Updated to include some price and ordering info
Alright, I promised you guys a news post about the
First of all, a little bit of information about the book. Any of this is subject to change, but here’s what I know so far:
The book will be slightly smaller than the size of your average comic book. It will be 176 pages, full color. It will contain nearly the entire first year of strips, from the high quality original digital files, cleaned up and enhanced. There will be running commentary throughout the entire book, like you would get on a DVD disc. It will include comments from myself, as well as comments from the characters, on different points in the strips. Behind the scenes kind of stuff. There will also be a brand new storyline at the beginning of the book, that you won’t be able to get anywhere else. There will be a nifty Introduction and any other sketches and tidbits I can cram in there.
As far as the price goes, it’s not set in stone either. But most likely the cover price is going to be around $20. I’m trying to keep it as low as possible while still covering my costs. This is just a ballpark figure, and I’m hoping to offer the book to pre-orderers for a slightly lower price. Any of this is subject to change.
I will be accepting cash/check and money order as well via snail mail, so don’t worry if you don’t have a credit card. And yes, the books will ship internationally. All of this will be detailed in the future.
On our current schedule, we should have the book actually finished being put together in about a month or so, give or take for delays. This means that the layout will be done, all commentary added, strips remastered, new content drawn, etc, and the book will be ready to go to the printer. Here’s where the tricky part comes in.
It’s going to cost a hell of a lot of money to print this book. We’re talking like five digits. As many of you know, I make a living off of the comic strip, but I’m not exactly getting rich here. I make enough to barely get by, and by no means do I have an extra wad of cash that large that I can throw around.
So in order to get this book printed and available to all of you, I’m going to have to raise the money. How am I going to do that, you ask? Pre-orders.
Now, the printing company will want half payment up front to even accept the job, and the other half upon completion of the print run (which would be about 1-2 months after I send them the job).
So, as soon as the book is ready to go, I’m going to start taking pre-orders. Then, as soon as I’ve raised enough money for the down payment, I’m going to send the book to the printer. I will then continue to take pre-orders, and cross my finger and hope beyond hope that I can raise enough money for the final payment by the time the books are done. If all goes well, the book would be shipping by mid to late summer.
So now you’re asking “well, why should I pre-order?”. I’ll tell you. Aside from the whole “supporting CAD” argument, and giving me a leg up in getting this book (and future volumes) printed which will be a big help in paying my rent and putting food on my table, there are other reasons. One of which is that you’ll be be gauranteed a book from the very first print run. You’ll get your book months before it’s available in stores. And I even plan to offer signed books to anyone that places a pre-order.
So there it is. That’s about as up-front as I can put it. We’ve still got a little while to go before I start taking pre-orders, but I wanted to plant the idea in your heads, give you a little advance notice.