Get ready for Mathieu Bablet's next project launching tomorrow: THE MIDNIGHT ORDER!
about 1 year ago – Mon, Oct 02, 2023 at 04:03:56 PM

Hi everyone!

When we first ran the Kickstarter campaign for Mathieu Bablet's SHANGRI-LA and CARBON & SILICON two and a half years ago, we knew we were onto something special. The response to those books was phenomenal, so we followed that campaign a year later with Mathieu's ADRASTEA, which did equally well. At that point we were committed to being Mathieu's publishing home for his award-winning brilliance. All three of those first edition hardcover books have since sold out, and we're now looking forward to launching his next grand opus on Kickstarter starting TOMORROW!

THE MIDNIGHT ORDER is a globe-spanning graphic novel about a secret agency of witches policing the occult in a war over the sanity of mankind. It is an action-packed series of interlinked short tales set in a shadowy shared universe of witches, witch-hunters, and a menagerie of unimaginable beasts that roam the world unnoticed. Together with a team of 13 other writers and artists, Mathieu weaves an intricate tale around Sheridan and Johnson, two of the Order’s best agents, as they pursue the Seraph, an ancient power that threatens to corrupt their ranks from within. Torn by deeds committed in their pasts, Sheridan and Johnson find themselves on opposite sides of a moral quandary, with the fate of the Order hanging between them. Will they be able to overcome their own ghosts to save the world?

It is a contemporary tale of supernatural magic, but just as sweeping and epic as ADRASTEA, traveling around the world as characters age and mature. If you were pleased with the production design of ADRASTEA and the various artifact components included in this campaign, you'll be excited to know that we're not skimping on the production design on MIDNIGHT: along with a standard softcover and hardcover edition, we're also offering this epic tale in a suitably deluxe slipcase edition that you will NOT want to miss --

The foil-inlaid cover art alone is stunning, but when you factor in the color-printed page gilding, ribbon bookmark, and the removable metal coin embedded in the slipcase cover, this is an artifact that will stand apart on any bookshelf! Also included is a separate rose-gold engraved metal bookmark emblazoned with glyphs found throughout the book.

This is truly the ultimate edition of yet another brilliant work by Mathieu Bablet!

In addition, in case you missed SHANGRI-LA, CARBON & SILICON, or ADRASTEA in hardcover, we are offering new softcover editions of each title individually or as part of a limited-edition "BABLET COLLECTION" Softcover Slipcase Set.

This new softcover set will feature the same luxurious linen texture and gold foil design as the SHANGRI-LA/CARBON & SILICON limited-edition slipcase. Each softcover book will also be available individually as Add-ons in this campaign, featuring 4 pages of additional production sketches in the back of each.

We hope you check it out when it launches tomorrow at 9 am PST. We are offering a $2 shipping credit for all pledges made within the first 24 hours, so hopefully you'll choose to join early and secure one of these campaign-exclusive limited-editions while they're still available! 😊

Thanks, everyone! Please join us tomorrow and help spread the word!

Our new campaign is live: MY FRIEND TOBY
over 1 year ago – Tue, Mar 28, 2023 at 06:57:14 PM

Hi everyone!

We wanted to let you know that our next Kickstarter campaign is now live,and we'd really love it if you would check it out and support this new project! 😊

It is quite different from ADRASTEA or any of our previous campaigns, but we love it just the same (and hope you will, too):

We love animals. We are big proponents of animal rights and wildlife exploration, with no less than 20 books in our catalog focused on animal tales. From kid's books to all-ages-wildlife adventures, we’ve got graphic novels for animal lovers of all types. April is Animal Cruelty Prevention month, and we are planning a number of things to support that noble cause, starting with our next Kickstarter for MY FRIEND TOBY!

MY FRIEND TOBY is a 144-page, wordless canine adventure about a simple terrier living a simple life with his human friend Marcel, a heartbroken artist who is having trouble making ends meet. But Toby doesn’t know anything about money or bills or electricity; he’s happy as long as there is food in his bowl and new territory to claim in the neighborhood. To him, everything is fine... at least until a stray cat appears, bringing all kinds of questions (and maybe a few unexpected answers)…

This book is adorable, and I’m not kidding when I say I laughed out loud a few times “reading” it. Yes, it is wordless, but it captures the language-less mindset of a dog in a way that seems both perfectly understandable and scientifically plausible. Triple-Eisner Award-nominee Gregory Panaccione (A SEA OF LOVE) is an animation industry storyboard artist turned graphic novelist, and his expert pacing and cinematic eye give this heartwarming story a truly cinematic feature quality.

