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Are in! I recorded a quick walk-through today. If you want to avoid spoilers about the interior of the book, all you need to know is that the physical proofs were approved, they look great, and we should have bound copies to approve within days.
Thanks for all your patience.
-CTRO
Hey all. I just wanted to write a quick update clarifying where we are and what we're waiting for. Although we approved the digital proofs of the book a month ago, there was a delay in invoicing which pushed back the production timeline. The printer has given us conflicting information about when exactly we'll be slotted into their production schedule, which we were pressing them this week to nail down.
I indicated to backers in some comments that I'd have a more clear timeline to share this week. Unfortunately, the last thing we heard from the printer was ambiguous, and so we'll need to wait until next week to pin them down on exactly when we can expect to be in production and how long it will take.
There are multiple pages of the book that I want to see photos of as soon as they come off the line, so that we can verify print quality. I'll be sharing them here as soon as I have them. We've also requested physical proofs be sent, so I'll share images of those as well. Printing won't be halted while the proofs are being mailed.
As soon as I have anything concrete, I'll post another update.
These delays are brutal. I wish I could do more.
-CTRO
For the past few weeks, we've been in a cycle of revisions from myself to publisher to printer and back again. At each stage we've found different issues and each time an issue is found, it requires another round trip.
Some of the issues have been absolute show-stoppers, like pagination being broken or offset errors. Others have been more subtle. I don't want to delay this book for an issue that nobody will notice, but I've also been working on it for years and want it to be as near to perfect as I can get it.
I have loved making this book, and I'm beyond grateful for the support it has gotten. But proofing something of this complexity and magnitude is not a task I'd wish upon anyone. Over 170 pages of tables, each with a unique layout, each with different numbers of items, a table of contents, an index, and a ton of different styles of text each indicating specific uses. Once you've looked it over 10,000 times, it becomes really difficult to notice any error and the impossible goal is to find every error.
After several revisions, I discovered that my InDesign paragraph styles were inconsistent across chapters. Eagle-eyed observers will notice this in the distributed PDF. I discovered it, with absolute horror, when I thought we'd arrived at a final version. After fixing this issue and scanning the entire book several times, I once again thought we'd arrived at a final version and resubmitted it to the hellish loop of revision.
And then, when reviewing the proofs once more, I found a single missing apostrophe. An "it's" missing its contraction. And it was included in one of my favorite table items in the entire book. But this was the only issue I saw. And so I made a bold choice: I would leave it. Not simply because I didn't want to go through another round of revisions, but also as a kind of symbol. A bit of grammatical wabi-sabi. An Easter egg for everyone who reads these updates. It made me feel kind of proud to let go of the idea of a perfect book. It wasn't accepting defeat, it was accepting the naturally chaotic way of the universe. It was Buddhism.
Until the next day, when I found a few more errors and fixed them all.
I've just submitted what I am foolishly optimistic may be the final revision. If I'm right, our printer will send me a physical proof so that we can be sure about things like our paper choice. If we're lucky and we got it right, we can schedule it for printing.
Fingers crossed. Thank you, so much, for your patience.
Cheers,
CTRO + EF,
PS: Some folks have been asking about an updated PDF edition. I'll get to this once we've moved into production so that I don't have to do another hellish loop of revisions and uploads there as well. I've got no idea how to do interlinking in a PDF, but hopefully we can make that happen so that the PDF is more useful. Glumdark was very much designed to be used as a physical book, but we want to make the PDF as good as possible.
We are officially neck deep in the proofing process with our printer. We've had to make some changes to the debossed / gold foil alignment on the deluxe cover as well as dealing with some trapping issues on the interior pages of the book.
Because we've done some experimental stuff with image and text layout, it has presented some odd text registration issues, but we've mostly gotten it all sorted.
I have a new digital proof in my inbox that I'm going to be inspecting with a (digital?) microscope today and getting back to the printer with changes tomorrow. I expect to have images to share of physical proofs in our next update, which will be our final step before the books start printing. Because of our ink and paper choices, mailing a physical proof is just going to be mandatory to make sure the presentation lives up to expectations.
Once we approve that print, we should be able to provide a semi-accurate delivery date. Because at that point we'll know when the printer can get us into their production pipeline.
The above poster is being screen-printed. We had initially planned to print it with the "official" ink colors of the Glumdark logo on black paper. But in the pre-production process, we started kicking around the idea of using UV inks so that the poster would glow in black light.
Currently, we're waiting for a digital proof of the potential UV inks. They will register as slightly more magenta, but the glow effect could be cool. We won't do it if it's too magenta. But let us know in the comments if you feel strongly one way or the other. Black light posters: cool, or not that cool?
I always put progress on the book first, whenever there's anything I can be doing. But when there isn't, I'm putting time into writing Glumdark Space tables and working on the website. To that end:
We'll be getting firm dates as soon as we know anything.
Cheers,
CTRO+EF
First, let's start with what matters to you most: the status of the book.
There has been a lot of back and forth about the final costs per unit for the different versions of the book. During this process, we weren't able to move into pre-production and get the first proofs done. Unfortunately, while this is happening, there isn't anything I can do to speed things up.
But we finally got the numbers we needed and should have everything signed this week. The printers have sent initial feedback on our files, so that means we're officially in pre-press.
As far as the rest of the items, many are already produced and most of the rest have been ordered. Nothing outside of the book itself should hold anything up further:
Perhaps because there's nothing I can personally do to get the book done faster, I've been investing my time into the Glumdark website.
The site had really started to look dated with too many CTAs and tons of stripes and underlines and etc. I went through and stripped the design way down, making it much easier to navigate and use--I hope.
The dice rolling mechanism on the Glumdark site has always been functional, but I like watching real dice roll. So I implemented dice rolling into the site.
It can be turned on or off easily in the footer. And because I didn't want to lose any snappiness, the table lands on the number before the dice finish rolling. Which always feels weirdly prescient.
This is out now! Lemme know if you find any bugs. I'm sure we've got some.
We have multiple pieces of art commissioned for the site by Strega Wolf and of course Vil. My biggest priority is addressing the fact that the Travel Location Generator still uses icky AI art for the icons. You can tell they were made with a really early version of Midjourney back before we took a strong stance on the matter. They gotta go.
And we've got two new tables in Beta: Lives in Space and Distress Beacons. They should both be out this week as well. We'll announce them on the Glumdark Patreon and Discord server.
Two small steps towards a Glumdark Space book?
Thanks for tuning in!
Cheers,
CTRO / EF