A huge thank you to the more than 1000 backers who participated in last week's poll and left thoughtful comments and ideas.
As a reminder, Misty and Larry have both experienced significant bites on their fingers from their rescue birds recently. Larry's healing is going quickly, but the bite on Misty's writing hand will require significant time, physiotherapy, and care. Misty is able to type, but cannot hold a pen without immense pain.
After consulting with all of you, chatting with the fan community on Discord, and a subsequent conversation with Misty and Larry, plus a technical discussion with our manufacturer, we have settled on the following plan:
The signature page in Grandmaster Deluxe will be printed on translucent vellum with black ink, featuring digital signatures in metallic blue. This will be part of the book itself. The art is below. (After initially quoting it, the manufacturer's tech team ultimately rejected foil as the heat would cause the paper stock to warp.)
Misty and Larry will hand sign the existing signatures pages when they are physically able, as long as it takes. Those will be available as a separate single page, exclusively to backers, whenever they're done. Expect months, if not more than a year, for the hand signed page to be available. We will cover the cost of shipping those separately if we can.
Limited signed bookplates will be available when Grandmaster ships for those who need them. We have tracked down a limited number of bookplates that Misty and Larry signed for our prior campaign, World of Valdemar. As there are some backers who have a strong and direct emotional connection to the physical signature, we will release an opt-in poll, for backers who can't wait, to reserve and receive one of these signed World of Valdemar plates when we fulfill Grandmaster. We'll release that poll when we get a count of those plates from Misty and Larry.
Based on your survey results, we hope that this will satisfy the vast majority of backers:
the book isn't delayed any further,
we get a cool signature page,
the signed pages will be ready when they're ready, and
we'll take care of as many people who need a signature now as we can. (We're anticipating that we have around 300 signed bookplates ready to go.)
If this is absolutely a non-starter for you, we will open up a refund process in September for anyone who would rather not receive the book in this form.
For everyone else, we thank you so much for your understanding and support. None of us planned for rescue birds with horrifically sharp beaks to take chunks out of fingers, but we're pivoting as best as we can to collaborate on a process that meets as many needs as possible.
IMPORTANT PERSONAL NOTE:
This is Ben writing. I booked my August vacation last year before the bird bite issue was on the horizon. My goal this summer has been to get the books to print before my departure, which I think we can just squeeze in. However, I will NOT be online for most of August (I'm hiking off-grid in New Zealand). I've asked Corvyn to monitor the support email in my absence, but please be patient if you don't hear back right away.
As with every campaign that we run, everyone will be helped as long as you keep replying to your email.
THE SIGNATURE PAGE
Pending approval from the manufacturer, here's what we expect the signature page to look like. At the recommendation of backers in the comments, we've changed from gold to metallic blue to fit the aesthetic of the book.
Misty and Larry both very graciously managed a single signature for us, despite the pain, and Larry was able to scan and send over their work.
This is a composite image. In the book, the words of the title will appear on a sheet behind the translucent signature page, making the final effect an overlay.
First of all, the full manufacturing proof of the Grandmaster foil cover is here and... we've approved it for production!
Sharp-eyed viewers will notice that we've made some design alternations to the back to improve clarity. We're very, very happy with how the final cover has turned out!
The only piece we're now missing is the signed tip-ins that go before the title page.
THE PROBLEM & THE POLL
Every crowdfunding campaign experiences unexpected delays, which we use our experience and creativity to plan for in advance. But we never, ever imagined a scenario where birds would take chunks out of Misty and Larry's fingers. Both are healing, but we don't have a timeline for when Misty will be able to hold a pen again. Thankfully she can still type!
This means we either need to pivot away from the signature plan or to wait indefinitely until she can sign the books.
(This is Ben writing for myself now)
My personal opinion is that the difficulty that Misty would experience with this many signatures would not only cause pain and fatigue, but that it would be very slow going. This means that what could have been accomplished quickly before would take her a lot longer now. And that's time that she could be spending writing.
I recognize that Misty and Larry's top priority is to take care of all of you and they very much want to deliver exactly what was promised. The alternative ideas that I'm posting are coming from me, and only from me.
