Proofing, Editing, Art, Money
almost 4 years ago – Tue, Jun 30, 2020 at 12:35:27 AM

Proofing

A random assortment of villainy has very early copies of Dragon Hunt! and Roc of Sages. I have already made (unfortunately well over 100) changes based on feedback. Broken links, awkward phrasing, weird formatting, grammar, punctuation, and the like. The books are already better for them.

Editing

This somewhat goes along with proofing. But layout is (obviously) finished on Roc and Dragon Hunt, and pretty much also done on Dark Lord's Doom. I am through the "prelude" part of DLD and about to hit the paragraphs. Having learned my lesson the hard way on Dragon Hunt, I'll be doing the hyperlinks paragraph by paragraph as I go, rather than all at once at the end. THAT was a mistake.

In any case, DLD is much shorter than Dragon Hunt, so I anticipate that I should be ready for both proofing and art direction in a few days.

Then I'll take on Catacombs and The Sunken Library. 

Art

I have been chatting with Glynn on the maps, and he's working on all of them. There are many maps. All the books will feature a map on both inside covers, front and back. Mixam makes that easy, so I'm doing it.

I have also placed the first round of art commissions. I've heard from all the artists and we've worked out commissions and pricing. I've already seen sketches from at least one artist. I've also seen mockups of the last three covers, and of course they're looking very nice.

The fact that the team is working on art for two of the books is excellent. It means I am, as they say in Project Management Land, no longer the rate-limiting step on the critical path.

Money

The "take," after Kickstarter takes its cut, was about $29,500 and that is just about to hit my bank account. This is good. I can use the money. I have already paid quite a bit of the cost of the project up front. Early fees to artists, paying off Backerkit. I also have to give SJG their well-earned due for allowing me to publish.

After that, though: it's art, final fees, and printing and shipping.

Backerkit

Speaking of Backerkit, I will endeavor to get that up and running this week. I have imported a bunch of stuff from older projects, I know more or less what shipping rate tables I need to use. But there's still a bunch of stuff to do, and I'll be getting on that as quickly as possible. Some of it is things like 'You said to pick two PDFs...which are they?" That takes a bit of time to build out.

Once that goes live, I'll send it out. Note that late backers/pre-orders DO count to the authors' pay rates. If we get another 100 new orders . . . we are all very happy. So as you do your surveys, see the cover art, interior art, and new layout samples, please take a moment to talk it up on social media. Despite me feeling like I do nothing but send out marketing spam, there were still a few folks saying "Hey . . . I missed this!"

So it's not too late to hit 600+...with a bit more help.

Art Direction on 2 of 5 starts today
almost 4 years ago – Thu, Jun 25, 2020 at 07:23:45 PM

So, here's a status update.

The prior week was absolutely nuts personally. I've been using my down time (and since I don't have any Day Job) to move my basement closer to being finished, and things kept getting pulled in. Contractors were scheduled, only to say "hey, we can come tomorrow if you can fit us in!" and this happened more than once. That almost always meant "Doug drops everything and works morning to night on electrical or drywall prep, or partnering with Alina on plumbing."

So, that was disruptive.

Progress so Far

But . . . now we're back at it for realz. Two of the books, Dragon Hunt and Roc of Sages, are fully laid out and edited. I am having a problem with the links in Dragon Hunt killing my room number formatting. I can do one or the other, but not both. For PLAYTEST purposes, I'll do the links, and I hope to get that straight by day's end.

For art direction, The two books are 56 pages and require collectively 23 pieces of art; that's about one per spread on the average, but while sometimes they're like this:

Sometimes they're like this, since I like creatures to have an image. The facing page also has an image on it, but I don't want to ruin one of the big surprises of the book.

Anyway, each yellow box is going to be a future piece of art. Today I'll go through and discuss options and pick potential images for my team, and also write the art direction. I like to give them screen shots of the actual PDF so that they know if they can play with the size, or not.

This round I'm bringing in six active artists, so four images each. One of them is new to the team, but I'm hopeful we'll work well together. 

If I'm very lucky, I will get all the art direction and the hyperlinks fixed today. That means I can get Dragon Hunt playtested a bit more; it's way easier to do a programmed adventure and check links with hyperlinks than manually.

