Collecting the Submerged arc of Tart in an elegant hardcover fit for your home library.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
We're going to print!
over 3 years ago
– Fri, Aug 26, 2022 at 12:25:39 PM
We had our last fix, well fixed, this afternoon (the overseer at the printer in China felt our copyright info might not be legible, so they made it bigger), and we are going into plate production.
I don't really know what Plate Production is on a granular level, but my understanding from 30,000 feet is that they take the artwork, and create a plate (I think four pages per plate). As the paper runs through the printing press at amazing speeds, these plates stamp the ink down on the pages.
I'm sure this makes it clear.
When that is done the pages will be bound, and inserted into the hardcover.
At some point in the process the Dust Jacket will be created and placed on the book. I literally have no idea how this is done, but I have a guess: Machines.
Or magic.
But probably machines.
This is really exciting. If all things go well our printer is estimating the project will completely boxed up and ready to go to port on or around September 16th.
At the port they get really comfy on a boat for a trip around the world to me. In the past, books we've printed outside of North America have been sent to California, made their way to Chicago, and then shipped to me. But many of the problems with receiving books into the US during the pandemic have been on the West Coast. Printlore is bypassing that and trying a port in Miami which is within an hour or two drive for me.
It would probably jinx everything to say there won't be any hiccups moving forward, so I will not say that. But it is going well so far.
With printing starting, Ludo is ordering the bookplates today for the backers who backed that tier. We're going to print 100 of them so people can get them in the future (but will still be pretty rare). When he gets them he'll sign and sketch at least as many as we owe for the campaign, but we'll likely do a couple extra for shows and backers who might decide to add them in the surveys.
The is one special surprise we're doing. We thought we were doing it during the campaign, but it felt like something we'd rather hold back as a surprise than advertise and possibly find out it was something we couldn't do.
The surprise is: Ludo is also creating a bookplate for the Tart Vol 1 Adrift hardcover. Since only he and I worked on that one, it will come with our signatures, and arrive free for all the backers who got the bookplate in the Submerged campaign.
It will also be the exact same number. So if you backed for the sketched bookplate, and get #4 our of 100. You will receive the bookplate for Tart Vol 1 Adrift #4 of 100 for free with your rewards.
I'll keep a list and make every effort to keep your number the same throughout the hardcover series. I'm not going to make that a promise or a guarantee, but I'm going to work at it.
If your finances have improved since our campaign closed and you want to add these bookplates, you will have the option to do so in your Backerkit survey. The Tart Vol 1 Adrift Bookplate will not be free, as it was for backers in the campaign, but you will be sent the same number and added to the same list to try to keep you receiving that number in the future.
As for me. I'm going to send this update, and then start to type the top half of the thank you notes all physical backers receive. In the past I've added handwritten thank you to all first day backers. But that was because I only had a few weeks before the books arrived. With a few months, I will be writing something to every one of you.
Sometimes they're funny. Sometimes they are profound. Sometimes they are really, really weird. It depends on many random and unpredictable factors what you get. But sometimes that's the fun.
Full disclosure, my handwriting is... not great. So good luck with that!
Anyway, really excited to get to the next stage of this project. I'll update soon with news on Tart 15. Ludo has started thumbnails on the project, but is moving this month so we're giving him a little time to deal with that stress before we deluge him with Tart scheduling.
Kevin
Tart Submerged Digital Bundle
over 3 years ago
– Wed, Jul 27, 2022 at 03:57:45 PM
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
The check is off to the printer
over 3 years ago
– Fri, Jul 22, 2022 at 05:21:43 PM
We are about a week away from having every page of the book set up to go to print. Now, that doesn't mean we will go to print next week, but it does mean it was time to take the support you provided us in the campaign, and send most of it to Printlore. So that the day we finalize our pages, we get in line to print.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to write one of the largest checks of my life!
With your support I was also able to pay Ludo in entirety for his illustrations of Tart 14 (Due to boring business tax stuff, he agreed to wait until this campaign to be paid, which he didn't have to do, but I am grateful for. Oddly, because of boring currency stuff, he actually received more Euros by waiting than if I'd paid him last year, so I'm happy about that). Now, if I budgeted the shipping correctly, we should have just enough to ship and still stay in the black on the campaign. And with a campaign this size, that is a really great place to be.
I wanted to share this and really hammer the point home of what your support did for us. We are going to exit this campaign with over 1,000 sets of the first two volumes of our series in hardcover that we can sell to grow our audience, we are caught up on what I owed Ludo, and we are going to be able to ship all or nearly all of our books to backers without reaching into other streams of financing.
That is such an amazing foundation that you once again created for us. So, what's next?
