Grandmother Fish: a child’s first book of Evolution

Books are here
over 9 years ago – Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 10:13:54 PM

The books have arrived, over a ton altogether! Most of the copies are in my garage, and the rest are in my living room waiting to be packed, stamped and shipped. It’s going to be a big project, but luckily I’ve got Karen and Jeff to help me, and maybe a friend from Victoria.

I’ve looked over the books page by page, and they look pretty much perfect. Karen’s color comes across great. So far no embarrassing typos. Honestly, Grandmother Fish turned out better than I ever imagined.

Eventually I’ll send out review copies and put the books up for sale on Amazon, but the first priority is fulfilling Kickstarter orders. The first people to get copies of Grandmother Fish have been the nonprofits to whom the backers donated books. The printer was kind enough to directly ship out over 130 copies to five nonprofits. They started getting their books before I got mine.

I’ll update you as the fulfillment process moves along. I’ve never done a mass shipment like this before so bear with me.

—Jonathan

Grandmother Fish in September
over 9 years ago – Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 09:50:07 PM

Bang Printing has issued me their invoice with the final count of books printed and costs for shipping. My check is in the mail. I've arranged to receive the shipment Monday, August 31st (maybe Friday the 28th). By then, we'll have all the stickers, bookmarks, prints and matchbooks packed and ready to go, and we'll stuff 1200 copies of Grandmother Fish into boxes and envelopes for the backers. I've told the people at Bang that I understand why their process was delayed, and I hope you can continue to be patient as well.

—Jonathan

First copies of Grandmother Fish in hand
over 9 years ago – Fri, Aug 14, 2015 at 01:34:22 PM

The good people at Bang Printing overnighted me two copies of Grandmother Fish, and I can confirm that they look great.

They should be done printing by Monday. Then we'll receive them and start sending out copies to backers. The wait is almost over.

—Jonathan

Grandmother Fish stickers are done
over 9 years ago – Thu, Aug 13, 2015 at 02:56:37 PM

Karen’s beautiful stickers are done. We were able to find a local printer, Alphagraphics, that could do the custom stickers that we needed. The sheet has all five Grandmothers and plenty of cousins. It even includes one animal that is not descended from Grandmother Fish. See if your children can find it. Once they do, can they find this animal on the family tree in the book?

Sticker sheets were a stretch goal, and they were available to backers as add-ons. Limited quantities of sticker and bookmark sets are also available for preorder (http://bit.ly/gf-store).

As for the hardback, it is scheduled to be printed Monday.

—Jonathan

Grandmother Fish August Update
over 9 years ago – Mon, Aug 10, 2015 at 06:14:20 PM

I spoke with my contact at Bang Printing, and he says that they are backed up and that Grandmother Fish is delayed a couple weeks. He hasn't given me a date to expect the book to be finished, but I wanted to let you know what I know while we all wait for the book to be done. The pages and covers are printed, and they'll put the covers on soon. The bottleneck is packing the books into cartons. Bang does a lot of printing for roleplaying games, and they had a surge of projects due for the Gen Con game fair earlier in August. Now they are working through their backlog, and Grandmother Fish is waiting its turn to go through the bottleneck at the end of the process. Originally they thought the books would be done August 3rd, so they're already one week behind. So far, they haven't given me a date to expect the books to be finished, but my guess is mid-August.

Delays are common in publishing, so I'm taking the news in stride. I hope you can all continue to be patient. I'll let you know as I learn more.

-Jonathan