Posted in: Books, Movies, Star Wars: Celebration | Tagged: star wars, star wars celebration, thrawn, timothy zahn

Thrawn Exclusive Cover Causes A Disturbance In The Force At 'Star Wars Celebration'

The idea of the convention exclusive has become a bigger and bigger deal as the second hand market has grown. Vendors like Funko, Hasbro, and LEGO have learned their lesson over the many years, and have switched to lottery systems to sell their inventory safely at conventions. Some vendors have not realized how crazy these things can get and Del Rey books has become the latest victim of their own exclusive.

The exclusive is a cover for the newest Star Wars: Thrawn by Timothy Zahn book being sold at both the Del Rey booth and the Barnes and Noble booth. The book was selling well on Thursday, but on a personal level for someone who did want the book, most people didn't think much of it since vendors selling out on the first day isn't unheard of. However, most vendors don't sell their entire inventory that first day and Del Rey books did exactly that. Instead of staggering the inventory over the course of the four day convention, they sold every copy save for seventy-five the first day. When eager fans arrived Friday to try to buy the book, they were told there weren't any copies left. At 7:14pm on Friday Del Rey posted a tweet about how they would handle this remaining inventory.

This is probably the best way they could handled this situation as messy as it was. However, Del Rey decided that posting a sign at their booth was the best way to tell people about this raffle. At 2:40 a booth employee told us that 700 people were there for the drawing and were told to line up. Come 3pm, the line was disregarded as a blob of people formed around the booth. The fans that took the time to form a line like civilized human beings weren't going to get a chance to draw for these remaining copies. The entire thing became a massive fire hazard to the point where security had to take over. At the time there wasn't anyone shoving but there were enough people that someone could have gotten hurt.

When asked about how many copies existed total Del Rey and Barns and Noble employees were unable to provide a solid number. Barns and Noble revealed that they had received more copies Friday and Saturday (a "pallet" for Saturday according to a booth employee) but there doesn't appear to be any communication between the booths.

The raffle appeared to be going on still when we left but it was hard to tell one way or another. There were people drawing to pick up the book but there are going to be a lot of unhappy fans in a couple of hours.

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