Hello everyone! Sorry it’s been quieter than usual on the newsletter and facebook, and I know you all know the reasons why, so thanks for your patience!
So I’ve been waist deep over the last couple of months making some bloody books. Luckily I love making books, and if I’m ever a bit quiet it means that I’m throwing literally everything into my titles – so it’s for a good cause!
Right it’s been a crazy couple of months, but really productive. We’re close to shipping out all our copies of Hyperion (which has taken longer than I had said, so apologies about that), and Lettered is due immediately after too. The Roman Numerals are also well on the way and will follow shortly after the Lettered Edition.
We also started early rights holder pre-orders for The Fall of Hyperion, and we really appreciate the trust put in us, as a lot of you ordered without having Hyperion in hand. We did move back the public pre-sale for this reason, but I still thought it would help out some collectors if I opened the window in September to spread out payments for our titles. This won’t happen again, I promise.
There are two public sales in November coming, unclaimed copies of The Fall of Hyperion, and then the full release of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. THGttG is our latest new series/IP release so Publishers Rights holders of Lettered and Deluxe numbers 1-150 will be able purchase their copies before the public pre-order.
More on the rest of our upcoming books below:
Hyperion
I’m sure you’re all well aware it’s currently shipping at the moment, so owners of this series, thanks for your patience! It’s a wonderful edition inside and out in our opinion, and Jaime Jones art has absolutely elevated it.
Over 200 of the Deluxe have gone out, with more going every day. They should all be in transit by Tuesday/Wednesday next week. The Lettered are then to follow. We won’t be doing the Lettered lottery for The Fall of Hyperion until the Lettered Hyperion reaches their owners.
Anyone interested in putting their name forward for any available Lettered “The Fall of Hyperion” copies please send an email to support@curiousking.co.uk with the subject “TFoH Lettered Lottery Application”.
Here are some beautiful images of the Hyperion Deluxe taken by Nick Godsell @realm.rhythms on instagram!
Before They are Hanged
Very close to finishing the printing on this one. Pat and Ellen at Nomad Letterpress have done a great job, and the second colour is going on now for the 50 or so chapters/title pages. Having so many second colour pages is incredibly costly in the current climate, but there was no way I was going to make any changes for the remaining books in the trilogy.
As soon as they’ve finished printing (mid-November) then it’s off to Ludlow Bookbinders to start the binding process! The art was handed in some time ago, so we have no delays in preparing the bookblocks.
I don’t think these will make Christmas for shipping if we get the pages in a couple of weeks, so looks likely for January. Luckily Last Argument of Kings starts printing the second BTAH has finished, so we’re ahead of schedule on that one!
Also making a couple of small tweaks to the Lettered BTAH. Nothing major, but a little something.
Legend
Moving along nicely, but behind our earlier shipping estimates sadly. The interiors have been ready for a few weeks now, fully proofed and awaiting printing. We’re using Phil and Robert from Hand & Eye on this edition and they will start printing in December as they’re doing some major improvements to their studio during the month of November.
We’re anticipating the completed pages at the bindery by the end of Q1 2025 for Ludlow to work their magic!
Regarding art, Justin Sweet completed all the B&W images and is working on the remaining colour pieces. We’re hoping the colours should be ready for binding and will keep you all informed each month as usual.
Both Stella Graham and Mark Lawrence have turned in their contributions in the form of an introduction and an afterword. Which are great reads! They will also be signing the editions.
Fall of Hyperion
We took the difficult decision to extend the rights-holder period to November 5th to get all copies out to Hyperion customers, and we are hyper-aware that this is quite close to our Hitchhikers Guide release. It looks like there may be a few in transit when this pre-order is planned – so if there are any collectors waiting to purchase their copy after receiving Hyperion in hand, then please send me an email at info@curiousking.co.uk and we can come up with a sensible solution.
Following on from Hyperion we used a different blue for TFoH, and we’ll use a different colour entirely for Endymion and The Rise of Endymion (but again, two different shades). The Hyperion Cantos feels like two linked duologies, so that works out nicely.
Rather embarrassingly a few eagle-eyed collectors noticed that we missed out the “The” from the books title. That’s completely my fault, and despite reading it several times, working with the publisher and authors agent, it never actually came up. I will absolutely be making the relevant changes to the binding design, as there is no way it’s going out with a shortened version of the name. Sometimes you just can’t see the wood for the trees…
Also worth mentioning the prototype Deluxe in the pictures is using an off the shelf leather with the colour we wanted. This has also left the blind embossing on it a little faint. Worry not, we will be putting in a custom order of the right type of leather we used for Hyperion Deluxe. So the production version should also have a nice depth of blind stamping. I really need to mention how much testing we went through to finally get the finish we wanted on Hyperion and requires a very precise process to get right.
Jaime Jones as usual is putting out fantastic work, and I’m in the process of laying out the interiors with his awesome artwork. There are a lot more chapters in this book than the first, which means it’s going to be a lot more expensive to print. Having said that, we have tried to bring our prices down despite costs going up. We appreciate it’s tough out there for most people in the current inflationary climate and are trying to do our bit for collectors.
Shipping pencilled in for Summer 2025 currently!
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Oh we’re getting close to this one! I’m incredibly excited about this release as it’s one of my all time favourite books and a quintessentially British wry and witty take on Sci-Fi. The big news on this one is that we are doing two different colours of the Standard Edition – 375 of each colour. We will also be allowing people to purchase both colours on the public sale should they want to. As we’ve increased the number of them, we’re confident that as long as people are fairly prompt around the public pre-order they should get one.
We’ve been tinkering with the prototypes for some time now so they’re as good as they can be. Eagle-eyed followers on our social media platforms may have also seen a couple of teaser shots of the Standard(s) and the Deluxe Edition, and the Lettered sneak is also below! We’ve really pushed the boat out for each tier of these editions whilst still planning to keep the price as low as possible.
Gary Gianni is nearly finished with the artwork, and it’s absolutely phenomenal. He is the perfect match for this story, and he has even exceeded my hopes. We should have over 30 B&W illustrations and 16 colour pieces over 270 pages.
We’ll be releasing the images of the prototypes ahead of the full production detail release this time. So look out for them on our socials following TFoH public pre-order!
Currently we have the full production detail release scheduled for November 15th 20:00 GMT with the public pre-sale pencilled in for November 26th 20:00 GMT. I will be able to confirm for definite end of next week, but don’t expect any hiccups.
Don’t Panic guys, it’s coming!
