Publishing Deadlines

For those of you following the website, you may note we’ve picked up a new talent – Anthony Kallas. Like so many personalities we meet at conventions, Anthony was an avid gamer. Unlike many, he was also an established author. He expressed a keen interest in the Tortured Earth multiverse and was anxious to contribute to it.

Surprisingly, he produced a module in short order. Kevin and I were able to reliably promise to have the module edited and ready for publication by the beginning of March. We put in the hours to edit the module and made sure it conformed the to Tortured Earth universe.

I present this background to set the stage for the establishment of realistic expectations. The issue with publishing is this: the publisher. We use Ingram Spark as our printing agency. The company is reliable, produces quality products, and has print houses worldwide. The downside of the company is the process one must undergo to actually see their product in print.

Modules and game guides are graphics heavy productions. The graphic formatting on these productions is labor intensive and time consuming. Despite our best efforts, formatting the documents to fit into the Ingram Spark autochecker is hellish. All documents must conform to the AI’s specifications before it actually goes to the human evaluators. Once in their delicate hands, you are notified of one problem at a time. Each time you upload the corrected document, you get a nastigram a couple of days later notifying you of the newest error. And so the process goes until all errors are corrected and ready for print.

Dark Origins completed editing and formatting on the March 1^st. It was finally approved for print on April 30^th. The process is aggravating and tedious. However, with all the aggravation behind us, we now have a product ready for world distribution.

Why is this relevant? For those of you reading this who want a wider distribution for your publication, keep in mind the need for scheduling. On this project, Anthony wanted to send out press releases back in March letting people know of the upcoming module. We had to constantly say, “Wait”. The reason is the approval process is extensive. If the releases are sent out too early, we stood a chance of building excitement and losing interest as we failed to deliver. Now that there is an actual product available, we can promote and deliver.

I have found it is better to remain quiet on a production, develop it fully, then announce the finished product than it is to continually hype an upcoming product. Potential customers may create a flurry of interest at the beginning but lose interest as the timeline drags on. Making announcements on a projected date is equally risky because of their potential to fail or become prolonged. Failing to deliver on a specific deadline is not only disappointing but can generate disinterest in an audience.

Now that Dark Origins is available, we can focus on its promotion with certainty and move onto new projects. The project has given us a better understanding of how we want our product to be presented in the market and define how our company separates from other TTRPG companies. The most recent development has been to pull the world setting portion of the module out of the campaign and present it on the website as a free-to-play module. 

The reasoning behind this move is both to provide new material for public review and give GMs a chance to experience the world setting to determine if they are willing to commit to purchasing the final product. The free-to-play modules also serve to give innovative GMs a launching platform to create their own adventures using the world setting as a staging area. With any luck, we’ll attract a few new writers.

As always, thank you for reading.

K. B. Kidder

www.torturedearth.com for more information about our game.

Dark Origins can be found by clicking the link.