If you’ve been following along with the Kickstarter updates, you’ve already seen this, but I recently got the first proof copy for the hardcover version of The Assassin’s Bride.
This was the project launched by the campaign, with a goal of having the book available through retailers toward the end of spring in 2026. But campaign backers will be getting their books in the next 2-3 months, so they’ll be arriving soon. It’s amazing to finally have the hardcover edition in my hands!
This is the 16th time I’ve formatted a book for print with Ingram, and it’s also the first time the colors have turned out nothing like what I submitted. Printed covers always turn out darker than the files you submit, and for years, my go-to solution has been boosting the midtone levels by .15. Even for purple, what is notoriously the hardest color to print accurately, the covers have always turned out well. I ran dozens of test prints at home and then adjusted accordingly, knowing that Ingram prints even darker than that. So unlike other covers I’ve done, this one was actually adjusted layer-by-layer instead of overall, and despite ramping up the frame background to be 30% lighter than the original version… it still turned out too dark.
Such is life! The warm, orange-brown background in the middle almost completely disappeared, so we’re on to round 2 of proofs for the hardcovers.
All you can do is take things like this as a learning experience. All the practice I’ve already had didn’t save me this time, but it did make me very glad that this campaign funded as well as it did. The Spymaster’s Prize will be released as a hardcover too, and because this one did well, I’ll be able to start the proofing process for TSP much sooner and will have photos of the actual hardcover book ready when it’s time for the campaign to launch. That will let me get colors on the graphics much closer to actuality, so I won’t be scrambling to fix it after the campaign is already over and shipping is supposed to begin.
When I have time to sit down and write it all out, I’ll share a look at all the awesome things I’ve made for this campaign, because it was unbelievably fun and I can’t wait to get to enjoy every little extra I created while packing up these rewards.