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Dragonsteel
CREATOR
7 days ago

Project Update: Ending the Year Strong, Starting the Next One Even Stronger

Hello, backers! Dragonsteel Nexus 2024 is behind us, so now it’s time for our next BackerKit update!

If you’ve been watching our social media, you know that these have been some crazy weeks for the Dragonsteel team. We know that you are all patiently awaiting your shipments, so we want to give you a window on how things are going at the warehouse and what things are looking like for the next few weeks.

Let’s Talk Progress

On Brandon’s website, you have probably seen our percentage bar for the Words of Radiance campaign. Currently, we’re at 15% fulfillment for the $325 tier. What does that actually mean in terms of shipments? Since September, we’ve sent out 15,155 packages, and those numbers increase every day.

To keep making meaningful progress on this campaign, we’ve recruited some more warehouse squires who have been a massive help. Our office staff have taken time to work in the warehouse each day, and our dedicated team is working weekends (and even some holidays!) to continue our progress on Words of Radiance shipping. We think about you every day and we are so excited for you to receive your rewards!

Taking Care of the Bridge Crew

We gave our team the Thanksgiving holiday off, and our team is going to be taking mandatory time off from December 25 to January 1. When the warehouse reopens on January 2, our staff and our warehouse squires will be hard at work sending out Words of Radiance rewards, catching up on customer service tickets, and packing our regular store orders.

We’re ending the year strong, and starting the next one even stronger.

Happy Holidays from Team Dragonsteel!
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Joe

My $325 order has shipped

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Sandra Tayler
CREATOR
4 days ago

Project Update: December Update

Greetings Backers,

At my house this is the last rush toward our celebration of the Christmas holiday, but I wanted to pause for a moment and give you all an update.

TL;DR: No action items for you. Thank you for filling out your surveys, if you have questions or concerns about anything relating to your order please email [email protected]. I'm giving you all another chapter to read. Both the video and chapter can be accessed by clicking over to Backerkit and logging in. Details below.


Details

When last I wrote an update I was in the space between Thanksgiving and  a convention (Dragonsteel Nexus). As expected, the convention had a bit impact on my ability to work on SLSC. (But I survived the food adventure of needing to pack along everything I ate for three days!) You can see the impact in my daily writing tracker.

On the days where I make progress on SLSC I get to color in the square for the day. I had a really great two month run until I hit Thanksgiving. The convention was December 5-7, which is the middle of that blank week. I'm getting my rhythm back now, but I feel the loss of those two weeks of work (spent on different work) as the end of the year comes rushing at me.

The end of the year is always a moment where I feel the weight of everything I haven't gotten done that I meant to do. I usually spend quite a bit of time collating all my blog posts and journal entries into book form. I then use a print on demand service to print the book. I have annual books going back to 2004 when I first started my blog. Here are the books from the past four years.

I want to make a book for 2024, and I will. But it will be a much slimmer volume since so much of my writing energy was diverted into SLSC and into freelance work. That trend will continue because between now and the end of the year I'm going to throw every available creative minute into getting SLSC done. But those minutes are only going to be available around scheduled family celebrations. 

In early January I will have to assess where I'm at in relation to the project. 


Current Status

Despite all the distractions, I finished Believing in Your Work. I'm now in progress on Your Access Needs, Health Challenges, and Caregiving and Creativity.   That only leaves the following to re-draft:
  • Grief is a Creative Process
  • When Things Go Sour
  • Closing Chapter
  • Opening Chapter
  • Introduction
I'm so close to being done, yet somehow I'm not there yet and days keep slipping away from me, spent on other things. (yes the other things are important, but this is also. The juggle is complicated and so are emotions.)

