Written by the illustrious Jay Swanson

Two months ago I ordered a bunch of books for a signing at Auntie’s Bookstore in Spokane. At the time, my main concern was getting Shadows of the Highridge in time as it was brand new and as-yet unprinted. Little did I know that it would be Into the Nanten that would never arrive.

As you may have seen, I’ve had issues with shipping books recently, but this time it wasn’t the Post Office swapping books for expired prison food (oh yeah, thanks to Reddit I discovered that those brands are all only available through the corrections system). Instead, my printer not only never shipped my order of Into the Nanten, they never printed it.

But I hadn’t figured that out yet. I chalked it up to bad timing, lost ink, unicorns in the printers; I had no clue, but I was off traveling again before I could give it a second thought. Then the books just never showed up. A couple of weeks went by and I finally emailed them to ask where those copies of Into the Nanten that I’d been waiting for were. Their response was essentially “Quality control found something and decided it wasn’t printable.”

I responded “I’ve sold dozens of these as they were, what on earth was wrong?” All I got back was an ambiguous, “Whatever it was, while it may not have been a problem yet, they figured it would be in the future.”

Not. Helpful. The ‘requested’ change was that we up the paper weight from 50lb to 70. I did some math with their spine-calculator and gaped. The original version of Into the Nanten was 1.3 inches thick – the new version would be 1.8 inches(!!!).

It took some effort, and I had to redesign the cover to accomodate the sudden weight-gain, but yesterday, two months and one day later, I received my order, which means you can buy it again! For those of you who already have, I put your copies in with FedEx this morning to make up for the delay.

Auntie’s has also restocked with fresh copies, so if you’d like to own this tome of a book you can walk in and grab one today. If you’re not in Spokane, drop by my store and I’ll sign one and ship it to you.

The books do look great, even if they’re a bit thicker. The covers printed with a warmer tone, as did the interior (a slight difference, but the result is that the illustrations appear slightly richer – a nice surprise). The weight of the paper definitely helps the pages feel hardier, and I think that has a direct impact on the appearance as you can’t see hints of the other side of the page so easily.

It will also make up an extra half-inch of difference should you need to level any table legs. It’s thick enough to be a table on its own now. And don’t forget your copy of Shadows of the Highridge or Dark Horse while you’re there – Shadows being mandatory reading as it’s a spinoff of Into the Nanten, featuring our favorite man of mystery: Brin Salisir.

Happy reading!

The post Into the Nanten – Thicker, Heavier, and Late to the Party appeared first on jayswanson.me.