While large parts of the pre-production copy (PPC) delivered to Jordan in May looked great, there were some issues we felt must be addressed in order to provide you with a high-quality final book.
I know it’s discouraging to read about yet another delay. I’ll cover some of the details of these fixes closer to the bottom of this update in the interest of transparency.
We’ve been working with our printer to nail down the exact margin and binding requirements. Over the course of this conversation, our printer offered to provide a free second PPC to demonstrate how our concerns could be addressed and the output improved, and to help ensure we’ve corrected all issues.
Production of the second PPC is in progress, and we expect it in hand in the second week of July. Due to Jordan currently moving halfway across the US, I’ll be receiving it for review.
What happens after the extended review pre-production copy arrives? If the issues are resolved, and no new ones are introduced, it’s print time. We’ll be able to line up the shipping & fulfillment plan with the print run ETA, and start talking about when these books start their journey to you.
Again, thanks for sticking with us. I’m feeling more confident about this ER PPC based on the printer’s close guidance and Jordan’s myriad fixes. Below are some of the fixes I was alluding to above, with screenshots of the Initial digital proof, photo from the PPC, and the Fixed version in a new digital proof. Over June, he’s been making a few dozen fixes, including:
Adjusting ink levels to brighten a number of spreads throughout that were too dark in print.
Fixing issues where some background textures and images reduced readability by bleeding through the text. Blend modes with dark backgrounds didn’t do us any favors in some of these cases.
Redesigning our black page border “ribbons” to fit within the new margins from our printer. These should hit right at the page-edges to make flipping between sections easier, but due to a series of miscommunications, the first PPC failed to achieve this.
Reworking some thin border elements that would emphasize any variation in the trimming. Sub-milimeter variance is noticeable.
Correcting the color of some art pieces that had ink mixes which look significantly different between digital and print.
Correcting a few more errant typos and not-quite-aligned elements.
Overprinting resulted in distracting blue bands in the dark background
Too much ink caused some loss of contrast, as well as color accuracy
Many page edge "ribbons" were trimmed off, the text is now smaller and further from edge
High ink levels completely hid the detailed backgrounds Eric made
Another example of loss of contrast and color accuracy to high ink levels
Page edge treatments highlighted any minor shift in paper trimming
I have a pre-production copy of Devil's Due in hand (for both the book and stickers)!
This is a big milestone on this annoyingly long road to fulfillment. I still need to give this a thorough review over the next week, however. There are a few initial things that aren’t quite what we expected, and we’ll be ironing those out in partnership with our printer before the full print run.
But for now, this feels like solid progress, and I wanted you all to at least get a glimpse of what's in store.
I'm sure you're sick of us thanking you for your patience by now, but the sentiment remains! I'll try to not get slowed down further by all the graduation events, dissertation editing, family visits, apartment hunting, and cross-country move planning I'm in the middle of. We were obviously aiming to be truly done with this book before now, but there have been many more wrenches in the gears than we anticipated.
We won't let that stop us though, and we'll continue to keep you updated every month with what's going on.
I hope you enjoyed your April. Around here, it’s finally spring, and I am so ready to say goodbye to winter. Here on the last day of April, we’ve got a short update for you.
We have approved all of the stickers, patches, and temporary tattoo proofs. The last thing is the most important one: the book itself. We have approved the digital proof from the printer, after a few rounds of back-and-forth to confirm colours, margins, and page count across interior and endpapers. The end result is a really nice endpaper treatment where the book attaches to the hardcover. We’re now awaiting the pre-production copy (PPC). If everything there looks good, we’ll give the go ahead for production to begin.
While the PPC work was kicked off, Jordan selected a nice matching spine and bookmark ribbon that matches the blue in the endpapers. I’m really excited to see how this turns out in the final product. We’ll be sharing photos once Jordan has the PPC in hand!
I know Devil’s Due has been a long time coming, but the arrival of the PPC will be a big milestone. We expect to provide you with a concrete timeline once the PPC is approved and production begins. Thanks for sticking it out with us. Once production begins, we’ll update the digital downloads on BackerKit to include the final PDF.
As always, we’re here to answer any questions or help with pledge surveys. There’s roughly 80 backers who need to fill out their surveys, so please reach out if you need a hand.
We’ve got two big progress milestones for this update.
Patch and Tattoo Samples
Our printer mailed us production samples of our two patches and temporary tattoos, and they look great!
We’ll likely remove the small pink stars from the skull design for a cleaner look, as they aren’t very readable in the embroidery, and there’s a color error with the skull’s eye we’ll try to get cleared up. But there shouldn’t be any other changes to these.
The Charon’s Ferry tattoos are big. There’s a lot of fine detail in the artwork that comes out nicely at this size, and we didn’t want to lose that by shrinking it down. So if applying it to the back of your hand, you’ll want to place it a bit higher toward your wrist and away from your knuckles to help keep your skin from pulling it apart more.
Awaiting Digital Proof
We had some additional delays due to a couple of mislabeled templates we were given to rework our margins. That said, the design files have been approved and are being used to make the digital proof right now.
