I've just received my dead tree copy of Street Magic and the first thing I've noticed is that the binding and/or layout has apparently been done quite wrong, in that the text of the page is misplaced and too close to the spine, since the stupid technophile-looking running chapter title which is printed on the outer page margin is too big and takes far too space, while the innermost column text is far too close to the spine and therefore quite difficult to read and follow.

I just wanted to know whether this is a problem with my copy or a mistake in the whole printing batch.

Sounds like you got a dud. Mine looks great.

I have no isusse with the binding so far. I wished they had color pages for some of the book. Lots of other hardcover books in the industry have color now with hardcovers. The price of 35$ for a B&W was a little much.
I did enjoy the content and new gaming addtions.

The only thing I have noticed with my copy is that several of the paragraph titles (like the guardian vines or FAB paragraphs) are Xed out boxes or solid blocks.

That's friggin bizarre...

FASA was bad about it's bindings in the past.

Wanderer- have to talked to FanPro about this? I worked for a gaming company for a while, and it was standard practice for us to send replacements for defective books. I doubt FanPro is any different.

Sounds like you ordered it online. If so, you'll want to talk to them directly, and they'll probably ask you to return the defective one. If you bought it at your FLGS, you can almost definitely return it, and they'll make the exchange next time they get an order in from their distributor. In fact, even if you ordered online, try your FLGS, and see if they'll make an exchange for you anyway, just to save you and Fanpro a little trouble.

Books are usually packed in bundles and if they're not looked at, they can be missed. They're usually spotted at the printer, but if not, they go through the publisher's warehouse, the distributor's warehouse, and the retailer's shelf, and they usually get spotted somewhere along the way. If you ordered online, and the problems were inside, I can see how it got missed.

Anyway, like I said, I'm sure you can get it replaced.

Dread Polack

Well I looked through my book again and on one page I have 2 section headings that are unreadable because they are boxed out in place of letters.

Mistakes happen, but they can be corrected. I got a replacement copy once I notified FanPro of missing pages in my SR4 book--and I live far, far away from Chicago.

Mine also has the strange rectangles instead of letters in some of the titles.

Wanderer, like Dread Polack mentioned, FLGS will normally exchange books that are defective. I've done it a few times.

All of the copies have those black rectanges instead of the actual letters; that page was corrected at the last minute and the font occasionally freaks out when pages are replaced in a PDF file ... I had encountered this with the SR4 PDF, but I hadn't let Jason know about it. I'll be letting him know.

The missing words are "FAB III" and "Black Guardian Vines."

That info will be in the errata when it's made available.