After a lot more prepress work than we expected, the print files for the book, stickers, and temporary tattoos, and the manufacturing files for the two patches, were all completed earlier this month. Unfortunately, that was right as the Chinese New Year began, and as a result, we’re still waiting on our printer’s review and approval. We believe we’ve followed their guidance appropriately, so we aren’t anticipating too many more tweaks at this point.
As announced, the preorder store was closed this month so that we can get final order numbers ready for the print run. Once again, if you still haven’t filled out your survey, be sure to do so now at this link: https://devils-due.backerkit.com/
Some good news is that we’re able to have our tattoos printed on a single large sheet, instead of 5 individual copies of a single piece, giving us the space to add more tattoos without additional cost. So we’ve included the Dark Arcana ballo in maschera masks and the signature Devil’s Due skull and crossbones as tattoos that you’ll be able to cut out and apply as well!
We’re in the process of signing the contract with our printer, and from there we will nail down our freight logistics for moving inventory out to warehouses for shipping. Once the print run begins, we should be able to give you all a solid timeframe. I know it’s been quite the wait for this, but we are making progress. And the good news is that we’ll likely be able to source all of our physical perks from the same manufacturer, which will not only be cheaper (thankfully, since the price of printing has grown 50% due to the book getting so big) but it should also save some time in the order-picking phase. All of the other pieces of our project are ready for production: patches, stickers, and temporary tattoos.
In order to finalize our quantities, we plan to close pre-orders on Friday, February 13 (two weeks from today). There are about 12% of backers who haven’t yet completed their surveys. Please get these filled out. With complete surveys and a closed store, we can get our final numbers in place. Also, as soon as your survey is filled out, there’s a PDF of the entire book waiting for you! If the survey email isn’t handy, you can request a new link here.
Thanks to some great backer feedback on our corrections form, we were able to make a couple last corrections and clarifications around ship stats. We thank you for the detailed notes! If you find any errors or typos after reading the pre-production PDF, please report them through that form, and we will update the PDF in BackerKit’s downloads with the final book once the print run begins.
Lastly, I want to shout out some new projects for Zine Month / Zine Quest next month by three members of the Azimuth Gang:
Scott Garriott and team are launching WORMS! WORMS! WORMS! It’s a box set of five pamphlets of vermicular horror from a trio of writers. Alongside Scott, Clive Lancaster and Terry Herc bring you purpose-built one-shots that can work at conventions or as drop-ins for a campaign. Be an early bird and follow the project now for some exclusive freebies on launch.
Chris Airiau has a new project three years in the making—Twisting Unseen. Waking inside a superstructure with functioning transporter portals, the crew need to learn the secrets of this place if they want to ever return home. There’s a map-building mechanic I’ve never seen in Mothership before in this one.
Joshua Justice returns to the Hekate Sector with Last Light Station. This setting zine explores the eponymous station at the edge of rimspace. The crew will find thrilling virtual entertainment, cheap (and dangerous) cybermods, a karaoke bar, a brewing conflict between Barlow Agro and the Hekate Agricultural Union, and more!
The extensive cross-referencing, hyperlinking, and indexing for the digital PDFs have been completed! (I also found the space to add a tiny additional index listing the bounty targets in the book by Bounty Level.)
We’ll be updating your digital downloads very shortly to provide this latest PDF to you, available through your existing backer survey links. If you can’t find the link, you can get to it through BackerKit’s homepage if you’re logged in by selecting “Your Pledges & Surveys” from the drop-down menu, or you can go to https://devils-due.backerkit.com and fill in the email you used to pledge.
If you haven’t completed your survey yet (I’m looking all 14% of you right in the eye[patch]), get to it! We won’t be locking addresses until we’re close to shipping, but the earlier we can get a more precise count of how many units of each item we need to produce, the better.
We are still waiting to get an updated quote from our printer, as things are moving slowly around the holidays. We’re hoping we can get through the preprint process quickly in January to get these books printed and on their way to us before the Chinese New Year in mid February, but it all depends on what their manufacturing queue looks like and whether we can avoid any significant issues in preprint. We’ll wait to lock orders and close the late pledges until we have a better idea of the preprint/printing timeline.
To quote a tired meme, I am once again thanking you for sticking with us through these delays. I’m proud of this book, and now that I’d call it finished, I can’t wait for everyone to be able to bring it to the table (along with all the patches and tattoos and stickers)!
Jordan continues progress on all of the references across the whole book and indexes, though working through a bit of an illness has slowed him down. Each reference will be clickable in the production PDF, including each index! While building out those index references has taken some effort, I’m really proud to have them, as it’ll make tableside lookups for NPCs, equipment, vehicles/vessels, organizations, and random tables so much easier. There are over 1,500 references in those indexes, plus all of the cross references throughout the book!
Since the last update, our pledge manager went live. Most of you have filled out your surveys—thank you! If you haven’t yet completed your survey, check your email for a link to it, or send yourself a new one by going to https://devils-due.backerkit.com and fill in your email. You can also get to it from “Your Pledges & Surveys” from the user dropdown on BackerKit’s homepage.
As a reminder, once you complete your backer survey, you’ll gain access to the pre-production PDF. This is effectively what we’ll be sending to the printers, save for the updated page references. As we move closer to press-ready, please send us any typos or errors you might find here: https://forms.gle/1tV5hA8B194Saf3W8
We plan to lock orders soon, and will close the late pledge/pre-orders shortly after that. If at any point afterward you need to change your shipping address, reach out to us via this form.
While this update is fairly brief, I do want to thank you all for sticking with us over these months. This book has easily become the biggest anthology any of us have worked on and, for me at least, is a dream come true. We can’t wait to get it into your hands as a fully completed project.
Well, it's clear we had a couple setbacks from our previous timeline. Some illness hit the wrong person at the wrong time as we’ve been setting up the pledge manager to get backer surveys out to you.
That said, we’ve submitted our Pledge Manager setup for approval by BackerKit, and we have a content-complete PDF preview of the whole book ready to go! We are distributing it through BackerKit’s surveys, so once we’re given the green light, we’ll get started with the required “smoke test” of sending them out to a small percentage of you. If no problems arise, we’ll send the survey to everyone else a couple days later. Keep your eye out for the survey emails soon!
Once you receive and complete your survey and pay shipping fees and any outstanding charges, you’ll get a download link to the Devil’s Due Backer Preview PDF. (And if you ever lose it, you can redownload it by returning to your backer survey.) All that’s missing from this preview version are page number references, more extensive hyperlinking, and the additional digital assets we’ll include in the final release.
When you get your backer preview PDF, if you find any typos or errors in it, please use this form to report them: https://forms.gle/1tV5hA8B194Saf3W8
2nd Patch Mock-Up
We’d also like to show you the design for our second patch above, unlocked via the $12,500 achievement: Into the Inky Void! The talented Kin over at Krakenhund Studios realized this design for us. Kin is the creator of Operation Golden Cut from last Mothership Month and a contributor to Flatline on the Blocks this time around. Every backer at the Corsair (Physical) and Pirate's Life for Me (Deluxe) levels will get one of these patches added to their rewards.
We’re super thankful for your patience as we’ve been realizing this project that you all graciously funded last year. While most of us on the team have at least some crowdfunding experience, producing such a large book in our free time, with just a motley crew who leapt into a Discord server one day, has definitely been a learning experience.
And it’s not over yet! Once the surveys are out and running smoothly and you’re all enjoying the preview PDF, we’ll work on manufacturing the two patch designs, the tattoos, and the stickers and preparing the book for print.
