Quick Update on Cytoverse and Tress
over 1 year ago – Tue, Mar 07, 2023 at 11:05:48 AM

Hello everyone! We are trying to be careful of sending you too many emails, but Isaac discussed some of the printing delays on Brandon's YouTube today and we thought you all would appreciate more details from him. Please watch the video linked below if you are interested. As a reminder, we will send another update as soon as we have received the next truckload of Tress from the bindery.

Also, we have officially printed and labeled all the Cytoverse swag boxes! The post office can only take so many pallets per day, so we still have some pallets waiting to go to USPS, but (if you backed at a Year of Sanderson tier) you should have received a tracking number from [email protected], even if it hasn't updated yet. Thanks again to each and every one of you for your amazing support!

Our March Box is Shipping! + Tress Update
over 1 year ago – Mon, Feb 27, 2023 at 01:46:14 PM

Happy (Almost) March!

This is a quick note to let everyone know that the March Cytoverse themed swag box begins shipping today! Those of you who pledged to a Year of Sanderson tier or added the swag boxes to your pledge will have your swag box shipped out within the next couple weeks. Watch your email for a shipping notification from [email protected].

Tress Premium Hardcover Timeline 

We have only received two truckloads of this book, one on January 23rd and the second a week later on January 30th. We are still awaiting the third truckload so we can resume fulfillment, but we’ve been told that once the next truck is on its way, they will come in quick succession and no additional pause in fulfillment will occur. Our only limitation will be how quickly our team can pack the boxes and how many pallets our carriers are able to take in a single day. We will send an update again when the first of these truckloads arrive, but we do not yet know when that will be.

Secret Project #2 Timeline

Right now it looks like we will still receive Secret Project #2 in April, but we don’t have an exact date from the bindery. As a reminder, the ebook (for ALL backers) and audiobook (for applicable backers) will be delivered at midnight MDT on April 1st.

We appreciate your patience!

We know the waiting is difficult, especially when tens of thousands of copies have already been fulfilled and it seems like everyone else has already received theirs. We do see and hear your expressions of disappointment in not receiving your book yet. We are equally disappointed in not being able to get these to you sooner. No one has been forgotten, and everyone will receive your rewards. We apologize again for the continued delays and thank you for your patience!

Tress Fulfillment Update, No Expected Delays on Future Books
over 1 year ago – Wed, Feb 15, 2023 at 11:39:51 AM

Hello everyone! Many of you are asking about the remaining copies of Tress of the Emerald Sea and expressing concerns about future books from this campaign. Thank you for your patience while we worked on getting more concrete information from the printer. We just received an update from them, so see below for details, an updated infographic, and an announcement on extra Hoid box availability.

Tress Status

Our premium books are beautiful, intricate, and high quality. What they aren’t, however, is easy to produce. Sourcing and procuring cover material, pressing multiple intricate foil images, and binding in full-color artwork pages are just a few of the processes that can slow things down. The intricate foil stamping for Tress is taking longer than we anticipated. We are receiving the books in batches as they’re completed, and we are currently in a small pause waiting for the third truckload.

We have shipped out 25% of approximately 100,000 copies of Tress of the Emerald Sea. We estimate 6 more truckloads will be required to ship the remaining copies, and we will post a very brief update when our third truckload arrives and fulfillment resumes, including any new information on timelines we may have at that time. We know many of you are anxious to receive your copies, and we sincerely apologize for the wait. It will be worth it!

In the meantime, we have begun assembling the March swag box and are already nearly halfway complete! Follow our progress between updates here.

Future Premium Hardcover Fulfillment

Secret Project #2 is already printed. The cover pressing and foiling process—which is the most difficult part remaining—is already in progress, with final binding to follow. Our current information is that no delays are expected with this book. If this changes, we will let you know.

Secret Project #3 is currently being printed at a specialty printer capable of printing 4-color pages. We are told that this book’s progress is going very well and we should not have any delays. This book will be very colorful and we can’t wait for you to see it!

Secret Project #4 will probably go through one quick final draft from Brandon, as announced in his Feb 7th weekly update. Once complete, it will go through final editing and layout, and be off to the printer in early April. Further details are still pending.

New General Public Release: Hoid Themed Swag Box

Limited stock of the Hoid themed swag box will be available on DragonsteelBooks.com beginning February 22nd at 10am MST. If you missed out and would like to get this box, mark this release on your calendars!

