We owe you guys a HUGE apology for the communication failure, along with a long overdue shipping update and a free apology gift.
11 months ago
– Thu, Jul 24, 2025 at 02:57:51 PM
Hi all, Bryce here.
First of all, I cannot apologize enough for the fact that this campaign was overlooked in our recent bout of major shipping updates. Many things happened, including internal miscommunications, resulting in you guys not being held accurately up to date on shipping delays. I'm so sorry about that, I'm here to clear that up, and I bring both explanations and gifts.
What happened?
Firstly, as those of you who have backed many of our other campaigns are already aware, there have been two major delays across a large portion of our projects:
- First, our printer suffered a hack in the first half of the year that had them down for months, causing a massive backlog of work both internally at the printer, and externally at partners like Wraithmarked, who had to scramble (of no fault of the printer's) to figure out schedules, payment processing, deadlines, etc. While that didn't affected THE VENEZIAD as much as it did other projects like A DARKER SHADE OF MAGIC, it was still part of the domino that has caused a printing delay.
- Second, and this has had a massive impact on the THE VENEZIAD, Wraithmarked has been doing a large amount of product testing to improve the quality of our books, all of which took significantly longer than expected. That is 100% on me for not doing my research on how long this testing could take. We've been working on the best materials to bind these books and others in, and more importantly we've been working on the best paper to use for the books since these are printed in color! I had anticipated we'd be talking a couple weeks of work, maybe a month.
Nope. 6+ months later of testing, struggling to get product and materials, and all kinds of other mishaps, and we are finally ready to pick the materials we need.
Again, this is completely on me. Not the printer.
- Lastly, and specifically to THE VENEZIAD, there was a massive miscommunication internally within the team, resulting in what basically amounts to a critical development step getting put on ice for several months. G.B. Steward provided us with feedback on the internal design as requested, but that feedback wasn't applied for a massive amount of time due to our designer's priority list getting mixed up.
Again, this one is on me. Not, G.B., nor anyone else.
So what's the result?
In short, we are currently looking at fulfilling in December, assuming there are no additional delays. I understand announcing a 4 month delay out of the blue is concerning. It should be. We should have been in touch with you guys about this months ago, but in parallel to the development mishap listed above, so too was our entire team unaware that things weren't getting done in the order they needed to be. That's not an excuse for the delay, but I want to be very clear that not keeping you guys in the loop was not by choice. As anyone who has backed SHADES OF MAGIC or STORMWEAVER can attest to, we are usually over-sharers when it comes to things like delays, and I'm sorry we weren't here.
How are we fixing this moving forward?
I know the following answers won't help anyone only here for THE VENEZIAD, but as we plan to do other projects with G.B. in the future, I wanted to make sure you guys were aware of some critical changes we've put in place effective immediately to eliminate exactly the issues we had here.
- First, while there's nothing we can do about the printer getting hacked, the completion of our product and materials testing was a 6 month investment to ensure we can standardize our designs and books in a way that will make printing MUCH faster in the future. So, not only no half-year-surprise delay, but an improvement in our original baseline print time since we KNOW the binding and paper we'll be using on everything.
- Second, we are shoving some major projects away from the end of 2025 into 2026 and 2027 to make room for new artist deadlines to ensure that we have at least all the needed non-Stretch Goal art assets for the book done at least 3 months ahead of schedule. This will significantly reduce delays like those related to the feedback mishap I listed above, which was related to tying in the custom chapter header art to the layout.
- Lastly, we are improving our communication standards and reducing workload within the support team by bringing on an extra part-time staff member whose job will largely be to keep an eye on Kickstarter communications from you guys and make sure they are appropriately answered or escalated. While this may not seem like it directly addresses any of the issues listed above, workload and crunch was part of the failure by us to see the missed communication, and extra hands should help alleviate that.
An apology gift!
Finally, in the hopes of showing how sorry we are for this mishap, Wraithmarked is going to be adding an apology gift to every single book-level backer and above. We're working with G.B. on the right item to add to the project (tariffs are making even what might seem like "simple" items much harder to get ahold of) but we'd love for you all to sound off in the comments if you have ideas! No promises we can do any of them, but we'll definitely be paying attention to suggestions!
Once again you have my apologies, and we will be improving our communications with you guys significantly between now and fulfillment of THE VENEZIAD. I and my team will be in the comments for the next several days answering any questions and concerns you might have.
Talk soon.
- Bryce
