The supersize option

All of the Fabled Lands books are now back in print in large format editions. These are 8" by 10", matching the original 1990s books -- though not, unfortunately, with those old fold-out covers that marked FL out as a hybrid of RPG, gamebook and boardgame.

But here's a heads-up. If you're ordering from Amazon, you're very likely to see a message telling you the books are "temporarily out of stock". The reason for that is they're set up for print on demand, which means that when you order a copy, Amazon sends a request to the printer (Ingram Spark) and your copy is added to the print queue. So naturally it isn't in stock at the time you order; that's the point of print on demand.

That message doesn't appear if you order the smaller format books because we set those up on Createspace, another POD company that Amazon bought a few years ago. It does seem as if Amazon's policy is to list books printed by rival POD companies as out of stock, but not to do that if the book is printed by Createspace.

Point is, you should get your book delivered in the same time either way. Amazon might tell you it'll take 1-2 months, or even that they are unable to say when the book will be delivered, but the fact is it'll probably arrive within a fortnight. Some Amazon customers have told me they even received an email from Amazon saying that they couldn't give a delivery date, only for the book to turn up that very same day.

There are other options, though. You can ask your local physical bookstore to order a copy for you. If they say they don't know how to do that, give them the ISBN and tell them to look on Gardners.

Or you can buy from Barnes & Noble who, not having their own print division, are happy just to supply what the customer wants without all the hassle.

Over the Blood-Dark Sea
The Plains of Howling Darkness
The Court of Hidden Faces
Lords of the Rising Sun

The snag there is that the first two books are printed by Createspace, who won't supply to B&N, so you have to get those from Amazon. It's a war, and book buyers are in the middle of it. Don't let the Soulwatch grind you down.

Big issue

Here's something I didn't anticipate when I outlined Fabled Lands Publishing's plans for 2016: a new large format (8" x 10") edition of the existing FL books.

How it came about is that later in the year we're hoping to publish a paperback version of the new book, The Serpent King's Domain. And then Jamie and I realized we couldn't only do a 6" by 8" edition. What about all the FL readers who bought the original large format books back in the '90s - you're going to want book 7 to match those, am I right?

So as a kind of experiment, seeing as we have the text files already edited, we're releasing new 8" by 10" versions of the original books, starting with The War-Torn Kingdom and Cities of Gold and Glory. Now hang on, though. Don't rush out and buy these if you're already happy with the editions you've got. There's no new content here. And we haven't been able to duplicate the fold-out covers of the original Pan Macmillan editions; even though print on demand has come a long way, it isn't there yet. But if you had an incomplete collection of 8" x 10" books and prefer that format, now's your chance. Oh, and these new editions feature Russ's regional maps in full glorious colour, so there is that.

Take your pick. The new large format edition...



...or the 2010 standard paperback: