Just a quick update, and sorry for the relatively long period of silence.

First up: I usually get surveys out faster than this, but when I set down to get all of this done on the 11th, my pledge levels didn't import properly, which potentially meant backers would not get credited appropriately for pledges. That obviously would not do; Backerkit had Veteran's Day off, so I had to wait until today to get that resolved. Which it has been.

So now I need to get the few pledge questions I will ask in place, make sure all of the Add-ons and Pledge SKUs are accurate, and then get surveys out.

I am NOT doing "Charge Shipping Later" as I had intended to. I am currently in the middle of fulfilling my Old-School Essentials project, and that gave me enough "intel" to properly assign shipping levels with confidence. Since I have sample books at the page count of everything I'm shipping, I can get actual package weights, even an approximate for cards. 

There will likely be ONE bit of weirdness in the USA, which is that I'm going to start by charging Parcel Select Ground rates for postage, and then right before we're done, look for anyone who is "books-only" and credit back some money to account for a roughly $3-5 difference in expected postage rates from USPS Parcel Select Ground to Media Mail. More on that later, but I expect the "starting" USPS rate to be about $12, or $8 for books-only. The lightest package (the three basic Bestiary books) in a book-wrap mailer will be in the 2-lb category.

More on shipping for everyone else in a bit, once everything is properly imported.

I can report that the core layout, including all but about 5 pieces of art, are finished for Garden of Evil.

I've finished editing and layout for the introduction to the Bugstiary, and now am going through each of the monsters and getting layout and editing in place. First I'm doing the ones that fit on a single page easily; then I'll need to decide on the ones with enough information to flow onto multipage spreads. Then finally, the ant-folk and the beetle-folk get their own heavy look, as they're legit civilizations that require more than just "here's a bag of hit points to kill." Heck, the beetle-folk are presented as a playable character option.

Then lastly Serpents of Legend, the longest book and the one that requires a bit more careful hewing to get all the author's intent on the page in an efficient manner. 

And the art continues to come in marvelously.

So that's it for now, and I'm going to go head-down for a bit to Get Stuff Done™, and hopefully the next you hear from me will be the smoke test going out, probably later this week. After a day of that, all the surveys go out, and as folks fill them out, I'll give a few days and then start charging, which will let me post up any PDFs you get that already exist. We'll do this in a bit of a rolling fashion until all the PDFs of the new things are also complete, then we'll give feedback time, and I'll close up, charge cards for shipping, and order any needed physical copies.

Of course, this is November and  December, which are pretty holiday-laden here in the US...and Turkey Day is at my home this year. So I better work quick!