Today's poll is advisory. The final decision rests with Misty and Larry.
"F&G" stands for "Folded and Gathered." This is basically our last chance before binding to make sure that everything is correct, with the entire printed book gathered into signatures (the eight-page folded units that will be sewn into the binding), but not yet bound with the cover.
This is EXACTLY how the interior of the book will look, on EXACTLY the paper stock that we'll use, straight off the industrial printers that manufacture do the entire 4500 unit run. FedEx delivered it, we reviewed it, and we approved it. Now, after the dozen or so people who have read and re-read the book cover to cover signed off, we get to find out in just a few short months how many typos we all missed. (NONE. The book will clearly be perfect, right? RIGHT??)
Meanwhile, in Oklahoma, Misty and Larry are looking at a box of 4500 signature pages and girding themselves to sign every one of them. (If that isn't a labor of love, I don't know what is.) As soon as they can.
As you know, Misty and Larry are both also passionate about the many rehab birds that they care for. And some rehab birds are more traumatized than others, which makes them dangerous even for experienced handlers. The upshot is that Sweat Pea and Peaches have attacked both Misty and Larry over the last month, which has meant stitches for Misty and serious band-aid management for Larry. Misty was bitten twice, with two fingers now healing. And I'm not going to repeat Larry's bloody injury story.
Please send them good vibes, a healthy pace of recovery, and cool weather. We're not entirely sure how long the signing is going to take—especially since Misty needs to balance signing things with writing the next book with letting her hands heal—but we'll update you as soon as the signed plates are on their way back to the manufacturer.
I'm thrilled to share that Veronica Giguere's "Grandmaster" audiobook downloads will begin distribution shortly.
If the audiobook is part of your order, you should receive an email from BackerKit within the next 24 hours.with the link to your downloads. If you're tech-savvy and confident, please feel free to proceed without reading further.
HOW TO DOWNLOAD YOUR AUDIOBOOK
We're serving the 1.7GB "Grandmaster" audiobook file via a direct download link from Limewire. You do not need any special software to download the book. We recommend downloading on a desktop computer, rather than a mobile device.
HOW TO UNZIP YOUR AUDIOBOOK
The "Grandmaster" audiobook comes in a .zip format, which puts all of the pieces into a single file. If you're on a desktop, you can right-click and use the "unzip" or "decompress" command to open the files. If you're on a mobile device, it should offer you a way to unzip the files there. (For example, on iOS you can add it to your system's "Files" app and it should automatically decompress.)
HOW TO PLAY YOUR AUDIOBOOK
Once you have the files, you can play them in any application that plays audio. Our recommendations follow:
We've passed another milestone in the book manufacturing process: delivery of the Art of Grandmaster cover wet proof with 1/s matt lamination + gold foil blocking.
The cover looks gorgeous in person and we've approved it for production. Foil can sometimes be tricky to get right, but every bit of it looks sharp and shiny.
We're excited today to share that the manufacturer has sent a detailed revised timeline for the production process on Grandmaster.
May 9 - Confirm start printing the interior pages, insert and ends
May 28 - 2pp insert sent via air mail for author to sign
Jun 02 - F&Gs sent for approval
Jun 05 - F&Gs approved to bind
Jun 10 - Signed 2pp insert returned by
Jul 29 - Advance copies sent for approval
Jul 31 - Advance approval needed by
Aug 04 - Bulk copies ready (book to dockyard)
Aug 11 - ETD
Sep 04 - ETA – DTD CA 91745
This effectively means that we can expect fulfillment to begin in September of this year. It's a little later than we hoped, but works very well with our team's availability.
It does mean that we'll have a wait a bit on launching the campaign for Deluxe Arrows, since we want this book in your hands first.
Regarding backers outside the USA, we still intend to split our freight shipments so that the books with a final destination elsewhere in the world won't pass through the States.
A Quick Note on Gamers Emails
We've asked BackerKit to split our account, so that you won't receive any more emails about the Gamers campaign. We expect that split to be completed today. Thanks for your patience!
