News Re: Physical BroadSwords #3 and Beyond (and Counterfeiters)

I have news regarding the counterfeiter situation, and it's not great. I received the a copy of what they were selling yesterday and it turns out that the book isn't a counterfeit, but the real deal. This could mean only one thing: my printer selling loose copies wholesale which, of course, violates our agreement. This is an unfortunate development and I do not think I will be using that printer anymore.

On the plus side, however, I've already found another solution and it's one that's been on the table for a while, since before the Kickstarter even commenced. 

For now on, I'll be printing the books via Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing. There is one negative for this, however, as I will no longer be able to provide hardcover. Originally, hardcover was a stretch goal to be applied to the first issue only. I hoped to keep it on every issue. Unfortunately, as subscriptions only total around 350 or so, it's becoming increasingly more difficult to keep up with it since most printer minimum order quantities are around 1,000 units/month. And now that there's issues with the printers, it's even more of a pain.

Having said that, the advantages, I believe, far outweigh this one negative.

Books will be on time every month. Perhaps the biggest advantage of this development is that I no longer have to deal with logistics of importing and shipping books into the US, messing with USPS, dealing with stamps.com's bugs, etc. 

I'm increasing content by 50%. I've never had a problem actually creating the content. I write far more than what's needed for the book every month. So I can easily replace the hardcover with more content. Expect this trend to start with BroadSword #4's physical version which should be out before the end of the month. (#3 was formatted the old way, so it'll be the typical 100 pages)

Amazon customer service. Since it's Kindle Direct Publishing, you'll get treated to Amazon's customer service. And you'll still have me, too! So we'll be pulling double-duty together.

Printed in the US. Some of you expressed that you'd prefer it if the books were printed in the US. Now that I'm going through KDP, they will officially be in the US.

PDFs and physical available at the same time. Because KDP is both Kindle and Physical, all I need is to create one file in order to create the other. Easy peasy.

No more middle man (me or USPS). When the books hit KDP, they're immediately available for download and mailing. This way there's none of this "fulfilling a month later stuff".

More time to focus on content. Since Fulfillment will be more streamlined, I'll have even more time to focus on content each month.

If you have any questions or concerns, please send me a message on here or hit me up on discord. Looking forward to this next chapter. It's one of my big goals this year to have a consistent release schedule with BSM and I think this is the best way to get there.

Take care!