Howard and Sandra Tayler

CREATOR

2 months ago

Project Update: Status Report: List of Deliverables and Production Plans

Greetings Backers!

It is time for your first full status report on this project!

TL;DR: We’re still in the waiting period between close of funding and opening the pledge manager. We expect to send out surveys during the last week of March, which is when you’ll be able to select your specific items and see how much your shipping cost will be. We will have detailed instructions in our next update. The next full status report for this project will be the week of March 25-29 which will bring it into alignment with the next status report for Mandatory Failure.

This project is a bit unique for us because it functions in many ways as an add-on to the Mandatory Failure project. One of the next big steps is to create the survey and set up the pledge manager. Both of those tasks are very high on Sandra’s list of things to do. We hope to send out surveys by the end of March. Once they are ready, we’ll have specific instructions for how to either combine your Seventy Maxims order with your Mandatory Failure order or to keep them shipping separately.

For our own project tracking purposes (and to keep us from multiple spreadsheet craziness) We’ve added the 70 Maxims deliverables to our Mandatory Failure Deliverable spreadsheet.

All of the deliverables on the Seventy Maxims portion of the mega-project should go very quickly and they won’t slow down the fulfillment of Mandatory Failure since we designed them to mostly impact Sandra’s workload rather than Howard’s.

Deliverable Progress

Seventy Maxims Reprint – To complete this, Sandra needs to update the InDesign file and do an additional copy edit. Once those are done and once funds are deposited this book can go to print
Pocket Reference – Sandra needs to create an Indesign Layout file, run a copy edit, do a test print and then these can be printed.
Poster 1 (1 column) – We’re in the test print stage for this poster. A final copy edit and this will be ready for final printing as soon as we have a quantity.
Poster 2 (2 column) – We’re in the test print stage for this poster. A final copy edit and this will be ready for final printing as soon as we have a quantity.
Illustrated Maxims digital images – Sandra needs to edit the images so they are consistently sized and named. Then they’ll be ready for distribution once the surveys are complete.

Details

Welcome to the "details" section where I tell you the story of our progress rather than the bare bones status reports.

For the week since this project closed, we’ve mostly been resting and getting our bearings. Running crowdfunding is stressful even when we’re trying to keep the project very simple and low key. There are always unexpected turns of events. For example, during our funding run Backerkit enabled their “overtime mode” where as long as people keep pledging the project doesn’t close. Our project was extended for an hour and a half beyond its official close time because people kept showing up for us. Howard commemorated the experience with a comic

That’s the still shot, you can find the timelapse here.

Today we picked up test prints of the posters and bonus story pages. Test prints are often the first moment a project feels real because it is finally tangible.

It is also when we discover errors that weren’t apparent in digital. As one person pointed out in our Discord server, one of these posters has “the” in its title, the other doesn’t. We’ll make that consistent before either poster goes to print.

Other things that happened this week: Howard did a school visit with a great group of creative writing students at a local high school. He loved doing it, but preparing and recovering both took more time than we wanted. Sandra helped launch the annual fundraiser for Locus Magazine. She’s been contracted by them to help with logistics on their campaign. So our week of “down time” was really a week of “focused effort on other projects” instead. The good news is that we’ve finally given ourselves a month of Apple TV and so we’re spending the next several evenings experiencing Ted Lasso for the first time. (And, yes we’ve also gone through both Monarch and Foundation while we’re subscribed.)

Next week is looking calm by comparison and I’m hoping we can finalize some designs so we’re ready to send things off to print as soon as we have funds in hand.

That's our updates for now. Your next update will be the week of March 25-29.
Thank you so much for backing our project!

Howard and Sandra Tayler

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