Once we review and approve the digital proof, our printer will make a physical pre-production copy and mail it to us for a final review. When we approve that, we’ll be put into the full production queue.
We should have more of a timeline at that point. We appreciate you all waiting patiently for fulfillment!
Somehow, 10% of you still haven’t filled out your surveys! If that includes you, do that ASAP at http://devils-due.backerkit.com/ or the link BackerKit emailed you. We’ll let you know when we’re getting ready to lock shipping addresses, so if you’re concerned that you might be moving soon or something, don’t worry about that yet.
After a lot more prepress work than we expected, the print files for the book, stickers, and temporary tattoos, and the manufacturing files for the two patches, were all completed earlier this month. Unfortunately, that was right as the Chinese New Year began, and as a result, we’re still waiting on our printer’s review and approval. We believe we’ve followed their guidance appropriately, so we aren’t anticipating too many more tweaks at this point.
As announced, the preorder store was closed this month so that we can get final order numbers ready for the print run. Once again, if you still haven’t filled out your survey, be sure to do so now at this link: https://devils-due.backerkit.com/
Some good news is that we’re able to have our tattoos printed on a single large sheet, instead of 5 individual copies of a single piece, giving us the space to add more tattoos without additional cost. So we’ve included the Dark Arcana ballo in maschera masks and the signature Devil’s Due skull and crossbones as tattoos that you’ll be able to cut out and apply as well!
We’re in the process of signing the contract with our printer, and from there we will nail down our freight logistics for moving inventory out to warehouses for shipping. Once the print run begins, we should be able to give you all a solid timeframe. I know it’s been quite the wait for this, but we are making progress. And the good news is that we’ll likely be able to source all of our physical perks from the same manufacturer, which will not only be cheaper (thankfully, since the price of printing has grown 50% due to the book getting so big) but it should also save some time in the order-picking phase. All of the other pieces of our project are ready for production: patches, stickers, and temporary tattoos.
In order to finalize our quantities, we plan to close pre-orders on Friday, February 13 (two weeks from today). There are about 12% of backers who haven’t yet completed their surveys. Please get these filled out. With complete surveys and a closed store, we can get our final numbers in place. Also, as soon as your survey is filled out, there’s a PDF of the entire book waiting for you! If the survey email isn’t handy, you can request a new link here.
Thanks to some great backer feedback on our corrections form, we were able to make a couple last corrections and clarifications around ship stats. We thank you for the detailed notes! If you find any errors or typos after reading the pre-production PDF, please report them through that form, and we will update the PDF in BackerKit’s downloads with the final book once the print run begins.
Lastly, I want to shout out some new projects for Zine Month / Zine Quest next month by three members of the Azimuth Gang:
Scott Garriott and team are launching WORMS! WORMS! WORMS! It’s a box set of five pamphlets of vermicular horror from a trio of writers. Alongside Scott, Clive Lancaster and Terry Herc bring you purpose-built one-shots that can work at conventions or as drop-ins for a campaign. Be an early bird and follow the project now for some exclusive freebies on launch.
Chris Airiau has a new project three years in the making—Twisting Unseen. Waking inside a superstructure with functioning transporter portals, the crew need to learn the secrets of this place if they want to ever return home. There’s a map-building mechanic I’ve never seen in Mothership before in this one.
Joshua Justice returns to the Hekate Sector with Last Light Station. This setting zine explores the eponymous station at the edge of rimspace. The crew will find thrilling virtual entertainment, cheap (and dangerous) cybermods, a karaoke bar, a brewing conflict between Barlow Agro and the Hekate Agricultural Union, and more!
While large parts of the pre-production copy (PPC) delivered to Jordan in May looked great, there were some issues we felt must be addressed in order to provide you with a high-quality final book.
I know it’s discouraging to read about yet another delay. I’ll cover some of the details of these fixes closer to the bottom of this update in the interest of transparency.
We’ve been working with our printer to nail down the exact margin and binding requirements. Over the course of this conversation, our printer offered to provide a free second PPC to demonstrate how our concerns could be addressed and the output improved, and to help ensure we’ve corrected all issues.
Production of the second PPC is in progress, and we expect it in hand in the second week of July. Due to Jordan currently moving halfway across the US, I’ll be receiving it for review.
What happens after the extended review pre-production copy arrives? If the issues are resolved, and no new ones are introduced, it’s print time. We’ll be able to line up the shipping & fulfillment plan with the print run ETA, and start talking about when these books start their journey to you.
Again, thanks for sticking with us. I’m feeling more confident about this ER PPC based on the printer’s close guidance and Jordan’s myriad fixes. Below are some of the fixes I was alluding to above, with screenshots of the Initial digital proof, photo from the PPC, and the Fixed version in a new digital proof. Over June, he’s been making a few dozen fixes, including:
Adjusting ink levels to brighten a number of spreads throughout that were too dark in print.
Fixing issues where some background textures and images reduced readability by bleeding through the text. Blend modes with dark backgrounds didn’t do us any favors in some of these cases.