Thank you!

Thank you for your patience. Thank you for your excitement. Thank you for sharing your unboxing videos, your feedback, and your enjoyment of Tress of the Emerald Sea (in all its formats) and the Hoid swag. And thank you, as always and ever, for the community and fandom that you make enjoyable for everyone!

Secret Project updates provided in above image

Quarter 1: All products designed, prototyped, and ordered. Most products fully received (still waiting on additional copies of Tress).

Quarter 2: All products designed and prototyped. All but one product ordered and around one-third have been received.

Quarter 3: Most products fully designed, and about half have been fully prototyped. Orders have been placed for a few products, and a couple are already at our warehouse!

Quarter 4: About half our products are fully designed, with prototyping complete or underway for those products. One or two have been ordered.

They're here!
over 1 year ago – Mon, Jan 23, 2023 at 12:36:16 PM

Tress has arrived!

Our first truckload of Tress of the Emerald Sea is finally here! Our fulfillment team will begin packing and shipping these immediately.

PLEASE BE PATIENT! It will take a little bit of time for us to ramp up fulfillment of this book. With the large numbers of backers, we expect that the process to pack and ship these to backers will take us at least a month, but likely more as we can only pack the books as fast as we receive trucks from the bindery. You will receive an email when your box ships, and we will post an update when we have completed shipments. 

We will fulfill the Quarterly Books - All Formats and Quarterly Books - Premium Hardcover reward tiers first. We will then fulfill applicable Year of Sanderson tiers, all BackerKit pre-orders, and add-on only pledges. Only once all those backer copies have shipped will we begin fulfilling pre-orders from the Dragonsteel Books store. We are thrilled to finally be able to ship these beautiful books!

All Hoid shipments sent!

Just in time for us to begin fulfillment on Tress, we completed shipping all Hoid themed swag boxes last week! Many of these boxes are still in transit, so please watch your tracking numbers before contacting us. Additionally, if you completed your backer survey after we shipped these boxes, we will do a catch up shipment at some point in the future, but cannot promise a timeframe.

Here are a few FAQs we recommend checking out before sending us a ticket about a missing package:

•  I was notified my shipment was delivered but I cannot find it. 
•  The tracking number shows that my package hasn't moved. Where is my package? 

A few more notes

To answer a few of the questions we have received:

• T-shirts: As stated in our December update, due to the size of this campaign and the logistics involved, we are unable to exchange t-shirt sizes for the Hoid box. For those concerned about the impact this will have on future shirts, we have great news! We have spent the past few months looking into another product for the Cosmere themed box—the only other box we had previously planned with a t-shirt. This product has us very excited, and we think you all will enjoy it. This product will replace the t-shirt and we will not require sizing requirements for any future shipments. (For those of you excited for a Cosmere shirt, don't worry! We still plan to design and produce one for the Dragonsteel store in the future.)
• Apple ID Email: Using an Apple ID login with "Hide my email" generates a unique email address for each site you use with an Apple login. Because of the way this system works, it will block all emails from an alternate domain—including the BackerKit pledge manager system we are using. If you use an Apple ID to log in to Kickstarter and have not received your backer survey or download links, please send us your preferred email address. We would like to send your rewards and Apple has been blocking our emails to you.
• Surveys: If you have not done so already, please complete your backer survey! Your digital rewards and tracking information will be provided through your survey. If you have difficulties accessing your survey, please see our article: How do I access my BackerKit backer survey? We cannot guarantee t-shirt size availability for late surveys who ordered the swag boxes, and may have to send you whatever is in stock once you have completed your survey. If surveys are filled out too late, we may no longer have rewards available.

Hoid's Hubris and Reward Fulfillment Timeline
over 1 year ago – Mon, Jan 09, 2023 at 09:13:38 AM

Oh, Hoid...

We all know Hoid has a high opinion of himself, and now we have more proof! Originally, our Hoid themed swag box was going to ship in March. Then Hoid worked his magic and switched to February. Now Hoid has struck again.

There have been new, minor delays with the production of the Secret Project #1 premium hardcover. Unfortunately this has delayed the book's arrival at our warehouse by an additional two weeks, so we've decided to ship your Hoid boxes early! These boxes will begin shipping immediately, and you can expect to receive your tracking number soon.

