Silmarillion misprint

Hi there, and welcome to the site!

Hardcover books like this have groups of pages ("gatherings") that are then stitched together. The pages are printed on very large sheets of paper and then folded up and the edges trimmed to make these gatherings, and then a bunch of gatherings are stacked up to make the book.

In your case, one of the gatherings is missing, and one other gathering was put in the wrong location in the stack. This is a printing error, happens on a rare occasion! Trotter has a copy of The Lord of the Rings where the Tom Bombadil chapter is completely missing (hear more about this in his YouTube intro video publishing later today.)

When this happens during manufacturing and the printer notices, they just destroy the copy. If a copy gets out into the world, and noticed when purchased new, the buyer can (and should) return it to where they bought it for a refund or exchange. Obviously this book cannot be returned any more, so at this point it is just a curiosity (and not really worth anything, sorry!)

I do hope you have another copy with all the pages. ?

However, for the Silmarillion editions do exist with blank pages and these are not printing errors but samples and are collectable, http://tolkienbooks.net/php/details2.php?id=723.

You will also occasionally find the gatherings upside down in books, these are not worth anything apart from being an unusual curiosity.

Collation issues aren't really "printing errors" or "misprints", as the problem has nothing directly to do with the printed material, only the assembly of said printed material. I have a few mis-bound copies (another poor term I might add) like this.

Khamûl wrote:

Collation issues aren't really "printing errors" or "misprints", as the problem has nothing directly to do with the printed material, only the assembly of said printed material. I have a few mis-bound copies (another poor term I might add) like this.

Fair enough - in my head I was thinking that the printer (the organization/person) is the one who messed up, so I called it a "printing error", but that's clearly not right.

Hammond notes for The Letters of JRR Tolkien that three states exist for the first edition, due to "errors of imposition" (imposition being how the pages are laid out on the sheets before folding).

"Misbound" is defined in Carter/Barker's "ABC For Book Collectors" as we are using it here, so I think it appropriate to use.

I actually just dismantled a copy of Letters; some really funny stuff going on there.

Khamûl wrote:

I actually just dismantled a copy of Letters; some really funny stuff going on there.

Specifically related to handling the incorrect positioning of the pages on the dodgy sheet?

Thank you, everyone. This has been very informative!

Stu wrote:

Khamûl wrote:

I actually just dismantled a copy of Letters; some really funny stuff going on there.

Specifically related to handling the incorrect positioning of the pages on the dodgy sheet?

I can't really remember what Wayne said, and don't have Hammond & Anderson in front of me, but for whatever reason I thought that (for one of the variants) pages had been tipped on to page stumps in the gutter. Which is something you might do for various reasons e.g. a single page has a glaring misprint & could do with being removed & replaced. But it looked more complicated that that. There is a few sections where a serious of pages are not folio leaves at all, but are single leaves tipped to each other.

I'm not super interested in Letters as a book but should have been more observant when I took it apart. I'll have a look again and post if it's easy to photograph & explain.

Khamûl wrote:

Stu wrote:

Khamûl wrote:

I actually just dismantled a copy of Letters; some really funny stuff going on there.

Specifically related to handling the incorrect positioning of the pages on the dodgy sheet?

I can't really remember what Wayne said, and don't have Hammond & Anderson in front of me, but for whatever reason I thought that (for one of the variants) pages had been tipped on to page stumps in the gutter. Which is something you might do for various reasons e.g. a single page has a glaring misprint & could do with being removed & replaced. But it looked more complicated that that. There is a few sections where a serious of pages are not folio leaves at all, but are single leaves tipped to each other.

I'm not super interested in Letters as a book but should have been more observant when I took it apart. I'll have a look again and post if it's easy to photograph & explain.

Yeah, I have the variant that has a couple of leaves cut away and then replaced with new ones glued to the stubs. Doesn't surprise me that it is worse than that (though I haven't looked too closely at mine beyond the obvious).