The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter Update

So, with Age of Swords now released, I've been getting a lot of emails asking about the next Riyria book: The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter. Hopefully I'll be able to answer a lot of the questions here.

First off, one of the reasons I've been a bit quiet on this project is I had a publisher interested in the print and ebook rights and I wanted if I were to sign with them, the book would take one path, and if I self-published it'd go another another route. Well, we finally got that all figured out and the two of us couldn't come to a meeting of the minds (meaning they wanted rights I didn't want to give up). I'm a bit disappointed, but I do think it'll work out best in the long run. The Death of Dulgath has had a fabulous run and we'll be using the same model for The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter (for the most part).

Okay, so let's get into some of the nitty gritty about his release.

• Release date: December 5th, 2017 - Just 3 months from now!
• Alpha reading & Beta reading pretty much took up all of July and August. I've incorporated all the changes from both groups, which has made significant improvement and both I and Robin are really pleased with how the final story wrapped up.
• As of September 4th, the book is in the hands of the copy editors (Linda Branam and Laura Jorstad). I've worked with both of these amazing women in the past on multiple projects (Hollow World, Death of Dulgath, Age of Myth, Age of Swords) and they have assured me they can work their magic by early October.
• That'll give us 2 weeks to approve/reject the copy edits and do a final reading of the entire book. Tight, but should be doable.
• Recording of the audio book and production of the ebook and print editions will start mid-October. Tim Gerard Reynolds will, of course, be doing the narration. And Robin and I will be going to New York/New Jersey for the recording. The hope is to get the book on the presses by end of October.

Yes, we will be doing a Kickstarter for this, the plan is for it to launch October 1 and it'll probably run for 3 weeks. At that time the book will already be done...so what is the Kickstarter for?  Well, it's for hardcover editions: Rare, Limited Edition, Regular Hardcover, and Tradepaper paperbacks. If for some reason the Kickstarter doesn't fund, the book still comes out, there just won't be hardcover editions. I'm fairly confident that it'll fund though.

A Kickstarter also allows us to do some bonus stuff like signed books, bookmarks, and what not. And, under special arrangement with Audible we'll be able to include an audio option for the Kickstarter!! Which is really exciting. 

Also, people who participate in the Kickstarter can get the book 6 months before it's for sale through the retail markets. So that's going to be a real plus. The plan is for Kickstarter (or people who buy direct from our site) will get the book on December 5th and the book will be in B&N and Amazon come June 5th.

One thing we'll be doing, with this Kickstarter, however, is significantly reducing the "bonus add on" stuff. Robin got really excited last time and she kept adding all kinds of things: coffee mugs, bags, t-shirts, etc. The intention was a good one, but the reality is the shipping became a nightmare. We had hundreds of T-shirt skus when you took into consideration Men's and Women's, multiple colors and various sizes. 

We also will have "early bird specials" which means you can get some of the most popular pledge levels at a discounted price. You'll have to be quick, though. Last time the early birds ran out just a few hours of the launch of the Kickstarter. If you want to be notified when the Kickstarter goes live, here is a link to sign-up.

Well, I think that about covers things for now. We'll keep you posted as we get closer. I hope you're as excited about this as we are.