Redesigning our black page border “ribbons” to fit within the new margins from our printer. These should hit right at the page-edges to make flipping between sections easier, but due to a series of miscommunications, the first PPC failed to achieve this.
Reworking some thin border elements that would emphasize any variation in the trimming. Sub-milimeter variance is noticeable.
Correcting the color of some art pieces that had ink mixes which look significantly different between digital and print.
Correcting a few more errant typos and not-quite-aligned elements.
Overprinting resulted in distracting blue bands in the dark background
Too much ink caused some loss of contrast, as well as color accuracy
Many page edge "ribbons" were trimmed off, the text is now smaller and further from edge
High ink levels completely hid the detailed backgrounds Eric made
Another example of loss of contrast and color accuracy to high ink levels
Page edge treatments highlighted any minor shift in paper trimming
I have a pre-production copy of Devil's Due in hand (for both the book and stickers)!
This is a big milestone on this annoyingly long road to fulfillment. I still need to give this a thorough review over the next week, however. There are a few initial things that aren’t quite what we expected, and we’ll be ironing those out in partnership with our printer before the full print run.
But for now, this feels like solid progress, and I wanted you all to at least get a glimpse of what's in store.
I'm sure you're sick of us thanking you for your patience by now, but the sentiment remains! I'll try to not get slowed down further by all the graduation events, dissertation editing, family visits, apartment hunting, and cross-country move planning I'm in the middle of. We were obviously aiming to be truly done with this book before now, but there have been many more wrenches in the gears than we anticipated.
We won't let that stop us though, and we'll continue to keep you updated every month with what's going on.
I hope you enjoyed your April. Around here, it’s finally spring, and I am so ready to say goodbye to winter. Here on the last day of April, we’ve got a short update for you.
We have approved all of the stickers, patches, and temporary tattoo proofs. The last thing is the most important one: the book itself. We have approved the digital proof from the printer, after a few rounds of back-and-forth to confirm colours, margins, and page count across interior and endpapers. The end result is a really nice endpaper treatment where the book attaches to the hardcover. We’re now awaiting the pre-production copy (PPC). If everything there looks good, we’ll give the go ahead for production to begin.
While the PPC work was kicked off, Jordan selected a nice matching spine and bookmark ribbon that matches the blue in the endpapers. I’m really excited to see how this turns out in the final product. We’ll be sharing photos once Jordan has the PPC in hand!
I know Devil’s Due has been a long time coming, but the arrival of the PPC will be a big milestone. We expect to provide you with a concrete timeline once the PPC is approved and production begins. Thanks for sticking it out with us. Once production begins, we’ll update the digital downloads on BackerKit to include the final PDF.
As always, we’re here to answer any questions or help with pledge surveys. There’s roughly 80 backers who need to fill out their surveys, so please reach out if you need a hand.
We’ve got two big progress milestones for this update.
Patch and Tattoo Samples
Our printer mailed us production samples of our two patches and temporary tattoos, and they look great!
We’ll likely remove the small pink stars from the skull design for a cleaner look, as they aren’t very readable in the embroidery, and there’s a color error with the skull’s eye we’ll try to get cleared up. But there shouldn’t be any other changes to these.
The Charon’s Ferry tattoos are big. There’s a lot of fine detail in the artwork that comes out nicely at this size, and we didn’t want to lose that by shrinking it down. So if applying it to the back of your hand, you’ll want to place it a bit higher toward your wrist and away from your knuckles to help keep your skin from pulling it apart more.
Awaiting Digital Proof
We had some additional delays due to a couple of mislabeled templates we were given to rework our margins. That said, the design files have been approved and are being used to make the digital proof right now.
Once we review and approve the digital proof, our printer will make a physical pre-production copy and mail it to us for a final review. When we approve that, we’ll be put into the full production queue.
We should have more of a timeline at that point. We appreciate you all waiting patiently for fulfillment!
Somehow, 10% of you still haven’t filled out your surveys! If that includes you, do that ASAP at http://devils-due.backerkit.com/ or the link BackerKit emailed you. We’ll let you know when we’re getting ready to lock shipping addresses, so if you’re concerned that you might be moving soon or something, don’t worry about that yet.
After a lot more prepress work than we expected, the print files for the book, stickers, and temporary tattoos, and the manufacturing files for the two patches, were all completed earlier this month. Unfortunately, that was right as the Chinese New Year began, and as a result, we’re still waiting on our printer’s review and approval. We believe we’ve followed their guidance appropriately, so we aren’t anticipating too many more tweaks at this point.
As announced, the preorder store was closed this month so that we can get final order numbers ready for the print run. Once again, if you still haven’t filled out your survey, be sure to do so now at this link: https://devils-due.backerkit.com/
Some good news is that we’re able to have our tattoos printed on a single large sheet, instead of 5 individual copies of a single piece, giving us the space to add more tattoos without additional cost. So we’ve included the Dark Arcana ballo in maschera masks and the signature Devil’s Due skull and crossbones as tattoos that you’ll be able to cut out and apply as well!
