Pre-order future volumes of ES?

[draal]

Hello,

Just wondering if it'd be possible to put money down for any future volumes of ES? A collected version, the last two installments, a monthly serial, or whatever. Regardless of the release date, just being able to pay for and know that the book version of the comic will be available to me whtn this finishes, would be worthwhile.

Will this be possible in the near future?

[Imp-Chan]

We did once offer a book for pre-order without a set release date, but, well... we messed up on planning that project, so we're still working on getting that book out, and it's pretty clear that most people wouldn't quite share your willingness to pay for something that will arrive "eventually." We're enormously grateful for the patience and continued support of those readers who did pre-order that book, and it is really nice of you to offer.

We do plan to bring out Errant Story in book form (nine volumes, to be exact)... however, we'd like to do so through a publisher (preferably one major enough to get the story the kind of dedicated graphic novel audience it deserves). So, we can't offer pre-orders, though once we actually have a publisher (we haven't even started looking for agents yet, so that's a ways off), they may choose to do so.

^-^'

[Graybeard]

We do plan to bring out Errant Story in book form (nine volumes, to be exact)...

On a related subject, Impy, what volume are we in now, and what are the chapter boundaries? Wiki needs updating.

[Imp-Chan]

Hmm... I think Volume Six actually started at Chapter 31. However, a bit of a review shows that Poe left out quite a few chunks of Volume Five that he'd wanted to include, probably because he was feeling really impatient with the story and wanted to hurry up and be done all winter. Remember the weird jumps in the storyline everyone was complaining about? That was because he tried to drop a couple of fight scenes, some father-daughter interaction, and an explanation or two... about 50-60 pages worth all told if my estimations are correct. Those parts will probably be added in later as a part of the big rearrangement for print, especially since he wasn't really happy once he'd dropped them. Each volume also needs to feel complete unto itself in addition to flowing into the next volume, so some shuffling of scenes is going to be needed anyways to give each volume a nice solid beginning, middle, and end.

Not withstanding the fact that I've already rearranged the first two volumes for flow and focus so this will be hopelessly jumbled when it finally comes time to do the printing, here's a review of the volume divisions so far:

PART ONE
Volume One: Prologue through Chapter Four
Volume Two: Chapter Five through Chapter Ten
Volume Three: Chapter 11 through Chapter 18

PART TWO
Volume Four: Chapter 19 through Chapter 26
Volume Five: Chapter 27 through Chapter 30
Volume Six: Chapter 31 to present, ongoing

Part three will begin with Volume Seven, probably sometime next year judging by Poe's present speed.

^-^'

[draal]

Well... I'd be willing to give a vastly larger sum to pre-order the errant story books (even with a horribly long lag time, maybe a sort of subscription purchase) as opposed to donating.

And as for the chapters, Poe is working from an outline? I remember hearing an estimate on the number of strips still to come on the last iteration of forums, but out of curiousity, how detailed are the plot summaries Poe is working from (that is, if he is working from an outline)?

[Imp-Chan]

Funny you should ask that... this past week, but especially all of the last three hours, we have heroically struggled to summarize the entirety of the major plot in a single page. We wound up just over that at a page and a paragraph, which all things considered I'm willing to call a victory. It summarizes what will be a minimum of 1200 pages of actual graphic novel, and short of writing something revoltingly dry, I think this might be pretty much the best we can do. We'll see what the critics think tomorrow, as well as what I think after a meal and some sleep.

Poe also has individual single-page summaries written out for each of the nine volumes. However, these are at least a year old and predate the decision to revise the story for print, so they'll actually need to be updated soon.

I suppose it'd be most accurate to say that Poe knows where the story is going, how it will end, and what the major scenes will be along the way. He also knows most of the minor scenes, and where he wants to break things up into chapters or volumes, but he doesn't have page-by-page breakdowns or all the dialogue scripted or anything. He'd really like to switch to working a chapter at a time instead of a page at a time, but it's a webcomic so he needs the support of the fans first if he's to make that kind of change.

^-^'