Age of Legend Progress Report

Hey all, Robin here. As Michael promised I'm here to give an update on where we are with Age of Legend with regard to deadlines.

• The beta read started January 16th with 21 people participating. We already have 5 people done and Michael has incorporated a number of changes based on feedback that came in. Feedback was originally due by February 17th, but I ended up sending out the beta in 4 parts (a trip to Michigan got in the way of me doing some "stitching" between edits of mine and changes from Michale, so we'll be extending that a little.
• While the beta readers are going through the book, Michael and I have been working on line edits. I do the first pass, send it to him. He does some changes of his own (sometimes reverting my changes) and it comes back to me. For any sentences we disagree on -- we duke it out. Seriously we've spent 20 minutes on a single sentence sometimes going through multiple versions, and rewrites. 70% of the book is done and we're hoping to have the line edits finished by February 3rd (which will include all the beta changes that we've received by then).  At which point we'll be formatting and printing ARC copies.
• Both copyeditors (Laura Jorstad and Linda Branam are standing by. Laura will get hers February 5th, and additional beta changes will be sent in a highlighted version on the 25th. She HAS to have her copy editing pass done by March 2nd because we start recording on the 4th!
• Yep, March 4th to the 8th we'll be in New York recording with Tim - always a highlight of a book's production process. This date was "set" ages ago as studios and narrators get booked up, so this has been the "unmovable deadline and the book has to be finished. That said, sometimes in the studio, there are are some minor corrections made.  For instance, sometimes Tim will read a piece of dialog "wrong" but it is exactly the way it "should" have been written, so we make the change to the master document.  So in that way, the recording dictates the print rather than the other way around.

• Linda and the gamma readers will get their copies right after the studio recording. At this stage, there is mostly just commas being addressed or typos that were read correctly but are wrong in the manuscript. Ideally, this would happen BEFORE recording but the schedule just doesn't allow for it this time around.  If anything big comes up (that for instance needs a new paragraph or a greatly changed paragraph, we can always have Tim re-record that area.  He'll have to do re-records anyway because sometimes there are things that we all missed when in the studio, and so there are always retakes that happen post-recording.

• Book layout will start while the Gamma readers and Linda are doing their work, and then we'll "drop in" the final manuscript which, (given the changes are minor) won't change page flow. Once the book is in the final layout it has to be proofed to make sure there wasn't some unintentional page breaks or bad reflows.
• Once the book is done being proofed and it is 100% locked down. We can get select and schedule the printer. It usually takes 4 - 6 weeks to print and it might have to wait a few weeks for the press. So that means they should be ready by mid to late May. Once they get to Ingram's warehouse the various retailers (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc) need to get them into their warehouses and that can take another 2 - 3 weeks.

Now, for those that don't know.  There will be a Kickstarter for this book so people can get copies before anyone else and their printed copies will be signed. I'll probably launch the Kickstarter in early March for 3 weeks. And we'll make an announcement here before it goes live (because there are limited numbers of units sold at "early bird" pricing where people who sign up fast get a discount. All levels include an ebook version, and Kickstarter backers will get theirs as soon as the book is proofed and locked down. We'll start shipping the physical books to the Kickstarters the second they get off the presses, which should mean people will get them at least a month before the rest of the world.  

For people who want the book but don't like Kickstarters, pre-order pages are already posted. If you are looking to get the hardcover anyway, please purchase now. You can be assured that if the price drops (which it will if the book is seeing lots of orders) you'll be charged the lowest price after your pre-order was made. Pre-ordering will help us (a) get greater interest from the retailers so they will promote the book more and (b) help determine the size of the print run.

So, as you can see we're pretty busy over here and the deadlines are tight. I know for you all, it seems like July is a million miles away, but for us, we already feel like we are at least 2 months behind!