According to our initial announcement about the Hill House signed limited edition of ANANSI BOYS, we were going to be shipping these books the first week of April.

We wanted to let you all know that we've had to push this date back three months. We also wanted to let you know the reason for this delay.

Back when we entered into the contract with Morrow/HarperCollins for ANANSI BOYS, we agreed to not publish our limited edition until the beginning of January 2006. This left us plenty of time to get this book out for this date.

Things were going along swimmingly until November. At that point we discovered that Neil's British publisher, HodderHeadline, was bringing out that month a signed limited edition of ANANSI BOYS. Not only that, they were also including a lot of the additional material we had announced. (This edition is the one you might have seen referred to as "the Ottakar's edition," given that it was distributed by a British bookstore chain by that name.)

This was a real shock to us. After we picked our jaws up off the floor, we started considering our options.

1) Of course, there was no way that we could get our book out in time to beat the British edition—both in terms of production and our agreement with Morrow. 2) We then considered how you, our customers, would respond to this news. Not only was the Headline edition fairly nice as limited editions done by trade publishers go, it also featured the additional material that we had thought would set our book apart. And even though it might be considered to be a strictly British edition, the fact is that the Internet renders that meaningless. Therefore, our edition, as then configured, would be a rather hollow effort. 3) In the end, we decided that we would have to go back to the drawing board and reconfigure our edition to truly set it apart from anything else out there. To that end, we've worked with our designer and illustrator, Dagmara Matuszak (of MELINDA fame), to expand our edition with many more pieces of artwork and other special effects. In addition, Dagmara is taking on a much larger role in the project in terms of overall design. And finally, we're working with Neil to get even more additional material that was not included in the Ottakars/HodderHeadline edition.

Naturally, this reconfiguration has added a few months onto our schedule. We are now planning to ship our copies of ANANSI BOYS by the end of April.

This additional work will add quite a bit to the production expense of the books. Please be assured, however, that those who have paid for their copy of ANANSI BOYS (which includes everyone reading this announcement) will not have to pay a penny more. We will most likely have to raise the retail price a bit for future orders, but this will not affect you at all.

We'd like you to see a sampling of the artwork and design that Dagmara has already devised for our edition. To see this, access the following link to and Adobe Acrobat (PDF) file of some of the ANANSI BOYS pages.

We truly hope you all understand why we made the decision we did. We at Hill House would not have felt good about simply issuing an edition not distinct enough from any rival Limited edition out there. We know that our volumes are expensive, and we want you to feel confident that you receive your money's worth. And please do remember that if in the end you decide that you'd rather cancel your order, we will of course refund your purchase price without question.

Purchase Your Copy Now

View Your Hill House Purchases

Prepayment Bonus If you submit your prepaid order for ANANSI BOYS by October 1, 2005, you'll receive two amazing bonuses: The ANANSI BOYS prepublication packet, which features the excerpt booklet produced for ANANSI BOYS by publisher William Morrow and a beautiful 5" x 7" reproduction of Dagmara Matuszak's cover art for the limited edition. Both items are enclosed in a black linen-finished envelope with a color title card hand-laid onto the front panel. All three elements (the booklet, the print, and the envelope) will be numbered with the same limitation as the limited edition you receive. A $20 discount on the price of the ANANSI BOYS limited edition, bringing your total cost (excluding shipping) to $220. But remember, you must get your prepaid order in to Hill House no later than October 1st.