Status of deliverables:

SLSC Print book: In progress as listed above
SLSC ebook: This will be produced and released within about a week of when I send the physical book to the printer.
SLSC Audiobook: I will begin production on this as soon as the physical book is off to the printer and the ebook has been delivered.
Custom Designed Notebook: I will be working on this in tandem with revising and editing SLSC. I already have ideas for how to arrange some of the activities on the pages.
Notebook Ready to place an order in January
Bookmarks: Ready to print
Notecards: Ready to print
Sticker sheets: Ready to print
Thank you Postcard: I'll design these soon.
Giveaway books: Once I have received my shipment of books I will set up a process where people can get these books for free.
Lecture bundle: I am late on this, details below.
Consultations: Mostly complete, a few more pending.
Group Mentoring: Ongoing! We've met several times and I'm enjoying the connections we're building.
Individual Mentoring: Some ongoing, some starting with the new year.

Updates on Recording Lectures

I really wanted to have at least one of these ready to go before I posted this update. I set aside time and recorded a lecture on Monday. Unfortunately I jumped the gun a bit. I got about halfway through my slides when I realized that my written lecture notes did not match the slides in front of me. I had to try to adjust on the fly to fill the gaps. I'm afraid the result was not coherent or cohesive. To make matters worse I'd chosen my hairclip poorly and by about halfway through my 45 minute recording I realized it was sliding down my hair, making me look increasingly disheveled. I could have paused to replace it, but then I would have an edit in the middle of the presentation where my hair changes. Distracting.

So I'm calling that my practice run. I'm going to spend more time with my slides and notes. Make sure I'm confident they're in alignment. I will more firmly secure my hair. Then I'll record again. Hopefully before Christmas, but I'm running out of days, my parents are in town, I haven't wrapped any gifts, and my tree still doesn't have any ornaments on it. 
The on-the-fly priorities analysis and adjustment is real. I keep looking at how much time has passed and feeling like surely I could have arranged something better. 

In the end I have to trust that past me was making good choices. That in the times she chose rest, she really needed rest. Then I look at where I'm at now and make decisions about how to move forward. 

I hope that if you have a holiday this month it is filled with joy and comfort for you. I'll be back with another update for you the week of January 6-10


All the best,
Sandra
Includes Backer-Exclusive Content
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Zombie Orpheus Entertainment
CREATOR
6 days ago

Project Update: Production, Art, & Surveys Update

Hi everyone!

Lots of news to share today.


ART OF GRANDMASTER

First, we've received the Art of Grandmaster dummy book from the manufacturer. The "dummy" stage of a project is a version with all of the paper, assembly, and details, aside from actual printed content. It lets us make sure that the paper, format, and weight are all correct. Then, when we send the interior contents, there won't be any surprises.

After much consultation with the manufacturer, as well as reading your comments about wishing that we had offered posters of the new art, we've made some upgrades and improvements to the art book! The art book is now larger, a whopping 9x12 inches. It will contain eight color pages (single-sided) and eight B&W coloring book pages (also single-sided). The color pages are on heavy-duty matt art stock and the B&W pages are a thick woodfree stock that's perfect for coloring. Every page is now perforated, so it can easily be removed and framed. The gold-foil cover will also be suitable for framing.

We will be printing 4500 copies of the art book and 4500 copies of Grandmaster Deluxe. This is the only manufacturing run we have planned for these books, so once they're gone, they're gone. We've made a 50% deposit with the manufacturer, who is currently purchasing materials for the run.


SURVEYS

Unfortunately, surveys still aren't quite ready. Normally we calculate and charge shipping later in the process, but we're working on simplifying our shipping tables and procedures so that we can do everything at once.

In the surveys we will collect the names for the Grandmaster credits, for everyone who qualified for the Loremaster credit in the book. That will be the final piece of content that lets us send the interior files to the manufacturer.


NEW ART

We have more original Valdemar art to share with you!

By Jabari Weathers in gouache paint, this piece depicts Vixen, Vanyel, Matya, and of course the world's most adorable spiderlings.



Speaking of Discord, don't forget to join the 650+ members who are now on the Official Valdemar Discord Server! There are so many great conversation happening and we'd love to invite you to the party.

