Carson Brown • SSTO Press
CREATOR
15+ projects backed in 2024
15+ projects backed in 2025
5 days ago
Project Update: June Update
Hi all,
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.
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