Digital Book Proofs and Other Updates!
Hi everyone! Apologies for the lack of a new page this week, but the ever-present march of the holidays is keeping us pretty well and locked into an “every other week” sort of rhythm. Fortunately, we’re coming up to the actual “holiday” itself in the coming weeks, so we’re looking forward to Rachel’s work hours getting back to a reasonable rate, and my own work requirements evening out a bit (though I know January is going to be a little busy for me).
So, you’re probably wondering what that graphic is in the header image area! Well, let me share a little story with you about printing physical books:
If you open up a hardcover book and take a look at the inside cover, you might notice that there’s a special patterned paper and a blank page or two before you get to the good stuff. Those are called endsheets (also known as endpapers or endleaves) and they’re an important structural element for the book. Some printers require it to be blank, others are ambivalent. PrintNinja lets you print whatever you want on there, so Rachel did up a nice leaf pattern.
So, are the digital proofs approved? MOSTLY.
There was some back and forth on the output (RGB works with digital files, but we needed to make sure the pages were exporting correctly into CMYK, which is used for printing), the placement of the UPC barcode, getting the necessary special files in place for the special edition cover’s foil and gloss–all that good stuff! But after a few back-and-forths, we’re hopefully just one last APPROVE button away from going into production. The next step will be physical proofs, which will be mailed directly to Rachel to make sure they’re hitting our desired specifications for things like page material, how the matte pages look, things like that.
So that’s the latest on what’s going on! No updates yet on the pins or any other bits of physical merchandise (though they are in production and we’re looking forward to seeing how they turn out). Once we have news, we’ll post it up here and via Kickstarter updates!
Just to remind folks, our BackerKit Preorder Store is still live and accepting orders! If you’re interested in snapping up a copy of the book (standard and limited are both still available), pins, the prints, etc, it’s all still up and available right here:
You’re doing a great work. I discoverd western deep world few days ago and i love it. I can’t wait for the next page. I really happy for the message then your world will develop. Now i have only one petition to you and Rachel. Can you make more pages? I thinking about 2 or 3 pages per week because story will be moved forward faster. I love this world and it’s boring to wait for a new page whole week. This world is the one of the best world which i ever seen (Game of thrones, Sunlight archives, witcher). I would like to seen what will be happen with Quin and Dak. I’d like to seen more cadian/erhmen friendship and of course what is going with hardin and Dak father. I hope the world will be evolve and now you’ve new fan which waiting for the next page. Sorry for the mistakes. I stil learning Englisch language. Greetings from Poland
Hi Kryket! Thanks for the comment, and we’re so happy that you’re enjoying the comic! Being compared favorably to Game of the Thrones and The Witcher is certainly enough to brighten my day :)
Much as we’d love to do multiple pages per week, both I and (perhaps most importantly) Rachel have day jobs that prevent us from doing so. Creating a comic like Beyond the Western deep is a lot of work as I’m sure you can imagine, and it requires a lot of time per page to produce. Time, unfortunately, that can get pretty valuable during peak work months like this time of year. Believe me, we’re just as interested in continuing the story as you are, and we’re very excited to show where it goes. But, at least for the moment, creating the comic isn’t either Rachel’s or my full time job. We hope that perhaps someday it can be, but we’re still a ways off from that.
Also, a quick note–we use a comment moderation plugin to make sure spam isn’t getting posted on the website. Usually whenever a new user comments or somebody comments multiple times with similar posts, it will flag that account and send it to us for review before it appears on the website. That’s why your comment didn’t show up right away :)
https://www.instagram.com/p/BrJF3Oensu3/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=1xivlakbtf61d
These are lovely, Cameron! If you’d like, we’d love if you emailed these images to thewesterndeep(at)gmail.com so we could feature them on an upcoming page :)
I’m still working on other characters
And glad u liked them Elson says Hi cause I was drawing while watching his stream
https://www.instagram.com/p/BrKIbr-HIbw/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=xugqvznjzfao
I have to ask: how do you select your names? Or in the other case: how do you create them? I always have trouble with that when it comes to writing. I like your comic by the way, greetings from Mexico.
Hey, E! I cannot speak for Alex and Rachel, but as someone who’s written stories of my own with huge casts, let me share a tip on this. For many years I’ve worked at various jobs which involved daily access to databases of clients, prospects and so forth, and I am always on the lookout for anything that I feel would make a good character name. It could be from a person’s actual name, or from a street or city name, or even from an email. Good names are all over the place, if you just look for them!
That reminds me of something that a writer said: ideas are there, you just have to search, remember and use them. Thanks
I found the comic two weeks ago and I enjoy it a lot. When will the new pages come?
Hi Pegas! Thanks so much for reading the comic! Rachel is cranking away on the next page as I type this, and it’ll hopefully be up soon. Normally the pages come once a week (hence the “Updates Saturdays!” in our banner header), but the holiday season has proven to be a particularly crazy time for her day job, and so we’ve had to slow the update schedule during those periods the last many years.
I see. Thanks for replying ^^ I really wonder how things will turn out