last year caused my regular Finding Lost schedule to be thrown off. Usually I'm writing the books as the season airs, and finishing it the weeks following the finale, and it goes into a summer production and is out by the fall, before the new season begins. Last year, I was on maternity leave with my little one for the year, and in addition to my 4-year-old, there was no time to be writing a book. But a lot of people requested a season 4 edition (the original plan had been to do a season 4/5 split this coming fall) so I set to work and completed it in October, it went into a quick production, and it's now at the printer.

Will you have it in your hands before season 5? Sadly, no. In fact, larger stores like Barnes and Noble have long lead times and the buyers buy books for certain months. They bought it for April, meaning if it were available right this minute they wouldn't allow it to be shipped to their stores until April. Outlets like Amazon, however, and independent bookstores, take it the moment it's ready. When it returns from the printer, it goes to the publisher's warehouse, is counted, then shipped to various other warehouses and wholesalers, who then distribute them among their stores. It's usually about 4-6 weeks from printer to shelf (less in Canada). I found out from my publisher today that the book is scheduled to ship the week of Lost's premiere (how appropriate!) and might -- MIGHT -- be in my hot little hands during the season premiere. But everyone else will have to wait.

Now, I always get a ton of copies of my books and after handing them out to a few family and friends, the rest sit on shelves so I can pretend I live in a bookstore or something, and I never know what to do with them. Offer signed copies on my blog? Who the heck would want a book signed by me? Contests? I did a couple of those. But in this case, I could offer to ship them directly to you, but you'd have to pay for the shipping. Shipping, sadly, has become very expensive (I remember a time -- says the old lady -- when I could ship out my behemoth Buffy books for about $2.50 a pop). BUT... it would mean you'll have a copy about a month before it hits the stores, and probably during the first couple of weeks of season 5, if you're in any kind of rush.

If you're interested, email me off-list, tell me where you'd want it shipped, and I'll take a copy of my season 3 FL book (which is exactly the same size as the new one) across the street to the post office and ask what the cost would be. Then I can email you back and see if it works out. And, if it means anything, I'll sign the book. And hey, if you want seasons 1/2 and 3 thrown in there, I'm happy to oblige! The book is $15 plus shipping (the season 1/2 book is $20). I don't charge tax, and autographs are free! How could you POSSIBLY pass up this deal? :)

Otherwise, you can order from Amazon here if you're in the U.S. and here in Canada. I promise season 5 will be out before the DVDs and we won't have to go through this next year.

UPDATE: I went to the post office and discovered that for a single copy, it falls under lettermail. So the shipping costs would be $2.65 if you're in Canada, $6.80 to the United States, and $13.60 anywhere internationally. If you want more than one copy, email me and I can give you the cost for that. I have lots of copies, so email me if you're still interested! For payment, Paypal would be the easiest option, but if you don't have a paypal account, email me and we'll figure out another way.