Reprint of the original Normal Tarot with silver foil, and the introduction of the gold foil Normal Tarot 2.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Shipping Update!
almost 3 years ago
– Wed, May 19, 2021 at 10:38:09 PM
Hello everyone,
The wait is ALMOST OVER. The fulfillment center has (almost) everything at this point but the decks themselves, which have been on a freighter the past 20~ days, and should arrive by June 2nd. I wanted to save an update until I had confirmation that the decks had arrived so I could let you all know that the fulfillment was starting, but I've been getting some (very fairly) impatient messages asking what's going on.
I get it-- trust I'm also frustrated with how much the printer delayed the whole thing. I know we need to make exceptions for COVID and all, but this was maybe 4,000 decks total, the printing shouldn't have been THAT slow. Apparently the printer had some new people working, had a mishap with the gold decks (the cardstock was...? bumpy or something) and had to reprint an unspecified number. My go-to for their company kept expressing as much frustration as me because the printing facility wouldn't give him any specifics. Needless to say, I'm already using a new printer for my next project, and we'll see if they can handle the 25,000+ decks of the Alleyman's Tarot in a timely manner.
The last things that need to ship to the fulfillment center are my oracle dice and the pins, which I've had in my office/bedroom for the past few months, and I'm finalizing those boxes to head in today and tomorrow. With the.... very massive (?) success of the alleyman's tarot, I think we should definitely do a second printing of these gorgeous decks in the near future. Hopefully post-COVID and on a time table that works out how we wish it would.
Again, very sorry for the quiet and delay, I just had nothing new to give you just yet. Please trust that I am patiently waiting alongside you and will let you know as soon as it starts fulfilling, so we can FINALLY celebrate in style (with gorgeous gold and silver foil decks!)
Thank you for your patience,
7,
your Publishing Goblin
NEWS! NEWS AT LAST!! AND THE GOLD TAROT!!
about 3 years ago
– Fri, Apr 16, 2021 at 02:26:12 PM
Okay, I finally heard that starting next week, the Gold tarot and the Silver tarot will be leaving the printer and are on their way to the Fulfillment Center!!!! That means... we probably still have a month or so to wait for them to arrive... BUT STILL! It's finally some concrete news. So they should arrive in like the middle/end of May, and start shipping then and into June, so about what I estimated last update. I'm so ready. That also means that I am going to be locking pre-orders and additional add ons and addresses here in the next few weeks. Be sure to update them in the survey you originally filled out if you need to on backerkit! : )
But I knew this for a few days-- I was waiting on the arrival of... THE GOLD TAROT PRODUCTION SAMPLE!!
Hey look it's the artists, the skeleton, and me, a shitty goblin!
That postcard-art print on the right is the one everyone got for free. It's super cute!
YES!!! IT looks so so so good. The silver deck has a gorgeous foil-- but it's secret. If you look on it straight on without a strong light, it looks normal, but then it catches the light and it springs to life. It's gorgeous, but the gold cards are alive from the second you look at them. These are two incredible decks, I am so excited about them!
And I didn't want to post about the Alleyman's Tarot, even though it's doing wildly well (it just broke a quarter million dollars in less than 48 hours y'all), because I didn't have anything to show all of you! It feels not-super-great to have launched a new campaign when my previous one isn't even done yet, but there were a lot of things in play that I couldn't stop, even when the printer delayed this project so much. I'm sorry for that. But now that I know we're finally on the final stretch to fulfillment AND I had fun new gold pics to show, I am ready to show you how awesome the Alleyman's has become!
If you are so moved, pleae consider going to support this project. Stretch goals on it are unlocking extra pay to the artists, so it's totally worth it! : )
Love y'all, thanks for your patience, the Normal Tarot is so awesome I can see us re-printing it with foil sometime soon when these are all sold out!
