It’s June already?! How on earth did that happen? Time flies when you’re trying to get a fine-press publisher off the ground it seems. So where are we then? It’s been a pretty manic month for Curious King, we’ve been delivering The Fifth Season (not without a couple of issues sadly), we’ve been announcing future projects, and working hard on prototypes for David Gemmell’s “Legend”.
Where are we? Well read on to find out:
The Fifth Season
We’ve nearly finished shipping! We’ve shipped all the Standard, Deluxe and all but one of the Lettered Editions out to a wonderful response. We did have an issue unfortunately on what looks like 15 Deluxe Editions regarding creasing on two of the tipped in illustrations. This was dealt with swiftly with the bindery arranging for collection and rectification of the issue, and following this the bindery are putting in new measures in place so these things are caught going forward!
There are just the Roman Numeral Editions to go out now, and we can say good night to The Fifth Season. As mentioned we will be pushing back the pre-order of Obelisk Gate to 2025 due to scheduling with our artist John Anthony di Giovanni. We have still started the process of designing and developing the prototypes of the books, so will be able to share teasers later this year/early next year.
We will be putting up remaining Standard/Deluxe Editions on the website on Wednesday 26th of June at 20:00BST, so keep an eye out for that.
A few images of The Fifth Season owners receiving their new books!
Hyperion
We’re into the last few weeks of printing now, and this will go straight to the bindery! I’m visiting the letterpress printer next week to see how things are coming on and take some footage for social media. The proofs for the interiors and endpapers are already done and they look wonderful, Jaime Jones did a knock out job on this one.
I visited Ludlow Bookbinders last week for a few bits and saw a very promising Deluxe case with a strong blind stamping of the labyrinth design. We’re having a full case with stamping made up to see whether we need to change any of the other foil stamp colours as the blue leather is darker than the original. We should be able to update you with an updated image of the prototype in the near future.
Still aiming for late summer shipping on this one, so not too long to wait now!
Before They are Hanged
Art is well underway for this one now. Vance Kovacs has done some amazing work on the interiors so far, and I’m very excited to start sharing some of the finished images soon. We’ve picked some cool scenes from the book and really feel they fit in with Tommy Arnold’s work on The Blade Itself!
Platemaking is well underway and should have them ready for printing late Summer. Nomad Letterpress are well prepared for this one, and as mentioned this is being done alongside Last Argument of Kings. Our plan is still to bind and ship before the end of the year!
Legend
The pre-order for this is imminent! We’ve been furiously testing for the prototypes recently, and the good news is some of them are ready with the others hot on their heels.
Our current plan is to release details of the production on July 3rd 2024 at 20:00 BST. This should have the full release of all three tiers and hopefully the dustjacket art from Justin Sweet. Our plan then would be to do the public pre-order for July 14th 2024 at 20:00 BST. This would encapsulate all 500 Standard Editions, and at least 50 Deluxe Editions, and any Lettered/Deluxe copies that were not taken up by rights holders. I will be confirming this early next week. As with other productions we will be contacting rights holders following the announcement to take up their books prior to public pre-order.
We already have the prototype of the Standard Edition finished, and we’re actually very pleased with it and think it will go down well. The early tests on the Deluxe and Lettered Edition are also looking very promising too.
So put it in your diary for now, we’ll update you next week if this needs to change. As mentioned previously we are looking to do 26 Lettered, 200 Deluxe and 500 Standard. I like to think the editions are a nice balance of classic and contemporary binding.
We’re very excited about this one and will be naming it the 40th anniversary edition should printing happen on schedule. I’m not quite sure how I would feel if it finally shipped in January/February 2025 as this would be the 41st year. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts?
