Death Frost Doom seems have been received well and has sold decently, on its small scale, in the little while it has been available.
No Dignity in Death: The Three Brides is complete, save for a final round of proofreading. I even made a mockup (which is about as good as Death Frost Doom in production values) to take around to printers yesterday to get quotes. And oh are there stories about some of these printers. Of the near dozen places we visited, I think only a few of them were actually working on anything. And those were the ones with the best prices.
Glossy covers (with a splash of color for NDiD) with full bleeds for the next releases! That will result in a price increase (but combined with the ISBN that I found out is free to receive in Finland, this will now be theoretically distribution-ready, even if I have no such retail deals set up yet) but seeing as how there is a production upgrade and the thing is 40 pages compared to DFD's 28, I hope you can forgive it. The truth is everything here costs more than in the US (not to mention it's got to be shipped to the US) so the same standard of physical product is going to cost a bit more than the equivalent from a small US publisher.
My only hope is that the amount of content per page (my goal is to have the text be dense yet easily legible) and the quality of the content makes up for it. And starting this weekend I'll have that feature in Roolipelaaja so maybe business will pick up locally.
People of Pembrooktonshire is in progress. Laura's got the art specs and this companion piece to NDiD will just have cover art and is otherwise all text. I'm just about halfway done with the writing, and then it needs proofreading and layout. Actually, I might be two-thirds done. My goal is 137 NPCs with bizarre plot hooks plus some general information about Pembrooktonshire, but fleshing out passably clever and/or weird hooks or twists for this many people is rather taxing. When I get to 100 I'll reasses whether to soldier on to 137, as 100 is a nice round respectable number that wouldn't feel like laziness. The hooks will be a mix of simple oddity, strange coincidence, flourishes of the supernatural, and a healthy dose of the macabre. See ifyou can spot all the references!
I do want Green Devil Face #3 ready with those. It will be produced as it has been, so it won't get the production upgrade. Get your late submissions in quick to pad this thing out to a respectable length. I'd feel weird producing a 16 page issue, but GDF is the community project. I'll gladly do layout and fulfill orders and have a couple entries myself and all that, but forgive me if my creative energies are focused on the paying work!
All work on these projects will stop between Thursday and Monday coming up. Friday through Sunday is Ropecon and my insane schedule of games I'll be running there, Thursday is prep day for that, and Monday I have a periodontist appointment, which should be fifteen shades of fun. But I expect all work to be done by the end of next week, and then we can go into the production phase, and then hopefully a great big ridiculously sized shipment to Noble Knight (with these titles and a restock of DFD). When that arrives and goes on sale there, the new items will also go on sale on my website. And a week later, through the PDF vendors.
And then we'll see if this "Build a Catalog" keystone of my business plan shows any signs of life.
There will be no rest after those are released. Insect Shrine of Goblin Hill will be next, and it will not take forever. This is my job now. After that I can decide whether the Grinding Gear Inn, Stone Hold Sanitarium, or Carcosa adventure will be next. Or whether I should finish up that Random God Generator. Or maybe something new from my own game will jump out between now and then as being well-served to be fleshed out for publication. Or whatever.
I do want to show you two No Dignity in Death art pieces. The book still needs an "official" layout to be done, but I think the mockup is going to wind up looking very much like the final product, so these two drawings are going to be either greatly cropped or shrunk. Here they are in full splendor, click for a bigger version. Both by Laura Jalo.
No Dignity in Death: The Three Brides is complete, save for a final round of proofreading. I even made a mockup (which is about as good as Death Frost Doom in production values) to take around to printers yesterday to get quotes. And oh are there stories about some of these printers. Of the near dozen places we visited, I think only a few of them were actually working on anything. And those were the ones with the best prices.
Glossy covers (with a splash of color for NDiD) with full bleeds for the next releases! That will result in a price increase (but combined with the ISBN that I found out is free to receive in Finland, this will now be theoretically distribution-ready, even if I have no such retail deals set up yet) but seeing as how there is a production upgrade and the thing is 40 pages compared to DFD's 28, I hope you can forgive it. The truth is everything here costs more than in the US (not to mention it's got to be shipped to the US) so the same standard of physical product is going to cost a bit more than the equivalent from a small US publisher.
My only hope is that the amount of content per page (my goal is to have the text be dense yet easily legible) and the quality of the content makes up for it. And starting this weekend I'll have that feature in Roolipelaaja so maybe business will pick up locally.
People of Pembrooktonshire is in progress. Laura's got the art specs and this companion piece to NDiD will just have cover art and is otherwise all text. I'm just about halfway done with the writing, and then it needs proofreading and layout. Actually, I might be two-thirds done. My goal is 137 NPCs with bizarre plot hooks plus some general information about Pembrooktonshire, but fleshing out passably clever and/or weird hooks or twists for this many people is rather taxing. When I get to 100 I'll reasses whether to soldier on to 137, as 100 is a nice round respectable number that wouldn't feel like laziness. The hooks will be a mix of simple oddity, strange coincidence, flourishes of the supernatural, and a healthy dose of the macabre. See ifyou can spot all the references!
I do want Green Devil Face #3 ready with those. It will be produced as it has been, so it won't get the production upgrade. Get your late submissions in quick to pad this thing out to a respectable length. I'd feel weird producing a 16 page issue, but GDF is the community project. I'll gladly do layout and fulfill orders and have a couple entries myself and all that, but forgive me if my creative energies are focused on the paying work!
All work on these projects will stop between Thursday and Monday coming up. Friday through Sunday is Ropecon and my insane schedule of games I'll be running there, Thursday is prep day for that, and Monday I have a periodontist appointment, which should be fifteen shades of fun. But I expect all work to be done by the end of next week, and then we can go into the production phase, and then hopefully a great big ridiculously sized shipment to Noble Knight (with these titles and a restock of DFD). When that arrives and goes on sale there, the new items will also go on sale on my website. And a week later, through the PDF vendors.
And then we'll see if this "Build a Catalog" keystone of my business plan shows any signs of life.
There will be no rest after those are released. Insect Shrine of Goblin Hill will be next, and it will not take forever. This is my job now. After that I can decide whether the Grinding Gear Inn, Stone Hold Sanitarium, or Carcosa adventure will be next. Or whether I should finish up that Random God Generator. Or maybe something new from my own game will jump out between now and then as being well-served to be fleshed out for publication. Or whatever.
I do want to show you two No Dignity in Death art pieces. The book still needs an "official" layout to be done, but I think the mockup is going to wind up looking very much like the final product, so these two drawings are going to be either greatly cropped or shrunk. Here they are in full splendor, click for a bigger version. Both by Laura Jalo.
The Gossipers
Gypsy Wagons
Great to hear that everything is moving forward. Too bad that you haven't gotten more submissions for GDF. Apart from submitting my own feeble attempts, I've even mentioned GDF in my own postings suggestion peoples to submit. Maybe we all the same readers...
ReplyDeleteAlso: I just bought Death Frost Doom in pdf. I don't think my group is hard-core enough to handle something quite this *evil*, but I'll probably be mining it for inspiration for months. I can't remember the last time *reading* a module gave me the heebie-jeebies.
ReplyDeleteWell done. I salute you, sir.