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I feel like maybe this will be a controversial or unkind opinion, but I feel like people are holding Dragonsteel to a kind of unrealistic and uncharitable expectation for shipping right now and I don't understand it. I've backed a number of Kickstarters/BackerKit things and rarely are they perfectly on time. This one is moving along at speed by comparison and Dragonsteel a) has been pretty transparent about what's going on, b) likes to treat its employees like people rather than running them ragged, which I appreciate, and c) always delivers and delivers with quality and great customer service if something goes wrong, so I trust them. But, like, I don't understand, in particular, why people are so upset about the $325 tier taking so long. They just had a con (which is a regular, yearly occurrence; it was not like they did that out of nowhere), it's the holiday season, and this tier has over 23,600 backers according to the Pledge Level page. The other tiers that have shipped had a fraction of the number of orders to send out, without the complication of the timing (which was, in large part, caused by manufacturing delays from one of the products which kinda out of their control). And a lot of the other issues that have slowed things down have been a water main break, employees getting sick, and a big manufacturer defect for a different product that released (which wasn't made to their specifications) that they had to cancel and refund on orders on from their site... All of which is deeply unfortunate that it happened back to back to back and can be frustrating, but it's not really their fault? It just seems like it's a busy time of year, in general and in particular for Dragonsteel, and we're in the largest tier. Full disclosure in that I have received my copy of the book; my add-ons will arrive when they arrive, I trust Dragonsteel well enough to deliver on that. I got excited-impatient when things started shipping while waiting for my copy, but not upset. I just don't fathom getting that angry or upset about it when they're trying and they're doing what they can? They have, again, twenty-three THOUSAND orders in this tier; without anything else, that was always going to take a while to complete and to get to the tiers further down.

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JC Spark
CREATOR
1 day ago

Project Update: The eagle has landed – Part 1 Der Adler ist gelandet – Teil 1

Dear Readers,

The time has come: the eagle – or in this case the white kitten – has landed... Part 1. 

As you probably all know by now, this is my first book publication and production. And although I did everything I could to prepare for it well, I experienced just about every failure, bad luck and mishap that was on offer. 😉

But today I can proudly announce delivery has begun!

The ebooks are ready in both languages and available. They have been added to your BookFunnel library! To get the books, simply sign in to the BookFunnel app or at my.bookfunnel.com with the email address you also provided to BackerKit – and which you probably used to receive this update. If you log in and your BookFunnel library is empty, log in to BookFunnel with the email address provided to receive the books.

And speaking of books... something arrived in the mail yesterday:
 
https://youtube.com/shorts/iN5Pq2BqBQ0?feature=share

Not the dog, the German edition of BackerKit fresh from the printer – and on its way to you tomorrow 😊
You can watch the inspection here
https://youtube.com/shorts/iN5Pq2BqBQ0?feature=share
and the unboxing here
https://youtu.be/YIoK_EyilJ8 

The English edition is currently being printed and, with luck, should be sent out by mail before the end of the year. The audio books are lagging a little behind, the speaker had a nasty cold, which set us back a bit – but we are working hard on it.

So, that was it from me before Christmas, I wish everyone happy holidays; you will surely hear from me again before the year is over.

Enjoy life, the universe and everything.
All the best,
JC Spark

 
Liebe Leser,

es ist soweit, der Adler – oder in diesem Fall das weiße Kätzchen -  ist gelandet … Teil 1. 
Wie ihr ja inzwischen vermutlich alle wisst, ist dies meine erste Buchveröffentlichung und Produktion. Und obwohl ich alles getan habe, um sie gut vorzubereiten, habe ich so ziemlich alles an Pleiten, Pech und Pannen mitgenommen, was so im Angebot war. 😉 

Aber heute kann ich mit stolz verkünden: die Auslieferung hat begonnen!

