Update for 7-29-2020
over 4 years ago – Wed, Jul 29, 2020 at 04:03:30 AM

Isaac here again with another weekly update. You all are the reason the campaign has been so successful, so, as always, thank you for your support.  We're working hard behind the scenes to make the books and other goodies a reality.

Livestreams

Each Thursday, we've broadcast livestreams with Brandon answering various questions. Starting this Thursday, July 30th, we'll be entering into the last week of the campaign and will have some fun things to show you on the livestream. We also might have a special guest, so make sure you tune in. As usual, Adam will send out an update Thursday with times and links.

On last Thursday's livestream, we revealed all the pieces of full-color artwork in The Way of Kings leatherbound and mentioned we would post static images in today's update. Those are at the end of this update, but first I'm excited to reveal most of the character cards from the playing cards set.

Stormlight Archive Playing Cards

Many months before the campaign, we teamed up with artist Rebecca Sorge Jensen, also known for her poster of the Knights Radiant from a few years ago, to create Stormlight Archive playing cards for one of the campaign stretch goals. Not only is Rebecca hard working and talented, we love working with her, and her knowledge of the world and characters of the Stormlight Archive shines through in her designs. From the beginning, we wanted to make sure that the cards would read and play well with any of the games you're used to using playing cards for. I hope you'll agree that her designs achieve that along with an added finesse and beauty.

There are still a few things being tweaked (for example, Syl's current design has her as the Queen of Diamonds when she'll actually be the Queen of Hearts) but I think this gives you a good idea of how cool this set of cards is going to be. That last image above with the larkins will be the back of the cards. I am inordinately excited for these!

Full-color Interior Illustrations

Please note that due to the various copyright holders involved, these and other images inside the leatherbound book itself are not part of the digital art package.

Poster Size Clarification

Just a couple of notes before we sign off. We noticed an error on the size of the poster. On the campaign graphic, it says that the poster is 23.75" x 35.75", yet on the campaign pledge tiers, it lists the posters as being 23.75" x 34.75". The campaign graphic is correct. The posters are 23.75" x 35.75". Since Kickstarter doesn't let us change that element of a pledge tier after someone pledges to the tier, we can't update that text. We apologize for this typo.

Thank You

I know we always end with this, and I don't want to sound like a broken record, but we really do appreciate the trust you've put in us to deliver a beautiful leatherbound book to you along with other goodies. Everything's moving ahead. We just approved the new foil dies for the Volume II of the leatherbound, and they're looking fantastic. We can't wait for you to get your hands on this book!

Third Kickstarter Livestream
over 4 years ago – Fri, Jul 24, 2020 at 10:50:12 PM

Update for July 21, 2020
over 4 years ago – Fri, Jul 24, 2020 at 01:57:51 AM

Isaac here with a campaign update. To keep from overwhelming you with lots of tiny bits of news every day, we’ll try to send out one every week or so. Since we’ve been saving up things, these might tend to be fairly long, like this one is. So buckle up and prepare for some interesting things ahead! As always, thank you for being involved in the campaign.

Sticker Sheets

Ben McSweeney has sent me images of five of the large character stickers that will appear on the sticker sheets, which we unlocked as our first stretch goal. Each of these sticker sheets will have a main character, a chibi character related to that main character somehow, and several sizes of the symbol of the Order of Knights Radiant they represent. The Kaladin sticker sheet in the stretch goals graphic is a pretty good representation of how we expect these to be laid out.

You’ve seen the Kaladin with chibi Syl before, but here we’d like to reveal Dalinar with chibi Navani, Szeth, Malata, and Venli. I hope you agree that these have turned out amazing!

Knights Radiant Order Prints

Additionally, we would like to reveal two more of Steve Argyle’s art prints representing each of the Orders of Knights Radiant. While some characters we know appear in these pieces--like Kaladin for the Windrunners and Dalinar for the Bondsmiths you’ll see below--there are many figures representing the Orders in general. In other words, a lot of these figures do not correspond to particular characters in the book. The Windrunner prints we’ve used in the campaign graphics aren’t quite final yet, so we’ll reveal that one and others in a later update, but these two, for the Bondsmiths and Skybreakers are pretty much final at this point. Enjoy Steve’s vision of these Orders of Knights Radiant!

Leatherbound Process & Progress

One of the things we want to do with these updates is keep you informed with the progress of the leatherbound books with sneak peeks into the manufacturing and design process. I hope this transparency will not only get you excited for the eventual arrival of your books, but will help you also appreciate the journey a leatherbound takes before arriving.

Some have pointed out that the leather case for the book in the unboxing video looks darker than in the mockup. That’s the nature of mockups and why we’ve been careful to note that the images we share are many times not final. We do our best to simulate what we expect the books and products to look like, but  things always look slightly different in real life. For example, it’s hard to catch the nuances of color in the leather in a photograph, and even different photos in the same lighting situation captures variation in color.

