Way Back Home

I hope at least some of you started humming the legendary tune by Bob Crosby and the Bobcats when you saw the title. If you’ve been following our Odyssey (Homer’s, not Clarke’s), the implication is clear—we’re heading home, or rather, back to our HQ.

It’s taking some time to (carefully) move everything, but fortunately, unlike Odysseus, it won’t take us ten years to get there. In fact, we might be fully moved by the end of March. There will still be plenty of work to do, but the renovations will continue around us, and we’ll finally have a space of our own—not to mention enough of it.

Letterpress Printing of 2001: A Space Odyssey—Complete!

The letterpress printing of 2001: A Space Odyssey is officially done! The Monolith Edition (RNE) was the final one to receive its splash of color—two, in fact: purple and silver accents.

The Essential (Cave), Numbered (Tycho), and Lettered (HAL) editions are now packed and have been handed over to our partner for folding, assembling, and sewing. Meanwhile, our team is steadily working on cases and covers, while I prepare to begin giclée printing for the illustrations in the Lettered and RNE editions.

The only missing piece is the leather for Tycho. Our supplier had to redo part of the batch to ensure a perfect color match, but the shipment should be on its way any day now.

Shipping Plans & What’s Next

I’m hopeful that none of this will impact delivery too much. Just as with Catch-22, we’ll start shipping 2001: A Space Odyssey as soon as copies are completed. Since production is done in batches, it will take some time to get them all out, but we’ll get there. I truly believe this will be our most extraordinary production to date.

At the same time, we’re entering pre-production for The Hound of the Baskervilles while also developing a completely new title. As mentioned in a previous update, our goal is to produce the next book in advance, meaning it will be ready to ship upon announcement. This will become our new standard practice, even for upcoming Sherlock titles—except for the Essential Editions, which will still require preorders.

Sherlock’s Essential Editions & Preorders

As most of you know, we’ve decided to continue offering Essential Editions for the Sherlock series. However, they will only be produced in numbers supported by preorders. This means that preorders for The Hound of the Baskervilles—Essential Edition will remain open until we enter full-scale production. At that point, we’ll lock the limitation based on the final preorder count, since the limitation number must be printed inside the book.

This process will apply to all Sherlock Essential Editions moving forward, unless demand increases to a level where we can produce them in larger quantities.

Bringing More Production In-House

The Hound of the Baskervilles will feature even more in-house production, as our team will fold and sew the pages in our newly renovated space. This will further reduce production time while eliminating the risk of transporting valuable stacks of letterpress-printed pages.

We are reaching a point where we will be nearly fully integrated, capable of producing almost the entire book in-house—except for a few specialty services.

A Bigger Spotlight on the Team & Behind-the-Scenes Content

This year, I plan to put a stronger focus on introducing our team and showcasing their incredible achievements along the way. We’re also working on increasing behind-the-scenes content, including more making-of videos. To take this to the next level, we plan to bring on a new team member whose sole purpose will be documenting the production process and sharing it with you. All of this will become possible once we’re fully settled back into our HQ.

Live Session & A Few Announcements

There are many more surprises in store for this year, but for now, I’m keeping most of them under wraps. However, to make things more interesting, I’m planning to do a Facebook & YouTube Live session soon (with proper sound this time!). I’ll share some exciting news and updates, show you around our work-in-progress HQ, as well as answer any questions you may have. It’s been a while since we’ve had a live session, so I’m really looking forward to it!

I’m aiming for the first half of April—stay tuned!