Greetings Backers!

I must start with an apology that this update is late. I am still scrambling to catch up on all of the things that got neglected during February. At the same time I am attempting to rest and recover from being overworked in February. As you might imagine the efforts to catch up and the efforts to rest are in direct conflict so I'm kind of failing at both of them. My current plan is to muddle my way forward switching between the two and not taking on any new efforts until I finally reach a place of being recovered.

TL;DR: Not nearly enough progress has happened on SLSC work, but this is one of the efforts I'm returning to now. Activities Notebook is in final stages of layout editing. I hope to start mailing it out by the end of March. I've created a Give Away books form and will soon be publicizing it. Your next update will be the week of March 30 - April 3.

I was feeling like I've been too busy and wouldn't have much to report, but actually I did make small amounts of progress and I have plans for all the rest. The work I have immediately ahead of me is this:
1. Activities Notebook: I finished 1st pass layout! Now I just need to print it out and do a paper edit looking for errors to fix. Then I'll be able to send it off for a test print. I plan to have these ordered in the next couple of weeks. My hope is to be shipping packages containing these by the end of March.
2. Giveaway Books: I have created a Give Away Book Form that you all can share with anyone who can't afford a book, but who you feel would benefit from having a copy. I have 70 pre-paid copies to give away thanks to many of you!  In the next week or so I will start making noise and advertising the form link on Social Media.
3. Wider availability: I need to make the eBook and audiobook available on bookselling platforms like Amazon and Ingram. Then I need to adjust layout for a Print on Demand version for those platforms which will make physical copies easier to access outside the United States. 

SLSC Print book: Complete!
SLSC ebook: Complete!
SLSC Audiobook: Complete!
Activities Notebook: Edit pass and layout. Finished by end of March
Journal (for creativity bundle): Complete!
Bookmarks: Complete!
Notecards: Complete!
Sticker sheets: Complete!
Thank you Postcard: Complete!
Giveaway books: In process!
Lecture bundle: Complete!

Once the three tasks above are complete it will be time to officially wrap up this project. I plan to give your next update the week of March 30-April 3. I've already begun thinking about what my next project should be and I'll tell you more about it in that update.

Thank you so much for backing this project!
Sandra Tayler

Greetings Backers!

TL;DR: If you have an audiobook in your order be on the watch for the email that lets you claim it. I've updated the Epub file available in Backerkit. Activities Notebook is still in progress. I'll be launching the effort to give away books in March. Your next update will be the week of March 2-6. 

February 11-14 I'll be at LTUE in Provo. You can read my full schedule here: Sandra's LTUE Schedule
February 27-28 I'll be at StoryCon in SLC. I'll be teaching one teaching class Friday at 10am followed by a signing in the Exhibit Hall. The rest of the time you can find me at the Exhibitor Support booth 625 in the Exhibit hall. 
If you're at either of these events please stop by and say hello.

If you have an audiobook in your order, you will receive a separate email with a download link. The file size is too big for Backerkit's download system, so I'm giving you a dropbox download link.

The download is 817MB and is a zipped folder of audio files, one for each chapter. Hopefully you can easily upload these into your preferred audiobook or music app for listening. 

I plan to make this book available on Audible. Once I've done that I may have a limited number of codes to let you claim a free copy over there. It will be mid-March or later before I'm able to make that happen. I will also explore other audiobook services. 

I finally updated the ePub to include the missing sentence and to fix a couple of other known typos.  If you have an ebook in your order you'll get an email from Backerkit with a link to download the updated version. 

I'm still working on the Activities Notebook.  Progress is slow as I'm a bit overwhelmed by prepping for LTUE, planning the entire Exhibit Hall for StoryCon, and helping Locus Magazine set up for their fundraiser in March. My admin brain is very tired. 

I wanted to launch the effort to give away the books in January. I've been too swamped with urgent tasks. Instead I will launch that effort in March once I'm past this month's conventions. I should have more to tell you about this with the next update. 

Your next full update until the week of March 2-6. 

Thank you so much for backing this project!
Sandra

Greetings Backers,

It is time for a quick update on the final two pieces of this project. Not much has changed, but I'm going to show you pictures of layout process and explain why the delays.

TL;DR: No action items. Audiobook only needs some final editing and an outro. The Activities Notebook needs me to devote some time to layout. Your next update will be the week of February 16-20.

Because of ongoing travel and thus lack of a quiet recording space, Mary Robinette has not yet had a chance to record the outro for the audiobook. She is back home this week and hopefully I'll have the audiobook to release to you before the next update.

