The sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, and only the second novel published by author Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman has frustrated readers whose copies were missing the bottom few lines on eight pages.
The error, in the initial print run of 25,000, led to a number of complaints on Twitter and online retailer Amazon, which has offered to replace affected books free of charge.
One reader, Jennie Richmond from Wigan, wrote on Twitter: “Loved reading Go Set A Watchman but experience definitely tainted by missing lines of text at the ends of pages.”
Others wrote of being "annoyed" and "frustrated".
A spokesman for printer Clays, part of the St Ives Group, said: “We found a fault in the production process leading to missing lines on eight pages of a proportion of the print run. We have been working with the publisher to ensure the faulty stock is replaced as fast as possible.”
Publisher William Heinemann, an imprint of Penguin Random House, said that replacement copies were currently being printed and that affected books would be replaced free of charge.
“Due to an error in the printing process a limited number of copies of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman are faulty,” the publisher said.
Industry sources have speculated on how the mistake could have happened, with either a ripping error or a problem with the master typeset files supplied being offered as possible causes.
A Clays spokesman said the company did not want to reveal the cause but did say there was no problem with the master typeset files.
Print consultant Francis Atterbury of Hurtwood Press said: “The phrase ‘printer's error' often means someone else has mucked up. It’s a strangely old-fashioned looking error, the descender of the letter ‘p' is missing from one of the lines which suggests something obstructed it, like a blank picture box in InDesign, or a piece of film was missing, but without knowing all the details it’s impossible to comment further.”
He added: “I doubt anyone will be saying too much in public and presumably all hell has broken loose at Clays.
"Most printers will be thinking 'there but for the grace of God go I'.”
The novel has sold more than a million copies in the US and Canada, more than 100,000 in its first day in the UK and is expected to be the top seller in the Nielsen BookScan UK chart this afternoon. It already had a high profile before the printing error was revealed, since Lee had not published anything since her 1960 Pulitzer Prize novel To Kill a Mockingbird.
The announcement, via her lawyer, in February that she was to publish a sequel to the American classic, written before it in the 1950s, gave the book widespread press coverage, not least because of conflicting accounts of how it came to light. Speculation of how much the author, now 89 and living in a nursing home, was involved in the publication of the new book has also been rife.
Excited readers queued through the night to buy physical copies of the hardback when it was released on 14 July, with some shops opening at midnight to sell the book at the first opportunity.
