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> I was wondering if I could get someone official to unofficially let us
> know how the next few books coming out after "the Mysteries" are
> coming. The release calendar looks like this: - "October" (but late, so at this point December is really more likely): The Mysteries (Revised) - January 06: Covenants (official announcement just went on the blog this afternoon) - April 06: Houses of Hermes: Mystery Cults - July 06: Realms of Power: The Infernal I'm expecting all the books to be 128 to 144 pages, hardcover, and at least in the near term $29.95 MSRP (unless major printing/paper/shipping price increases mess up our budgetary spreadsheets). With Jeff Tidball starting next week, and taking over my responsibilities for layout and production on the Ars books, I expect that the future titles will be much more on time than the ones so far this year. > If possible, I'd just like an opinion on when they think the next
> few books will come out. I hope the above information helps. > I'm just a little disapointed in the amount of information that is
> available on the main web site...or anywhere on upcoming books. I
> know that things might be different here for sure, but I'm just used
> to companies having a release schedule 6 months to a year in
> advance. We certainly do our planning that far in advance, and more. As a rule, we formally announce books 3-4 months ahead of release. That's the window of time that game distributors require to publicize the book to their shops and collect orders. Book distributors typically want 6-12 months of lead time, which may be why publishers who are heavily dependent on book trade sales (such as the biggest RPG publishers) tailor their workflow to that kind of schedule. Unofficially, we share info as I did above about books as far as a year out, but we need people to understand that things are subject to change. > Even the Mysteries book doesn't have an actual release date and it's
> only a few weeks from being released...it just says October. We don't have the predictive ability to pick specific dates. We typically get a tentative ship date from a printer 3-4 weeks out, but those dates often move by as much as a week early to two weeks late, and depending on where a game is printed there is also an unknown quantity in shipping times. (Fortunately, most of our books are printed in-state by a printer who drives them to our warehouse on their own truck, for same day delivery cheaper than a regular trucking company.) I try to broadcast an e-mail to all of our distributors 7-10 days ahead of the date when I expect to be shipping a new product. That gives them time to assemble their pre-orders, add the new release to their hit list for calls they make to customers, and cut the purchase orders for us. Some large publishers have street dates (the official day that a book or game is to be on sale to the public), which they announce many months ahead of time. In order to meet these dates, these publishers sometimes have the products printed months in advance. For example, a friend of ours who is on the staff of Wizards of the Coast was visiting last month, and showed us a mock-up of a game he designed, which Wizards is publishing. He said that the games were already printed, but he wouldn't be getting his own copies for a couple of days. But here's the kicker: The game's street date is in *November*, and this was September. So in order to budget for production delays, distribution times, etc., the game is actually completed and ready for sale more than two months ahead of the street date. That's two months during which the publisher has to pay for all the bills (printing cost and warehousing, for example), without having the revenue from selling it to customers. If you're big and well capitalized, and you have marketing plans and distribution networks that depend on specific dates and having product out in the system a month or more ahead of time to meet those dates, that may make sense. For Atlas, at the present time, it doesn't. > I just want more info...I'd rather have more info ahead of time
> and be a little disapointed if a delay occurs than have no real
> idea. The problem on my end is that when we set specific info out, and circumstances change, I have to spend a lot of time informing people of the change. If I say, "Covenants will be shipping to distributors in January," then I'm covered if it's January 1 or January 31. If I say, "It will ship on January 3rd," then every time that date changes (for instance, if the printer is backed up by a week because of problems on a press or an unusually high workload), I have to set aside more time for e-mails and phone calls to update everyone on what's up. And if there are problem delays, beyond the usual margin of uncertainty (the +/- 1 week that we can expect from even our most reliable printers), we often don't know exactly when things will be resolved. > I already found the unofficial list with covenants, HoH:The
> Mysteries and the infernal book coming out after...but when? 6
> months...a year..are they written yet and should be out within the
> next 3 months? To confirm what others have said, the general plan is to have quarterly releases for Ars Magica. Even if books are written, we don't plan to move them up to release sooner -- we think that one book per quarter is a good pace for supporting the game, not overwhelming the wallet of the average player, etc. I hope this makes more sense of things! -John Nephew
President, Atlas Games
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