Then, for the same reason, I'll turn to Dark Lord's Doom. The sooner it gets out there, the sooner I can ensure all links are good, and there are no connection errors. That requires many eyes.

Then I'll finish up Catacombs of Living Death and The Sunken Library. I'm hoping to have all-but-the-art on all of these by the end of the first week in July. We'll see! Life always seems to throw wrenches at you (if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball!).

Backerkit Comes

I'll also spend a bit of time on the Backerkit page this coming weekend. If I'm lucky, I'll get 'r done and be ready to go live on June 29, and that will probably go a bit longer than usual so that the US July 4 holiday doesn't fox folks' ability to access the system.

Because this is "books only," with luck I can make some simplifying choices for shipping rate tables. We'll see! Shipping is always horrid.

Art, then What?

Once the art is done (not sure a date on that yet) and all the books are laid out, I'll distribute the prelim PDFs. A few weeks shall be allowed for folks to point out mistakes. 

I have a very specific method for this: there is an errata form page on my blog. I will add the new books to it and all errata must come by that method. If it's not submitted via the page, it won't get done. This is for my own sanity and tracking.

After that, they go to print. And what usually takes MONTHS will instead take WEEKS thanks to the rapid-printing capability of Mixam. So soon after, physical copies will go into the mail.

Those doing the math should see that we're probably talking about eight or nine weeks from now for "books in hand" if things go well. That's "end of August, maybe September." So we're running rather ahead of the predicted pace at the moment. I shall endeavor to keep it that way.

Dark Lord's Doom: Cover Final
almost 4 years ago – Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 05:47:52 AM

This still needs better "ad copy" on the back, but Ksenia got me her intended final image today, and I love it. Such detail - and this is a SCREENSHOT, so it's not all apparent.

Anyway, we're working on the next three covers now, and I'll post them as I get 'em. I'm working on my layout for the GM'd adventures now, and then I need to get the art direction underway.

And that's all she wrote
almost 4 years ago – Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 11:05:11 AM

The End of the Beginning

555 Backers. Over $32,000. 

Solid performance. Met the goal, and made enough to pay all parties market rates . . . or that'll be true if I keep to the art budget I set. 

For now: Thank you.

The Mummy 4: Funding is only the Beginning

OK, so what's next? 

I work like heck to get layout in place. Two of the books are already there. A third is super close. The last two get done ASAP.

Then, on the books already done, I start with art direction and assemble the art team. The sooner I get image assignments to them, the sooner we can be done. In addition to the maps, the 40-page Dragon Hunt! has 20 images of various sizes. So there's a bunch of work to be done there to keep things readable. (Programmed adventures are NOTHING but text. So they need more art to break up the flow of things, let you know what characters look like, etc. They're art-heavy. The others don't usually require so much.)

Once the art is set into motion, it's time for lots of editing. The solos need checking as well, and I like to involve my top backers in that process.

The covers are underway.

But now, basically, it's full on "production" mode. And I know what I can commit to in terms of funds.

Backerkit?

After funding settles (two weeks), we launch Backerkit. That will collect shipping information, and for those who chose "pick X books" will give you the opportunity to choose what you're getting. I need to know this, and pretty fast, so I can order the right number of print books.

You will also have a chance to alter or adjust your pledge, and "pre-orders," which add to both the campaign total AND increase the authors' pay just like campaign orders, are accumulated at this time. The "Survey" phase lasts for maybe two weeks; the pre-orders are open until the PDF is ready to finalize, or close to it.

I'll keep folks posted as to progress. I have no reason to dawdle on this!

$30,000! Second Pay Raise!
almost 4 years ago – Sun, Jun 14, 2020 at 12:38:48 PM

Ripping right along on this final day. Just over seven hours to go!

We passed $30K, which is awesome.

We hit 520 backers, which raises the authors' pay above the baseline, from 5.0 cents to 5.2 cents per word. Every 10 backers continues to do this. Forever. If suddenly a deluge hits and we get 1510 backers, that's 15.1 cents per word base rate (22.6 cents for solo adventures).

And finally, it's not over yet. There are still more than 400 folks following the campaign who haven't backed. . . so who knows what the final total will be!