Unusual Tales from the World of Printing

Every so often, we see in the news an interesting tale from the world of printing. This month Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf fell out of copyright in Germany, meaning that publishers could once again print copies of the controversial text. Naturally this led to a debate about the ethics of doing so. Eventually, it was agreed between the big German publishing houses that an annotated academic edition exposing the book’s many inaccuracies and falsehoods should be produced. Here are some other unusual printing tales that have emerged in recent years. Freedom to be Pulped Someone at HarperCollins printers was in big trouble in 2010. The postmodern writer Jonathan Franzen had just written Freedom, a contemporary American epic, which was expected to be a big seller. However, the whole first run had to be pulped when an error at the typesetting stage led to an earlier draft of the novel being printed in place of the final draft. Guinness World Records The Guinness Book of World Records celebrated its 62nd anniversary with the 2016 edition. During that time well over 100 million volumes have been printed. This print run means the Guinness Book of World Records holds the Guinness World Record for the best-selling copyrighted book. This is not the only World Record that the book holds; it is also the book most frequently stolen from public libraries. Egan Was Here In October last year, Edinburgh held the World Paper Money Fair. One banknote of interest, if not particularly valuable, was the Scottish pound note. It had recently come to light that over 50 million pound notes that had been printed in the 1950s and 1960s had borne the signature of an apprentice printer. WH Egan had forged his name into the depiction of a pattern of cobblestones outside the Bank of Scotland. Nobody noticed until he confessed decades later. At Colour Print, we might not have such unusual stories, but we do offer competitive prices on a large range of printed products. You can email us on websales@col-print.co.uk or call us on 01603 488001.