To help tie MY FRIEND TOBY to our Cruelty Prevention efforts, we will be making an independent donation to the Anti-Cruelty Society based on the campaign’s performance. Kickstarter doesn’t allow pledge funds to be used for charity, or to make it sound like any portion of raised funds will be used as such, but we’ve worked with Kickstarter Trust & Safety Committee to approve our initiative to make a completely independent private donation based on how well the campaign does.

So please consider backing MY FRIEND TOBY to not only get a wonderful graphic novel (or graphic novels, plural – we have several bundles with exclusive bonus items!), but to also help some needy animals find good homes in the process. 😊 

Thanks, everyone! We hope to see you there! ❤

International shipping update + a friendly reminder about HOLMES 😊
almost 2 years ago – Sat, Dec 17, 2022 at 03:01:47 AM

Hi everyone!

It has been several weeks since our last update, and for the most part, everything that was expected has occurred: all UK and EU ADRASTEA pledges have shipped (bundled with OGRE GODS and ARSENE LUPIN orders) as have most Asia orders. A handful of individual packages may still be making the final steps to some of the more remote locations, but for the most part, Spiral Galaxy and VFI have completed their part. If you are an EU, UK, or Asia backer and haven't received your package by now (or at the very least shipping/tracking notification), please message us here and we can look it up for you.

We were hoping we'd be able to say the same thing for the AU and NZ orders, but with the extra congestion of the holidays heaped on top of their perpetually loaded schedule, their first-week-of-December estimate has slipped a little bit. As of their last report (last week), they expect to pack and ship AU/NZ orders starting next week. We believe they should send out Address Verification messages to those backers first, but we have asked them to please confirm when those emails will go out so we can give you a heads-up. Hopefully, that will happen this weekend, but we'll let you know as soon as we have concrete information.

In the meantime, we haven't mentioned it here yet, but you may have seen it pop up in messages or recommendations from Kickstarter or Backerkit -- our SHERLOCK HOLMES campaign ends this Friday!

This is a new edition of the first Sherlock Holmes novel by Arthur Conan Doyle originally published in 1887, with brand new illustrations by the magnificent Vincent Mallie. It is a beautiful book, which we are offering on its own or as part of two campaign-exclusive limited editions: a special "Sleuth" bundle with a replica Key to Holmes’s infamous address on 221B Baker Street, a Magnifying Glass, a Pocket Journal, a gold foil bookmark, and other assorted artifacts collected inside a unique manila case folder, and a Deluxe Slipcase Set pairing this new book with a copy of Vincent Mallie's similarly illustrated edition of ARSENE LUPIN, GENTLEMAN THIEF!

Both of these exclusive editions will only be produced in limited quantities for this Kickstarter campaign, and they will not be available anywhere else. These will be gorgeous sets (we think we're getting better with each slipcase we produce) and there are less than 200 sets left! (And less than 2 days left to join!)

So please check it out if you haven't already... We'd love to end the year on a high note! 😃🎅🥳 Thanks, everyone!

Int'l shipping update
about 2 years ago – Tue, Nov 01, 2022 at 04:57:36 AM

Hi everyone,

We've received some news from Quartermaster regarding the International shipping hub status:

•  Spiral Galaxy (UK/EU orders): Address Verification Emails are expected to go out THIS FRIDAY, November 4th. Please watch for those emails from @spiralgalaxygames.co.uk!  Once those have gone out, you'll have 48-72 hours (over the weekend) to reply with any address changes. They will then start packing so that orders start shipping that following week!
•  Aetherworks (AU/NZ orders): The inventory has (finally) left Aetherworks's consolidation warehouse and is expected to reach their primary warehouse in Australia by November 19th. They anticipate fulfillment will likely begin the first week of December. 
•  VFI (Asia orders): Packing is complete, and we expect to have any available tracking information sometime this week.  It's possible that CN and HK backers might receive their orders late this week or early next week.