I have good news on the Activities book.  I've found a way to get high quality, a smaller print run, and a faster turn around. The cost to me will be higher per book, but the over all cost will be less because I won't have to pay for so many extras.

I've been working my way through layout, but the process has been slow. A major reason for the slow is that my freelance work for StoryCon has taken up three times the amount of hours that I had mentally allotted for it. When I planned my January I based my estimates on running the Expo Hall for StoryCon last year, except this year the Expo hall is twice as large and the team I'm working with is larger two. Double the size means 3 times the organizational work.

I'm still sneaking in work on the Activities notebook daily.  I'm working from a print out I have in a 3 ring binder on which I've written notes for myself. I tried to pre-think so that when I sit down to do layout I'm just following instructions instead of having to invent ideas.

Unfortunately sometimes I left myself notes like this one.

If the picture doesn't load for you, the handwritten note on the page says "Some sort of recording mechanism for tracking these patterns. Be Smart!

Thank you past me.

Mostly though I'm carefully rendering my own instructions. I'm working in InDesign and one very smart thing I did early on was create a set of blue guidelines that help me with placing everything on the page.

The very first thing I notice here is that the blue bounding boxes for the text are out of alignment with the blue guidelines. So I fix that.

Next I create spaces in the text where I'll place lines for writing.

Then I go to an earlier page and copy lines from there so I can past them here.

Then I slide the lines into the gaps of the text making sure they're matched to the blue guidelines.  I copy paste for each gap.

Then I turn off my guides so I can see if everything looks good without them.

I notice that the right hand side of the writing lines are a bit ragged. It is the result of this copy paste process during 80 prior pages. A small error gets replicated page to page. I decide to fix it here. So I add a new guide on the right of the text and make sure all the lines end on the guideline.

Each line has to be adjusted individually. I'm going to need to do the same through the whole book. I'll make a pass specifically to check and fix that.  This is the point where I am painfully aware that there may be tools to help me do this sort of thing in a less labor intensive way. I could spend hours researching and learning tools. Or I can just get this project done. This is one of the hazards of learn-as-you-go. I cling to my process and always feel like I could be doing this better.

Now I'm ready to tackle the next page. My notes say I want two columns, so I scroll back 20 pates to find an earlier page where I've already created that.

I copy this column construction and bring it back to the page I'm working on.  I turn on the guides so I can get it placed correctly and change the text to what this page needs.

Turn the grids off again to check both pages.

I've now completed first pass layout on this page spread. I've got about a dozen more page spreads to do. Plus I need to go back and do another 3-4 where I told myself "be smart" and I haven't figured out how to be smart yet. 

If I can focus and put in at least an hour per day. I'll be done inside of 10 days. Then I'll print it out for a binder where I make handwritten notes. Second pass layout will be tweaking and refining. The thing I wish I could do is then pay someone with real graphic design training to pretty everything up.  But alas, time and money don't allow for that. So this book will be simple and (hopefully) useful. 

And with that, I need to get back to work instead of writing about work. :)

Your next update will be the week of February 16-20.
Thank you so much for your support.
All the best,
Sandra Tayler

Greetings Backers,

It is time for a quick update on the final two pieces of this project.

TL;DR: No action items. Audiobook only needs some final editing and an outro. The Activities Notebook needs me to devote some time to layout. Your next update will be the week of January 26-30.

The audiobook engineer put in some editing time over the holidays. He was finishing up and realized that the book needs an outro. I wrote it, now we just need to find a moment in Mary Robinette Kowal's schedule to have her record it. Once we have that piece I should be able to deliver files to all of you who have an audiobook as part of your order.

I was much distracted by holidays and end of year activities, so I did not devote much time to Activities Book layout, but now that we're at the beginning of the new year I'm ready to focus and get work done. I'm hoping to have layout complete in the next two weeks. I've got a lead on a good solution to getting the notebooks printed, I'll have more information on that with the next update.

Sorry this update is short and sweet. The beginning of the year has a big stack of tasks to get done and I want to plow through them as fast as possible, but I didn't want to leave you all wondering what is going on.  If you're interested in a more detailed accounting of all my things, here is my most recent Newsletter. 

Your next update will be the week of January 26-30.
Thank you so much for your support.
All the best,
Sandra Tayler

Greetings Backers!

Thank you so much to everyone who backed this project. 

