Stuff I bought directly from the official Tolkien site was also poorly packed and came in with several bumps. Maybe I'm just unlucky.

In any case, wouls be great for someone to do a side by side comparison of the facsimile vs 1st print.

Velmeran wrote:
Wouldn't be shocked if Stu's copy didn't come directly from HarperCollins themselves.

Yep, mine came from head office in London, packed in a padded envelope inside a padded envelope, so no bumps!

It is actually a very sturdy slipcase; probably the sturdiest I have seen from HC in a long while, so I think they will stand up well to the postal service.

Morinehtar wrote:

In any case, would be great for someone to do a side by side comparison of the facsimile vs 1st print.

Once it arrives, I will be doing exactly that

As Trotter has pointed out, the text on the flaps has been re-typeset. Not sure why HarperCollins did that, rather than using the scanned text that I supplied; Maybe they thought it wasn't quite sharp enough (amd they might have been right). Unfortunately, I didn't get to see or re-edit the flaps after they did their work on my version, as they only sent me the central image area (which I then edited).

I'd have preferred them to have just gone with my completely accurate front and rear flap versions, but at least my edit made the cut for the main image.

The genesis of the jacket was broadly:

1. Two overlapping scans (front and rear) re-assembled and merged back in 2015 - SWC
2. Digital removal of creases, joins, etc, 2015 - SWC
3. Removal of all staining and shadowing from flaps, 2015 - SWC
4. Separation of flaps (not sure why), colour reduction, tidying of runes, introduction of quite a number of small errors [software being a bit aggressive, I think], plus a layer of speckling - HC
5. Removal of all speckling (took hours!), manual repair of features lost in step 4, colour reduction down to three colours (including correcting colours which had been swapped incorrectly in step 4) Suggested correcting colour for green - SWC
6. Re-integration of flaps (HC version) - HC

The reason the "JRR Tolkien" and some of the white-boundaried features have a bit too much white is as a result of step 4. If I'd had more time, I'd have fixed those things, but it all fell on a Saturday and Sunday morning, and my wife was really upset with me for "computering" all weekend. So I finally just flicked it off to HC as good enough (which it is). The speckling layer was a killer to remove; I think they added it because some of the jacket was naturally speckled a bit on my original and would have taken a long time to remove. If they had given me the version without that layer, step 5 would have taken half as long and I would have been able to focus on some other areas a bit more, but that is OK, as no one was expecting me to edit it.

Honestly, overall I'm pretty happy with the result, even if some aspects could have been done a tiny bit better. Relative to what almost made it out there, it is a win! If they were to do a second print, they could definitely tighten a few things up (and ideally use scanned/restored flaps, perhaps with a some more editing - but might not actually look better, so possible HC made the right call)

I have my Hobbit facsimile on a pre-order from Amazon UK -- thanks for all your efforts with the dust jacket, Stu, and for sharing your thoughts here. It's interesting to follow the process (although I have much less time nowadays to spend on the JRRT hobby)! And I recognize dealing with the wife's patience... happy wife, happy life!

I think the book will be widely available next week, so if anyone is thinking of cancelling orders and trying a different company who may state that it is available now, been there and done that in the past but did not get the book any quicker, then good-luck.

I am sticking with my Amazon order.

And after almost what, 6 years, why wouldn't you stick with that Amazon order at this point? :D

Once I get it I will go straight to read "Riddles in the Dark". Are there any other major textual differences between this one and the current version?

nothing major, apart from ch.5.

I was just having a chat with Charles Noad. (he says it's okay to write about this here). I'd rung him a couple of days ago to ask whether he'd heard anything about this edition, and he said he'd already got his from HC.

He rang me this evening to say he's gone through his copy of the book, checking it against Hammond and found only the one anomaly - there is no blank page between the map and the half-title. Otherwise, it seems pretty good.