Shamelessly stealing the movie title and for a very simple reason—it is sure getting crowded here at Amaranthine Books. The last couple of months have been pretty busy, but we even managed to get a little bit of vacation time so we could properly focus in this upcoming period. I know we’ve been too silent with the updates, at least for my taste, but the reason is quite simple—big things are happening!
Shipping Essentials
There is one thing that we did not consider when we introduced the Essential Edition with Sherlock Holmes. A quite simple thing but, oh, so easy to overlook in all the letterpress excitement. It was the fact that the amount of books that we will need to ship is going to be almost three times bigger than our previous runs!
It is a lot of work, but it is also extremely satisfying finally getting the Essentials shipped. Detective Edition and Clue Edition will follow closely behind, we just need to clear some space before we can accomodate so many books in our relatively tiny office. Hopefully, we’ll have a lot more space in a few months, but you can read more on that below.
What’s important now is that we’re thinking of doing something extra special for Detective and Clue Edition. You will receive an email soon and it will be similar to all our other emails we send before shipping the book—primarily checking whether you have changed your delivery address—but it will contain a query as well, so be on a lookout for that.
Where’s the Catch?
We are still testing papers, but so far nothing has come close to Hahnemühle, especially since we can customise it to our needs. In the following weeks we’ll order the paper and start printing, while we carefully prepare the boards and the cases. While we’re still aiming to have it ready by the end of this year, the holiday season may interfere as our partners are fully booked in that period. We’ll do everything that we can to stick to the deadline, but we don’t want to rush things either, especially with such a large volume.
There are many planned upgrades for Catch-22, some of them you’ll see even with Clue Edition of Sherlock Holmes. Many more are planned as we expand our production, but it will take time to get there. What I can promise, though, is that our books are just going to keep getting better.
Upgrades!
I’ve mentioned a couple of times before that we are about to renovate our headquarters which will also contain in-house production. As with all things related to construction, there have been hurdles, but we’re slowly getting there. The blueprints are almost in their final version, but there are a couple of things we have to take care of before the renovations can officially begin. One of them is moving all of us to a temporary office/production space so we don’t get in the way of the renovations. However, we want to ship all editions Sherlock first, because moving the books too many times is not something any of us is keen on doing. But that’s why we always say—slow and steady, wins the spaghetti.
As we expand our production, we will also need more people. We have been interviewing a lot of folks these past few months and have agreed to hire most of them once we’re ready. The final number is still undetermined, but let’s say that expanded office and production will be very much needed.
Our new office is not something that we’re doing just for the sake of functionality. Sure, it will be great to have almost full production possibilities at our disposal, but that space also has to reflect us and our way of doing things. Therefore, it will not be merely a production space, but also a creative one, as well. Even better, it will be a place that you can visit, should you ever find yourself nearby. That means that all our customers, whether they bought one or all of our books, will have a free tour of the place. You’ll just need to let us know when you’ll drop by and that’s it!
Once the demolition and construction begins, there will be a lot of pictures and updates to share, but I can’t wait to share the final result. I dare to say it will be an office like no other.
Space, the Final Frontier
But there’s also 2001: A Space Odyssey, right? Don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten it. We’re just going back and forth over the contract and these things take time. We’ve done a lot of prototyping and there is still a lot more to do before we’re ready to announce it. Combine that with everything else that’s been happening and you get a pretty busy schedule.
The prototypes we’ve done so far are pretty great and I believe this might end up being our best title yet. I can’t reveal more, not right now, but rest assured, we’re working on it.
