Hey everyone!
So it's been quite a ride for Megastructures, the Visual Encyclopedia! The book got 1500 copies printed after a wildly successful Kickstarter, it managed to ship during a world wide pandemic and supply chain craziness, and last week the final few copies were sold on my gumroad store, which are now on their way to those last buyers.
So the question I'm most asked is will there be a second printing? So the short answer is yes, but not now.
The longer answer. First I am so happy that my little project has been received so well, and I'd love to do a second printing immediately. But right now the world of printing and shipping books is still in a very bad spot. For some reference, the price to print books of this sort has almost 2x since my first book in 2017. And the cost to ship books overseas is almost 3x what it was. As just a simple example, the cost of shipping a book to Australia is almost 2x the price of the book itself. So all of a sudden that $35 book is closer to $100. Covid really did break the world, and the covid lockdowns in China have not only made printing books erratic but costly. I assume the really big book publishers have found ways to deal with things, but for small book publishers like myself, the climate is all wrong.
So to make the economics work for both my US and international customers, we need to see the printing and shipping industry come back to earth. I'm hoping a year or two wait might be enough. And the plan is the moment I see the prices come back down, I'll do another kickstarter to fund the reprint of the book.
In the meantime, the digital version of the book, while maybe not as good as a book on the shelf, can be easily distributed and is available here for $15:
https://artofsoulburn.gumroad.com/l/qnntu
One final huge thank you to everyone who made this book such a success. Every nice email I got, every excited person I met at a comicon, thanks for making Megastructures: The Visual Encyclopedia such a hit. I hope to continue building on the project in the future, so follow me on social media to see any and all new developments. In the meantime, onto a better future to all humankind among the stars!
http://twitter.com/ArtOfSoulburn
http://www.facebook.com/ArtOfSoulburn
http://www.instagram.com/artofsoulburn/
http://www.artstation.com/artist/ArtOfSoulburn
http://www.youtube.com/artofsoulburn
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