Die Ebooks sind in beiden Sprachen fertig und stehen bereit. Sie wurden zu eurer BookFunnel-Bibliothek hinzugefügt! Um die Bücher zu erhalten, meldet ihr euch einfach mit der E-Mail-Adresse bei der BookFunnel-App oder auf my.bookfunnel.com an, die ihr auch bei BackerKit angegeben habt - und über die ihr vermutlich dieses Update bekommen habt. Wenn ihr euch anmeldet und eure BookFunnel-Bibliothek leer ist, meldet euch mit der beschriebenen E-Mail-Adresse bei BookFunnel an, um die Bücher zu erhalten. 

Und wenn wir von Büchern sprechen … gestern war etwas in der Post:

Nicht der Hund, die deutsche BackerKit Ausgabe frisch aus der Druckerei – und Morgen unterwegs zu euch 😊 
 
Ihr könnt euch die Inspektion hier ansehen
und das Auspacken hier

Die englische Ausgabe wird gerade gedruckt und sollte mit Glück auch noch in diesem Jahr in die Post gehen. 

Die Audiobücher hinken etwas hinterher, der Sprecher hatte eine fiese Erkältung, was uns ein wenig zurückgeworfen hat – aber es wird eifrig dran gearbeitet. 

So, das war es zumindest vor Weihnachten von mir, ich wünsche allen schöne Feiertage, ihr hört sicher noch einmal von mir bevor das Jahr zu Ende geht. 

 Genießt das Leben, das Universum und alles andere.
 Alles Liebe
 JC Spark 
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Now there are two progress indicators, one is the 325 overall pledge progression and then one for each specific order. Let's hope they can gather a good rhythm again and that no other event collides with the pledges :-) Looking at this from afar (got my pledge, waiting on for my WoK add on) is giving me the same feeling I got from the complaints at the munchkin big box crowdfunding (words like "sickened, disgusting, etc...). I believe the complaints are well deserved. I would not, however, address them at the team per se but at whoever is planing and managing. I get the impression that Dragonsteel’s name has grown faster than the company itself and they now find themselves at a position in which they are biting off more than they can chew. I believe the team is doing a great job, but whoever actually manages the company should take a step back and look at this as an opportunity for learning since there seems to be no contingency plan to palliate a crisis (or rather an unfortunate turn of events, I don’t believe this is an actual crisis). Anyway, let’s hope they get the stuff sorted out so they can focus on the crowdfunding campaign.

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Baby Bestiary
CREATOR
2 days ago

Project Update: Pre-Christmas Update!

Hey all, 
just a quick update, 
I thought i had taken care of the PDFs earlier. I apologies for that, they have all been sent!

Also, a quick update on production. 
For some reason I had thought i was gonna be able do a local production of the Hardcover book with spot UV, but it appears I was totally wrong (even doing hardcover at lower volume in the US would be generally more expensive, but was something we were expecting to do). 

Nevertheless, I had a different project in production with an offset/overseas printer, and we were able to get this book in to piggy back on the production time and shipping. 
So, now the newer books, will have softcover with spot UV, and the Hardcover books will have a combination of SpotUV and Foil Stamp which I'm pretty excited to see. 
THe fun part is that I should be getting our samples anytime next week (but since its Christmas I probably wont expect to see it until the 30th. But when I do, Ill be sure to share it with you all to show off how everything is coming together. 

I hope everyone is doing well for this holiday season, and also, since calendars were part of peoples orders, I am going to have the warehouse ship those as soon as possible so you can get them before the hardcovers arrive (which might take a little bit since they're arriving by freight) (also international books will be going to our international hubs, which will tune down shipping times as well). 

More to come, 
Andreas
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AK Faulkner
CREATOR
10 days ago
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Hi! I saw that there are now two progress indicator in the website, one for the overall progress and one for the current radiant orders. Could you tell us in what order are the you going to be shipping? For example now I see that that the orders being shipped are the one for the elsecallers, what is going to be the next one? Thank you! And happy hollidays!

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