In a blog post on Wednesday, author John Green revealed that Barnes & Noble has accidentally shipped copies of his forthcoming YA novel, The Fault in Our Stars (Dutton), a few weeks too early. The book has a January 10 on-sale date and, in his post, Green said the mistake by the retailer is "disappointing" but that it is not his "wish to see Barnes and Noble or any of their employees vilified."
Penguin is doing an announced first printing of 150,000 copies for the book, and Green has signed all of those copies (including the ones B&N has shipped), as part of a promotional push for the title. In June, Green tweeted to his more than 1 million Twitter followers – as well as numerous Facebook fans and YouTube subscribers – about his plan to put his John Hancock on all those books. That announcement shot the book to #1 on Amazon and #2 on bn.com.
Green (Looking for Alaska; Paper Towns) said in his blog post that the most unfortunate aspect of B&N's mistake is that it interferes with the work he and his publisher have done to "make sure that everyone who wants to read TFiOS will be able to do so at the same time." A rep from Penguin added that although it's unfortunate what happened, the focus remains on the publication of the book itself. The rep told PW: "We don't think this takes away from what we've done here."