For example, these photos of the cases, which the bindery has confirmed are the same leather as the cases I opened in the unboxing, were sent to us from the bindery. They are the same exact book case in the same room with the same lighting conditions, and yet the first three photos appear more medium blue in color than the final photo, which makes the case appear a navy blue.

Our mockups were based on the bluer photos. Now that I have a case in hand, I’d say these are a navy blue a bit more desaturated from the blue color of our Elantris leatherbound. This Stormlight blue needs to look good with the various colors of foil we’ll need for future leatherbound books in the series, like red, blue, gold, purple, emerald, etc. I believe this blue will be a nice “neutral” blue that will do the job well.

Speaking of leather, let’s talk about some of the ways the leather choice affects other aspects of the design. First off, genuine leather is thicker than bonded leather, so when the bindery wraps it around boards of the same size, the genuine leather version of the book winds up being a smidge taller. This won’t matter much with the Stormlight books being in slipcases, but they will be a smidge taller when put next to your other leatherbound books on a shelf. Here’s an example, using the infamous “Blue Mistborn” the bindery sent me as an example of the genuine leather to be used on The Way of Kings. This photo shows our standard bonded leatherbound Mistborn next to the genuine leather one-off version.

The extra thickness of the leather causes the book to be smidge taller. This photo shows off another aspect of leather choice. The bonded leather on the left is relatively smooth, which gives a crisper die impression. When you move to a more-textured leather, the foil takes on characteristics of the leather beneath it as you can see in this comparison of The Way of Kings spine next to our Warbreaker spine.

This is perfectly normal for a more-textured leather and something I took into account in creating the design for the  Stormlight Archive books.

You might remember from the unboxing that I noticed that the front and back designs weren’t quite centered. I alerted our rep, who got to the bottom of things, and now we have this picture from the bindery showing how the design will be centered. Something to keep in mind is that this process, I believe, is done by hand for each book, so minor shifts left or right are normal, but overall, it looks like the centering is right where we want it.

We also received these pictures of the slipcase from the bindery, which is using mockups of the two books to figure out how to fit them into the slipcase. We also see here how the Stormlight symbol will be centered on the front of the case. We’re using the same metallic blue foil for the symbol as we’re using for the blue parts of the design on the books.

All in all, these books are coming together nicely!

Add-Ons

We're hard at work reading your comments and making adjustments whenever we can make them work. We're printing enough of many of the stretch goals now that we're able to drop the price of the Order Pack in the add-ons sections from $50 to $40.

Additionally, many of you have asked for an add-on option to buy Dawnshard and other goodies together (the Pick-your-Order of Knigths Radiant swag pack, the playing cards, the backer pin, and the Wit/Witless coin) without needing to buy and pay shipping on the Bridge 4 poster. So we've created an add-on that is basically all the rewards from Tier 2 but without the poster. The way to get this is to pledge $1 or more to the campaign, which will give you access to the Backerkit add-on store at the end of the campaign. We've also added a similar add-on to get the leatherbound book with all the goodies from Tier 4 but without the poster.

Also, we should mention here that at the end of the campaign, when we send out our backer survey, everyone will have a chance to upgrade their tier. For example, if you pledged for a Tier 3 (leatherbound arriving in 2020) and decided later that you wanted a Tier 4 but were afraid to drop the Tier 3 for fear of losing your 2020 leatherbound, you will have the option to upgrade to Tier 4 without losing your 2020 book.

Lastly, we want provide an update to some of the frequently asked questions we've been getting, so take it away, Dragonsteel Minions!

Hello from the Dragonsteel Minions—Mem, Lex, and Michael!

We are the ones watching and responding to your comments, answering your emails, relaying your suggestions to the rest of the team, and all around doing our best to be there for you while Brandon and his team work hard to bring you great books and experiences. We often go to bat for you when there is no easy solution, and we do our best to make things go as smoothly as possible. Sometimes we find great solutions, sometimes we find workable solutions, and occasionally we find that—try as we might—there isn’t a lot we can do about something due to limitations in production, shipping realities, and so forth.

We are all new to running a Kickstarter campaign. Some of us have backed Kickstarter campaigns before, but not often enough to be able to know answers as quickly or readily as we would like. As we’ve searched for solutions to your questions and requests, we've learned a lot about this platform. As over 40% of our backers are new accounts to Kickstarter, and other backers may be only occasional backers, we want to share what we’ve learned.

Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform designed for creators to run a campaign and gather funds for a project. Creators offer rewards in the form of pledge tiers to encourage backers to invest in their project campaign. Once the campaign begins, changes to the pledge tiers are difficult or impossible to make (this protects the backer from any last minute changes that might reduce the value of a tier). Backers get to choose which rewards are most meaningful to them and pledge to that tier level. Or they can simply contribute to the campaign without a reward simply because they believe on the project (or because they would like access to the add-ons at the end of the campaign). Throughout the campaign, backers may choose to cancel or adjust their pledge up or down, including pledging beyond what is required specifically for the tier they choose to back. Once the campaign concludes, all pledges are charged, Kickstarter takes its fees and turns the remainder of the pledged money over to the creator. It is then the responsibility of the creator to fulfill promised rewards.

BackerKit is pledge manager software that gathers backer information from the Kickstarter campaign and allows for last-minute additions to reward tier choices. BackerKit allows creators to offer add-on rewards and upgrades, which backers can use to further customize their rewards from the Kickstarter campaign. Any additional money pledged on Kickstarter beyond what is required for a chosen tier (if any) will be available as credit in the pledge manager. Credits can be used to upgrade a tier or pay for add-ons or shipping. Any unused credits are retained by the creator. Crowd-funding is not designed for refunds. It is expected that campaign backers know their money is paying for the campaign, not necessarily for the reward items themselves, which are considered promised bonuses for backing the campaign.

When the campaign was announced, we listened closely to input we received from our fanbase. Kickstarter recommends a lesser number of tiers so it doesn’t get complicated for the backers. Even then, we decided to add two additional tier options (in addition to our original planned tiers): A “Leatherbound Only” tier, which would not send any physical rewards beyond the leatherbound book (in order to save on shipping costs for our international backers), and a “Leatherbound Plus” tier, which would give an easier way to get all the physical books in one reward package. We also made plans to add additional copies to The Way of Kings 10th Anniversary Leatherbound Edition first printing (which will arrive later than the books now in production), as well as add a second run of numbered copies. Just in case.

Your response to our Kickstarter campaign has been amazing and humbling. The number of pledges for tiers containing the leatherbound book are far beyond anything we anticipated. Our contingency plans (that we never expected to need) were put into place within a few hours of the campaign launching. We added additional 2021 printings in all our tiers and added an additional un-numbered leatherbound $500 tier due to the demand of fans who wanted to get all the swag. This is a lot of fun to watch and to participate in!

After a lot of work and effort and logistical challenges, we can finally give definitive answers to our two most common and confusing questions that we haven’t previously been able to provide full answers to.

Upgrading 2020 Leatherbound tiers: If you pledged to a 2020 tier, and would like to upgrade, we will make this possible through the add-ons in the BackerKit pledge manager. Those who are still on a 2020 tier will see special add-on options to pledge up to any higher tier and keep the 2020 shipping date of their leatherbound book.

Customizing pledge rewards: Some backers have expressed an interest in removing the poster from their pledge, to save on shipping. Unfortunately, Kickstarter is not designed for refunds and custom adjustments. Customized adjustments might have been possible on a one-by-one manual basis on BackerKit, but the thousands of backers we have makes managing individual change requests almost impossible, so the decision has been made not to offer this option.

If you do not want to pay the shipping costs of the poster, the $200 Leatherbound Only tier and the $10 Digital Novella tiers do not include the poster reward. You can pledge to one of these tiers and then customize additional rewards through BackerKit after the Kickstarter campaign is complete. As mentioned earlier in this update, you might consider pledging $1 or more, which will give you access to the add-ons at the end of the campaign. We have customized several add-ons there to account for those who do not want the poster.

We have updated our FAQ to include this information. We have also added other FAQs and edited existing answers. Please read the FAQ if you have any questions or want to learn more about the Kickstarter campaign.

Thank you all for your patience with us as we’ve sought to find solutions and answers to your questions. We’ve appreciated your kindness toward us and each other, your respectful discourse, and all the suggestions for stretch goals, changes, and expectations of what you would like to see. In future months and years, you may find new merchandise on our store based on these suggestions.

We’ll find you in the comments!

Thanks to Mem, Lex, and Michael for all they're doing to communicate your thoughts back to us. And thanks to all of you for making this campaign such a big success. We feel the trust you've placed in us, and we're working hard to make awesome things for you!

Second Kickstarter Livestream
over 4 years ago – Sat, Jul 18, 2020 at 01:06:00 AM

New Stormlight Novella Title Reveal
over 4 years ago – Fri, Jul 17, 2020 at 07:13:28 AM

Isaac here with a couple of updates. First, the big one. We would like to reveal the title of the new Stormlight novella, so here goes!

Dawnshard follows the story of Rysn, the Thaylen merchant whom we've seen before in the Interludes of the first three books of the Stormlight Archive series. Stay tuned for this Thursday's livestream for more information.

In other news, copies of one of the volumes of the leatherbound have started receiving their gilding prior to being bound. Here's a cool picture the bindery sent:

So as the campaign continues, we're ramping into production mode on our side and at the manufacturers we're using. More updates to come as we get more news! As always, thank you for supporting our campaign. We're working hard to make this book something really special.