Your Publishing Goblin,
Seven
Silver Tarot Production Samples!!!
about 3 years ago
– Wed, Mar 24, 2021 at 09:49:23 PM
Today I got my production samples of the silver Normal Tarot, and they all look so incredibly good!
The foil stamped box!
Look at that shine!
The full silver set!
I'm so excited! And I haven't shuffled it much yet but so far the silver edges are so clean and do not come off at all, like the original printing. The printing is coming to a close, and we'll have a gold sample sometime soon Im hoping! Then off to the fulfilment center and shipping in late April/start of May, as I explained in the last update. A month or two late, but in the grand scheme of things totally worth waiting for!
Now that I've seen the deck and the book, I know that this is an incredible 2nd ed of the original Normal Tarot, totally worth buying. Maybe we'll do a second printing later when this inevitably sells out! The foil is so incredible, if you look on the cards straight on it disappears and looks white. Then you catch literally any amount of light and it just sings to life. I cannot wait to get a copy of this into Amy's hands... her work updating this deck was so incredibly worth it!
Also, check out those two new extra cards, the Caretaker and Okatsu cards! I'm super excited because the first time around the Caretaker nixed my hopes to add more cards, even if they were just fun extras.
If you've been following along, I was going to delay my Alleyman's Tarot project since the Normal Tarot was delayed a couple months. Originally I wanted to have these decks in all of your hands this month, then launch the Alleyman's next month.
That being said, I'm not delaying the Alleyman's Tarot like I originally planned to. I signed contracts with people stating that the launch date would be April 13th, which could move up to 2 weeks earlier or later, but no more. Also, there's just not much more I can do on the Normal Tarot at this point, it's all a waiting game on my end. Wait for the printer, wait for the fulfilment center. I don't even have any work left to do, so I've been keeping busy just keeping the alleyman's on track, and working on new oracle dice and oracle coins.
To that end, I got an early copy of the Alleyman's to do readings with and to take some photos!
I fully understand that some of you don't care about the project overlap or the delays and just think this stuff is cool and will still pledge. I also know some of you are seeing me launch a new tarot project before the other one is even fulfilled and might find that sleezy to ask for more money when I haven't even delivered what I promised the first time. I understand and I'm not holding anything against anyone. Everyone should do what's best for them.
The Normal Tarot I was super hands on with, but I didn't design the concept nor did I illustrate it. To me it's someone else's project that I'm managing and facilitating. But the Alleyman's Tarot is mine. I did the work to get the people together, I included my own art, I'm writing the book. I'm facilitating 80 artists on it, but also I'm just making a deck I wanted to make. So please consider following along on this new project in April, and thanks for your patience!
I'll be giving lots of space for the Alleyman's to fulfill, time-wise, before my October project, which if all goes well will be my Publishing Gobin's Divination Coins! Normal Tarot 3 with my art, an updated second ed of my Oracle Dice with new dice, and more are on the horizon! So please stick with me across my projects. I will always give you something new and incredible that's worth pledging for.
Thank you all!
7DA
your Publishing Goblin
Update on the Delay
about 3 years ago
– Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 05:50:01 AM
Have you ever wished you could eat your own words?
Tl;dr: Fulfillment is pushed back a month. Will start mid April, may last into first week of May.
Unfortunately the update from the printer today, as I promised, is not a great one. Though they told me a while back before the Lunar New Year break that the Silver deck was at least in production, they're now telling me that both decks were put on hold over the break. The printers were worried that with the size of the job and the foil printing that needed properly mounted that if they started, stopped for the holiday, then came back to it, it could get off-set.
At any rate, they are quoting me 4 weeks on the jobs to be finished. I'm surprised to hear that, of course, as I feel like it isn't that much bigger than the last decks I had made, but maybe the foil alignment and application is a more time consuming process than I realize. In any case, 4 weeks from today is March 22nd.
New timeline then:
Printing is done by March 22nd. It will take at LEAST two weeks for the items to go from the printers in China to the fulfillment center in the US. Let's be conservative and guess 3 weeks, so April 15th. Fulfillment team quoted me 2-3 weeks to do their part.