TL;DR: I've shipped out all the packages that are ready to ship. 204 packages are waiting on the completion of the Activities Notebook. (Details below) You can now order additional copies of the book directly from our online store. (Sandra Tayler Store). Audiobook is waiting for me to review files, which I plan to do this week. A detailed accounting of all deliverables is below. Your next update will be the week of January 5-9. 

ACTION ITEM: If you are among the 204 whose packages are waiting on the Activities Notebook and you would really like to have your other items by Christmas, please email me: [email protected]  I can split your order for an extra shipping charge. If you're content to wait, no action is needed!

I love this part. It is when I get to send packages to many people and then imagine people opening those packages. I'll go into detail about the joyful shipping process down below, but first some stats and specific updates on deliverables.

1357 total orders
498 Digital only (All of these have been marked as shipped, but you'll get automatic emails when the audiobook is ready or when I have an updated ebook file for you.)
638 packages mailed Pictures below! You should have gotten an email with your tracking number. (Unless you have a Custom Designed Activities Notebook in your order.)
204 waiting on Activities Notebook Details below
12 unanswered surveys Click here to fill out your survey if this is you!
4 declined cards 

SLSC Print book: Complete!
SLSC ebook: I still need to re-issue a version with the sentence corrected in Chapter 10.
SLSC Audiobook: Waiting on me to approve audio files. Details below.
Activities Notebook: In layout. This got sidelined because of holidays, helping my son move, and then shipping. It needs to come back front and center. Details below.
Journal (for creativity bundle): Complete!
Bookmarks: Complete!
Notecards: Complete!
Sticker sheets: Complete!
Thank you Postcard: Complete!
Giveaway books: I need to create a form for people to sign up to receive these. Once I have the process in place I'll advertise their availability. This is going to be my January push.
Lecture bundle: Complete!

I checked in with the audiobook engineer about progress and it turns out they need my final approval for the files. So I need to schedule time this week to listen to 10 hours of audiobook and make notes about any changes or corrections. Once I turn in those notes then Mary Robinette and the engineer can schedule a session to record the corrections.  So this is waiting on me to get it done. Sorry about the delay. 

My work on layout for the Activities Notebook got completely sidelined by helping my son move, Thanksgiving, some freelancing work, and then book shipping.  It is time for me to re-focus and get this done asap. Once layout is complete, then I hit a decision point where I can either optimize for time or for money. I can have the books printed over seas which will delay their delivery by three months but will be MUCH cheaper for me per copy so I could print extras to sell. Or I can print them inside the US for 4x as much per copy, have them in only a week or two from placing the order, but I'd only get as many as needed to deliver to backers.  I hate the long delay, but I think the overseas shipping makes the most sense. I'll continue thinking this through while I get the layout done. 

In order to deliver the give away books, I need to create an easy online form that people can fill out to claim one of the books. I'm going to focus on Audiobook and Activities Notebook first, then turn my attention to this. So you'll probably see more news on this in January. 

After all of the above is done, there are still some next steps for this project. The Crowdfunded edition will be available in my store while supplies last. (I have 1500 spare copies, so supplies should last quite a while).  I'll also use Ingram Spark create eBook and POD editions that will go live on Amazon and other large retailers. This will allow people who are not in the US to get physical copies without paying for international postage. The POD editions won't have the same quality of construction, but will still get all of the content. Publishing this second edition also means that (in theory) bookstores and libraries can order my book. It will likely be January before I get this done.

My last update showed you pictures from the day we built boxes. Let me take you through the process of prepping packages.
Books start here on the pallet out in the large warehouse space.

I carry a box of them into our workspace and unload them onto a table.

Then I can take stacks to refresh the piles at the packing station.  This is where a book, thank you card, and buffer paper are all placed together into a box and stacked to be sealed up.

Here you can see boxes waiting to be sealed.

I didn't get a close up view of the taping station. But the helper pulls out the postage, tapes the box closed and then sticks the mailing label to the outside.

We then load everything into the car to be dropped at the post office.

When we were all done, we'd gone through most of a pallet of books.

There was also a day when I signed 260 books.

And another helper carefully assembled bundles of notecards, stickers, and book marks.

It was a fun three days of work with cheerful company and it resulted in more than 600 packages mailed. Today I'm sending out the final orders with personalizations.  And the only orders left are those which also have the activities notebook. 

That's my update for now.

Your next update will be January 5-9 when I'll report on the Activities Notebook, Audiobook, and eBook re-issue.  I'd report earlier, but I'm giving myself a holiday break.

Thank you so much for backing my project!
Sandra Tayler