We want to thank all of our backers abroad for your support and patience. International shipping continues to be the most challenging part of this entire operation. There is that old business adage "Cheap, Fast, or Good -- pick two," but when it comes to shipping outside the US these days, it seems like we're lucky to get even one of those... Shipping rates continue to rise along with global inflation and gas prices, while increasing demand puts additional strain on the warehouses and shipping channels. We're doing everything we can to keep the costs and waiting time within reason, but the problems causing these challenges are much bigger than us...! Rest assured, things are moving and your stuff IS on the way. 😊 

If you are overseas and find yourself ordering a lot of stuff from the US or backing a lot of US-based campaigns like these, you might want to consider getting a US-based Parcel Forwarding Address through one of many services available online. That way, you can have your pledge orders shipped to a US address, which is much cheaper and 6-8 weeks faster. These services can then collect all of the items that arrive at that location and forward them to you in a single shipment. (Granted, that single shipment may still be a little expensive, but certainly cheaper than having multiple individual orders shipped to you separately...)

Here's a website we found with some services to look into: https://www.reviano.com/blog/best-parcel-forwarding-services.html

We aren't personally familiar with any of them, so we aren't advocating any of these services directly, but it is a good place to start your own research.

If anyone has any other links or services they would recommend, please feel free to share them in the comments below! 

(*PS: This update has been copy/pasted between OGRE GODS, ARSENE LUPIN, and ADRASTEA, as all three of those campaigns are shipping together.)

International Shipping Status
about 2 years ago – Tue, Sep 20, 2022 at 01:40:00 AM

Hi everyone!

Hope you are all doing well -- our apologies for lack of updates, particularly concerning International Shipping, as we've been waiting for confirmation on freight status from Quartermaster. Getting solid info and turnaround estimates has been a challenge lately as they and their regional warehouse partners (notably Spiral Galaxy for EU and UK orders and Aetherworks for AU and NZ orders) have all been overloaded and understaffed for quite some time now, which is by no means ideal, but it is the unfortunate situation we are having to push through. To complicate that, there was a late-discovered issue where an item was incorrectly packaged with one of the other campaigns shipping with this one, which Quartermaster had to quantify to make sure that the international copies of those bundles are correct... Believe me, we've been frustrated by these issues, too. Things seemed so much smoother and easier a year and a half ago...

As of this morning, I've been told that the inventory heading to Spiral Galaxy should be there by the end of this month. Assuming it arrives as expected, Spiral has booked a window to ship out the orders by the end of October/early November. We've asked what we can do to shorten that window, but it is entirely due to freight speed, customs clearance, and their own (over)loaded project queue.

The inventory to Aetherworks will reach their consolidation warehouse in California in the next week or so, but we are waiting on them to confirm when they will transfer that inventory to their hub in Australia. They tend to collect multiple projects at that warehouse, so it depends on when they feel they have a full load ready to go. At this point, however, those orders will likely share the same late-October/early November ship date.

This has indeed been an(other) exercise in patience, not just for our overseas supporters, but for us as a publishing company trying to fulfill projects as quickly and easily as possible. Our offer to bundle multiple campaigns to ship together may have been made with the best intention of reducing shipping costs for you, the customers, but it has in turn introduced a lot of additional complications and delays to each of those individual campaigns. Combining hundreds of orders over several months with unique combinations of several dozen different items -- many of which are heavy books -- requires a lot more diligence and time to pack properly (which has been an ongoing topic of conversation lately). We're taking all of these recent lessons to heart so that our upcoming projects can ship confidently as we move ahead. Will it mean fewer campaign-bundling opportunities? Perhaps, but we do want to do what we can to fight the rising cost of postage overseas. We hope you will stick with us as supporters while we fight this together...

Are there viable alternative solutions for international shipping to consider? Shipping individual packages directly from the US is not financially viable as postage rates for a single 5+ lb package start at $60 and go up very quickly.  And books are heavy. The only way to reduce the individual order cost is to consolidate them into regional freight groups through forwarding warehouses, which is what we're doing, but that is taking a lot longer than it used to. So we're faced with only two options: SLOW or EXPENSIVE, and neither of those are satisfactory. It's not enough to simply blame COVID (although that is still a factor) -- everything else about shipping and fulfillment has become staggeringly and increasingly slow over the past 2 years, and as much as we continue to look for options, every alternate solution we explore seems to face the same set of challenges. It is systematic gridlock worldwide, and we feel helpless.

That said, things ARE moving, albeit slowly, and we are committed to seeing them through! If any supporters abroad have any suggestions, we are open to all input! 😊