Our printer is moving ahead with production, and we’ve got some estimated dates to share. We’re anticipating our final “master production copy” for our review in mid-to-late September, and the entire product to be ready for freight shipping in mid October. That MPC is the true representative of Devil’s Due, made on the mass production machinery, and it’s exactly what you’ll get in the post. Expect to see that one in our next update! Once that freight is ready, it’ll make its way to warehouses to be kitted and then packed and shipped!
In addition to working with the printer, we’ve been assembling the digital assets that pair with the PDF. Jordan packaged all of the illustrations created by our lovely illustrators and designers, plus the in-fiction radio broadcasts for each of the missions and pirate crews in the book. The final PDF is next, incorporating all the tweaks made on our journey to print production.
We’ll have more updates on when this big beautiful book will be in your hands in the next update.
Carson and I have just reviewed the most recent digital proof, and we're happy to say it's looking good. We're giving our printer the greenlight to go ahead with full production!
While this momentous step obviously took longer than we planned for, unfortunately, the waiting isn't quite over. We still have to see how long our printer’s production queue is at the moment and use that time to finalize our freight shipping.
The good news is that, because we're producing everything with the same company, we'll be getting all the books, patches, stickers, and tattoos in one go, and we won't have to wait for multiple manufacturers to ship everything to us separately. That will help speed up the final couple of steps a bit.
We'll be sure to let you know when we have firm dates for when these space pirates will load up ship, head to our shores, and eventually set sail to your local port of call!
While large parts of the pre-production copy (PPC) delivered to Jordan in May looked great, there were some issues we felt must be addressed in order to provide you with a high-quality final book.
I know it’s discouraging to read about yet another delay. I’ll cover some of the details of these fixes closer to the bottom of this update in the interest of transparency.
We’ve been working with our printer to nail down the exact margin and binding requirements. Over the course of this conversation, our printer offered to provide a free second PPC to demonstrate how our concerns could be addressed and the output improved, and to help ensure we’ve corrected all issues.
Production of the second PPC is in progress, and we expect it in hand in the second week of July. Due to Jordan currently moving halfway across the US, I’ll be receiving it for review.
What happens after the extended review pre-production copy arrives? If the issues are resolved, and no new ones are introduced, it’s print time. We’ll be able to line up the shipping & fulfillment plan with the print run ETA, and start talking about when these books start their journey to you.
Again, thanks for sticking with us. I’m feeling more confident about this ER PPC based on the printer’s close guidance and Jordan’s myriad fixes. Below are some of the fixes I was alluding to above, with screenshots of the Initial digital proof, photo from the PPC, and the Fixed version in a new digital proof. Over June, he’s been making a few dozen fixes, including:
Adjusting ink levels to brighten a number of spreads throughout that were too dark in print.
Fixing issues where some background textures and images reduced readability by bleeding through the text. Blend modes with dark backgrounds didn’t do us any favors in some of these cases.
Redesigning our black page border “ribbons” to fit within the new margins from our printer. These should hit right at the page-edges to make flipping between sections easier, but due to a series of miscommunications, the first PPC failed to achieve this.
Reworking some thin border elements that would emphasize any variation in the trimming. Sub-milimeter variance is noticeable.
Correcting the color of some art pieces that had ink mixes which look significantly different between digital and print.
Correcting a few more errant typos and not-quite-aligned elements.
Overprinting resulted in distracting blue bands in the dark background
Too much ink caused some loss of contrast, as well as color accuracy
Many page edge "ribbons" were trimmed off, the text is now smaller and further from edge
High ink levels completely hid the detailed backgrounds Eric made
Another example of loss of contrast and color accuracy to high ink levels
Page edge treatments highlighted any minor shift in paper trimming
I have a pre-production copy of Devil's Due in hand (for both the book and stickers)!
This is a big milestone on this annoyingly long road to fulfillment. I still need to give this a thorough review over the next week, however. There are a few initial things that aren’t quite what we expected, and we’ll be ironing those out in partnership with our printer before the full print run.
But for now, this feels like solid progress, and I wanted you all to at least get a glimpse of what's in store.
I'm sure you're sick of us thanking you for your patience by now, but the sentiment remains! I'll try to not get slowed down further by all the graduation events, dissertation editing, family visits, apartment hunting, and cross-country move planning I'm in the middle of. We were obviously aiming to be truly done with this book before now, but there have been many more wrenches in the gears than we anticipated.
We won't let that stop us though, and we'll continue to keep you updated every month with what's going on.
I hope you enjoyed your April. Around here, it’s finally spring, and I am so ready to say goodbye to winter. Here on the last day of April, we’ve got a short update for you.
We have approved all of the stickers, patches, and temporary tattoo proofs. The last thing is the most important one: the book itself. We have approved the digital proof from the printer, after a few rounds of back-and-forth to confirm colours, margins, and page count across interior and endpapers. The end result is a really nice endpaper treatment where the book attaches to the hardcover. We’re now awaiting the pre-production copy (PPC). If everything there looks good, we’ll give the go ahead for production to begin.
While the PPC work was kicked off, Jordan selected a nice matching spine and bookmark ribbon that matches the blue in the endpapers. I’m really excited to see how this turns out in the final product. We’ll be sharing photos once Jordan has the PPC in hand!
I know Devil’s Due has been a long time coming, but the arrival of the PPC will be a big milestone. We expect to provide you with a concrete timeline once the PPC is approved and production begins. Thanks for sticking it out with us. Once production begins, we’ll update the digital downloads on BackerKit to include the final PDF.
As always, we’re here to answer any questions or help with pledge surveys. There’s roughly 80 backers who need to fill out their surveys, so please reach out if you need a hand.