We still expect to begin shipping the January box before the end of the month, but much of our fulfillment will now stretch into February. We will post an update with more specific information as soon as the premium hardcovers have been received. 

In the meantime, just a reminder that you can watch our packing and shipping progress on our Secret Novel fulfillment progress page. And if you download our free printable, post your finished pages to @DragonsteelBooks with #tressoftheemeraldsea. We'd love to see them!

Digital Rewards

Speaking of January rewards, ebook and audiobook rewards for Tress of the Emerald Sea have released! Due to this release, we will be using the true title for this book from this update and going forward. We have received many questions about this digital fulfillment, and we've included answers to the most common ones below.

Quality/Typo Concerns

We have uploaded new ebook and audiobook files that correct minor formatting, typo, and quality issues. These files replaced the original fulfillment files and you will not see anything different, but downloading your reward files again will give you the improved files.

I can't find my email to get the rewards!

Your digital reward downloads are available at any time through your backer survey. For guidance on accessing your survey, please see our article: How do I access my BackerKit backer survey?

My email address has changed or I used an Apple ID with Kickstarter. What do I do?

Please message us through our Kickstarter account with your corrected email address, or open a support ticket that includes your backer number, incorrect email address, and corrected email address.

Do you have my correct shipping address? Please change my shipping address!

We expect all backers to stay on top of updating their own shipping addresses. If there is a portion of your address that you cannot update, please complete everything you can and save it, then let us know what still needs to be changed. For directions and help, see our article: How do I update my reward shipping address?

I filled out my survey late. Where are my rewards?

Completing your survey does not immediately finalize and lock it on our end. We have to verify everything is complete and lock the survey. When this is complete, any applicable digital rewards will become available, either through the link that is then emailed to you or through your backer survey.

NOTE: If you complete your survey after we have shipped the physical rewards, it may be several months before we are able to go back and ship rewards to those who did not complete their survey before the initial fulfillment. We are unable to complete this early on an individual basis.

How do I upgrade my pledge to get rewards I didn't pledge for initially?

We are no longer able to make changes to pledge rewards. Please see the next section for information about obtaining these rewards outside of this campaign.

How To Get Rewards You Missed

A number of backers have reached out asking how to get the audiobooks, physical books, or swag boxes. We are pleased to announce that these books will be available in all formats in the future, and the swag boxes will be available in limited quantities.

Digital Books

Ebooks: Each title will be available for purchase from your usual ebook platforms on the 10th or 11th of January, April, July, and October. This means you can purchase Tress of the Emerald Sea tomorrow, either through your standard ebook platforms or through our store! 

Audiobooks: Each title will be available for purchase from the following platforms on the 10th or 11th of January, April, July, and October. 

• Speechify (currently only available for iPhone) (Brandon Recommended)
• Spotify (Brandon Recommended)
• Apple Books
• Google Play
• Chirp/Bookbub

Audiobooks for these titles will be priced at $15.  The audio editions will not be available on Audible for the foreseeable future. See Brandon's 2022 State of the Sanderson post if you have questions about the reasons for this.

Physical Editions

Our Dragonsteel premium hardcover editions will be available for pre-order from our store the same day the ebook and audiobook format goes on sale for that title (again, this means Tress of the Emerald Sea is available for pre-order tomorrow). As we did during the Kickstarter, we will be including a free ebook with any premium hardcover purchase. The individual premium hardcovers will sell for $55 each and are expected to be carried indefinitely, with reprints when necessary. Additionally, while supplies last, you can purchase the full monthly box for $65, which will include a complimentary ebook, themed sticker, themed bookmark, and monthly Cosmere character collectible pin.

Swag boxes for each month will also be available for pre-order at some point during their scheduled month. They will be priced at $65 each while supplies last. All swag products will be available only as part of their monthly boxes.

Note: Pre-ordered books and boxes will not ship until all backer shipments for that month have been fulfilled.

Commercial Editions

As a reminder, Tor and Gollancz will also be releasing their own commercial editions of these books. This means standard hardcover and (maybe eventually) paperback books without the unique artwork, covers, and other premium features of the Dragonsteel editions. These commercial editions will be released 3 months after the Dragonsteel release, and are already available for pre-order through your usual bookstore channels. Our store will not carry the commercial editions of these titles.

Commercial foreign language editions will also be available through traditional channels—some as early as the Tor/Gollancz editions, and some at later dates. Information on these editions will need to be obtained through the individual publisher.