We're looking at final shipping wrapping up by the end of April to May 6th. I've done everything I can to streamline the packaging and fulfillment process for the fulfillment team so I hope they can finish in 2 weeks time or less, rather than the 3, but there are 29 unique items coming their way from this campaign with incredibly varied packages.
Some people got a sticker or two and a pin set, some people got a sticker or two and a pin set but the stickers they got were all different than the other person. This makes every single package fairly unique, and will slow down their ability to just be like "okay we have 50 packages with this same packing list." Something for me to keep in mind next time around-- maybe more pledge tiers rather than add ons? Hard to say.
I will leave pre-orders, order changing, and address changing up on Backerkit through March then. We're a month behind schedule, which is too bad for many reasons, but considering the state of the world kind of par for the course. Thank you for your patience, I promise it will be worth the wait! These decks are still going to be so gorgeous-- so beyond worth it.
Will give a new update when anything new happens! (And yes, this will push back the Alleyman's Tarot. I have no interest in launching another tarot project while I'm still fulfilling the first.)
your Publishing Goblin
7DA
Hello Everyone! Update!
about 3 years ago
– Sat, Feb 20, 2021 at 01:05:22 AM
So, everything is still happening! : )
Sorry for the radio silence, I was planning to give it a month and reach out in a couple more days, but there's apparently a function in Kickstarter that lets people request an update. I think that's kind of incredible and now I want to go look at it for all the old Kickstarters I supported haha!
There was a test print coming that is no longer coming. Long story short on that, I didn't order a physical test print, because I know it adds a lot of time to the turn around. I just did digital proofs of the print files. But for some reason there was an accidental mark for a test print on just the Gold decks. We cancelled that to keep it in production with the silver decks to get them out on time.
I'm sure some of you are wondering "Wait, you aren't doing a test print...?" Nope. I didn't with the Oracle Dice books or dice, I didn't with the first run of the Normal Tarot, etc. I worked with the printers very closely to fine tune the print files and fix all the errors ahead of time, and while yes, mistakes can still be made, I know that all of the cards are in their right order and ready to be foil stamped. I have zero concerns. Now if something does go wrong, you can all copy and paste this at me and give me endless crap for it.
I almost always do print tests for books, though, as there are always small fixes I want to make. I can confirm with some prints of the books though that they look great!
I just had a bit of a snag with the fulfillment center, but I've fixed it and we're good to go ahead. What I'm waiting on now is for the Lunar New Year time off to end for the Print Ninja factory workers so we can get the decks and everything finished and sent! I'm requesting info on how far done the decks and prints and stickers are (the books have been done for a little bit already), but last I knew the gold was just going into production and the silver was already in production. It may even be done at this point, I'm not sure just yet, but I will know more Monday.
So let's be careful with the guesstimation and assume that things finish up in the next 3 weeks, entering March. They ship over to the fulfillment center along with all the other goodies I'm sending in (the oracle dice, mats, books, etc), arriving in about 2-3 weeks so mid-March. They're going to have like a 10 person team working on packaging and shipping as soon as it's all in. I can't expect it to take much longer than 2 weeks to ship it all, knowing that I could do it in two weeks if I was 10 people, but let's be kind and say it takes a month. That would put the final shipments in mid April.
I still expect most (if not all) packages to be out in the post by the end of March. But with the slowdown of the Lunar New Year (something to keep in mind next year...) it may bleed into April a bit, so we're looking at a potential 2-4 week delay. I still have a big project planned for launch in April so I promise I will do everything I can from my end to get this all out as soon as possible and on time, but since it's with a fulfillment center from here, I can't actually personally do much to make anything happen faster.
I will reach out Monday or Tuesday once I know the official status of the printing, and keep you all apprised of any changes. I can't wait (at all, I'm just so excited) to hold these new decks.
