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Message: <blockquote data-quote="seankreynolds" data-source="post: 8033483" data-attributes="member: 3029">I'm not sure why you think that. Just for the Arcana of the Ancients Kickstarter (which BTM is part of), we've posted status updates on June 5th, April 14th, Feb 25, Jan 15, Oct 18 2019, Aug 9 2019, July 15 2019, and Jun 19 2019. Other than the gap around the holidays, that's an update about every six weeks on the status of the books in the project.Well, I mean ... it takes time to write, develop, edit, layout, proof, print, and ship a book. The Kickstarter ended in April 12, 2019. AOTA is a 300-page book. If Bruce and I were writing at peak capacity (about 4 pages per day, which is really hard to maintain), with the work split equally between us, that's 37.5 work days just to get the bulk of the writing done. With about 20 work days per calendar month, that's two months right there, which puts us at June 12. Add in a couple of weeks for the creative director (Monte) to read it and give comments, another week for Bruce and I to make changes, and that's mid/late July. Then we lose about two weeks for Gen Con 2019, so that's mid-August. Add a month for editing, that's mid-September. A week for the managing editor and designers to review editor questions, that's late September. A month for layout (maybe, I don't know, I'm not a graphic designer, but it's a BIG book), that's late October. A couple of weeks to proof the layout file, that's mid-November. Roll the files over to the printer in China, hopefully it gets done before the Chinese New Year (when the printer shuts down for several weeks). Getting it on the boat from China to the US takes a month or more, including the variable time it takes for cargo crates to clear customs. We fulfilled PDFs to backers in early March in anticipation of shipping out physical copies to backers, and by mid-March we were shipping print copies to backers, and the book was live in our store on April 1st.And that's if we started immediately as the Kickstarter closed, working at peak efficiency, no gaps or problems (like COVID-19, which shut down printing operations in China for a while, and also delayed shipments of things out of China). And we generally don't start writing as soon as the Kickstarter closes because we have other current projects that we're writing. So I understand there is a lead time and that's frustrating for you, but we really can't work any faster than this without sacrificing quality.And for the next book in the series after AOTA (Beneath the Monolith), it's out now, only three months after AOTA became available, which is pretty impressive. We're working as fast as we can.That's because PDFs have value. They're not a freebie, even though many people treat them like freebies. It's a $45 hardback book with a $18 PDF. There are people who only want PDFs, and they think $18 is a good value for that book. If buying the $45 hardback from our webstore got you the $18 PDF for free, what message does that send to the player who spends $18 on that "free" PDF? What message does that send to the brick-and-mortal retailer who sells the book for $45 and doesn't include the PDF? (It makes them not want to carry our books because there's a big incentive for people to buy it from our webstore and get the PDF for free.) So yes, backing the Kickstarter is a good deal because we're giving you the PDF as part of your print backer level--it's a thank-you for trusting us with your money in advance (a year in advance, or more) to make a good product.And of course, our PDFs aren't just a text-and-copying-locked version of the print book—they're hyperlinked and bookmarked, which takes extra work.I appreciate that the time to create a book is frustrating for you, and I appreciate that you back the Kickstarter because you like the products and the people at the company. But we really are working as fast as we can on these things. I write more per month at MCG than I did at Wizards (back in 2000 when I was a designer on Forgotten Realms, a designer was expected to finish ~32 pages of material per month and my sustainable MCG writing pace is about two to three times that) and I think I'm a better writer and designer now than I was then. It's okay if you feel that you wait too long for Kickstarter rewards and want to just buy them at retail once they become available.</blockquote>

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