I have the Backerkit surveys mostly built. I need to recheck a few things. Like making certain that all the PDFs volunteered by other creators are available to download Getting survey questions nailed down etc. I'm expecting to send surveys sometime in early to mid August. I do not have an idea yet on how long it will take the books to be printed, shipped and delivered to me, but we created a very long window of delivery because of that uncertainty. It's my hope we deliver very early, but whatever happens, I'll try to make sure you hear about it here in the updates (which will probably start to come closet to every month now, unless big news pops).
One last thing. Tonight's Explain Yourself is actually guest-less. We've been fighting to keep our guest list at four projects or fewer for a while and tonight we really succeeded. We don't have a single one. So Will Allred and I are going to hop on and answer Crowdfunding, comic making, and really whatever else comes up questions mailbag style.
If you have any questions about comic making right now, feel free to comment on this update, or email me at [email protected] and we'll try t get to it.
I've shared it before, but Will's campaign for Crossover Division 1-4 has about a week remaining. We will start production on a one-shot Tart/Crossover Division adventure in the next few months, so now is a great time to get on his really fun series:
Book mark it!
over 3 years ago
– Tue, Jul 05, 2022 at 06:56:48 AM
Just a very short update to let you know that the backers whose credit cards errored after the campaign came through amazingly.
When the campaigned closed we were looking at a possibility of 28 backers, and $1806 missing from our reported raise. I will not lie, that would have been a tough amount to lose (even though I understand that some, many, and all credit card issues are accidental.
By the time Kickstarter closed the window to fix payment the sum total of backers we lost is four. And the funding we lost from those backers totaled $477.
I'd rather have that $477, of course. But the difference between losing $1,800 and losing $500 is MASSIVE. As promised, we will be ordering the attached bookmarks to be built into the hardcover because those 24 backers made it happen for us. Truth be told, if we got close, I probably would have done so anyway, because I wasn't thinking clearly when I made that proclamation, and made it really difficult to achieve. That said, you still achieved it!
Before I let you go, I'll say that I once bragged that every single backer with an errored credit card had fixed theirs. It was a joyous day in the Joseph household. I learned two weeks later that I'd just been reading the Kickstarter reports and we had definitely had backers drop off. Oops.
Anyway, 24 of 28 backers being able to fix their cards in one week...is ...pretty amazing.
Ludo and I are doing some last second organization on the pages, and should be delivering the files to the printer this month. I hope in the next two weeks, but that will not be in my ability to control.
I do not expect to update this campaign again until we deliver the printer files and/or we send out our backer surveys. So don't expect to hear from me here for a few weeks. But you can always message me with any thoughts or questions.
Kevin
Two days later, still so thankful
almost 4 years ago
– Sun, Jun 26, 2022 at 07:59:35 PM
I wanted to drop quick update to let you know where we're at.
With the campaign ending on a Friday we can not expect to receive the funds until July 11th to the 13th.
We can't do much with our printing until we can pay them, but there is organization we can do while we wait.
Ludo and I are spending this week cementing the back matter which we will be adding to the book. When that is set, we'll be working with the printer an a few big and small things to make the artwork in the book look as amazing as we possibly can. At that point, I get out of the way of the people who know what they are doing, and will put my time into the Backerkit Surveys.
When we closed there were 28 backers with errored credit cards totaling over $1,800 missing from the funding total you see on our page. But 8 backers have already fixed their issues and brought that deficit down to under $1,300.
While we really hope most backers can fix their cards in time, that change in missing funding has alleviated one concern. We will still be able to afford to upgrade to more pages without feeling like we are hurting the campaign doing so. I don't even know if I would change plans on a stretch goal due to errored backers (it would be punishing everyone for situations that are often just bad timing, and nobody's fault), but the backers who have already fixed their transactions definitely took a load off of that decision.
We were so close to the Bookmark Stretch Goal that I was contemplating including it even if we didn't quite beat $18,000. So I'm going to put this out there. If enough of the remaining 20 errored backers correct their cards before the Kickstarter cut off that our deficit is less than $500, we'll go ahead and add it to the book. I think we can get there, and I'd love to make the book better if we can.
Thank you all for being there for me during this campaign. There were personal things that happened during this month that were quite scary, and tremendously sad. The involved family, and health, and the loss of someone of immense kindness in my extended family. As honest as I like to be with my backers, I didn't share for a few reasons. The most important is, it wasn't (and still isn't) my story to tell. It was hard, and stressful, and scary, and eventually very sad. But I had a group of people who didn't even know they were supporting me in a different way, and I did cherish that.
When you back a project, you get a reward. The creator gets income to make that project (and your reward). But I want you to know from the creator side, you give so much more than your very hard earned money. You give more than just a vote for a book. It goes further than you probably think when you hit Back this Project. But I want you to really internalize what you do for those of us running these. It is so much more than it might seem.
I'm still on the recovery side of exhausted, and am not doing a lot today other than this update. But we'll hit the road running tomorrow.
