Hi everyone! Apologies for the lack of a new page this week, but the ever-present march of the holidays is keeping us pretty well and locked into an “every other week” sort of rhythm. Fortunately, we’re coming up to the actual “holiday” itself in the coming weeks, so we’re looking forward to Rachel’s work hours getting back to a reasonable rate, and my own work requirements evening out a bit (though I know January is going to be a little busy for me).

So, you’re probably wondering what that graphic is in the header image area! Well, let me share a little story with you about printing physical books:

If you open up a hardcover book and take a look at the inside cover, you might notice that there’s a special patterned paper and a blank page or two before you get to the good stuff. Those are called endsheets (also known as endpapers or endleaves) and they’re an important structural element for the book. Some printers require it to be blank, others are ambivalent. PrintNinja lets you print whatever you want on there, so Rachel did up a nice leaf pattern.

So, are the digital proofs approved? MOSTLY.

There was some back and forth on the output (RGB works with digital files, but we needed to make sure the pages were exporting correctly into CMYK, which is used for printing), the placement of the UPC barcode, getting the necessary special files in place for the special edition cover’s foil and gloss–all that good stuff! But after a few back-and-forths, we’re hopefully just one last APPROVE button away from going into production. The next step will be physical proofs, which will be mailed directly to Rachel to make sure they’re hitting our desired specifications for things like page material, how the matte pages look, things like that.

So that’s the latest on what’s going on! No updates yet on the pins or any other bits of physical merchandise (though they are in production and we’re looking forward to seeing how they turn out). Once we have news, we’ll post it up here and via Kickstarter updates!

Just to remind folks, our BackerKit Preorder Store is still live and accepting orders! If you’re interested in snapping up a copy of the book (standard and limited are both still available), pins, the prints, etc, it’s all still up and available right here:

https://westerndeep.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders