On Tuesday I wrote about being annoyed with a publisher. My annoyance concerned a chapter I had written for the book called Värdet av Förtroende (The Value of Trust) which has just been published. The reason for my annoyance was that I wanted to include a Calvin & Hobbes strip where Calvin’s father convinces Calvin that light bulbs work by magic. The point was to show that trust in authority is not always justified.
The publishers would not let me include the strip. First they stated that permission was too complicated to get. This was not a good excuse since I had already obtained permission (and payed for the privilege). Then they stated that the strip could not be published for technical reasons. This was silly but I realised that I would have to accept defeat even if my editor struggled hard on my behalf.
Today I received two copies of the book and imagine my surprise when, there on page 217 was my strip. So all that is left is for me not to be annoyed any more – how annoying!