Two book print projects, started months apart, ordered and paid for months apart. Both got delivered within two days of each other. The universe is weird. Today’s venture into fandom and capitalism is my copies of the 3rd printing of Fallout: Equestria. Of which I ordered four. One for me. Two to sell later. One for contest/giveaway/gift/etc. Mostly because before the 3rd printing was announced copies of the 1st and 2rd printings were going for around 400 bucks a pop on ebay. Then again, I did grab a copy of the 2nd printing for around 90 bucks a little after the 3rd printing orders were happening so bonus! I might even get one copy of each printing just to feel like a real collector or something. Also, minor spoiler warning in that the last two pictures have a few paragraphs of actual story that may or may not spoil things if you haven’t read the story. Then again, a handful of random paragraphs in the middle of a 600 thousand word story is a drop in the bucket.
Now for pictures! Because, again, it’s an easy way to fill the daily posting slot for today. Plus I do want to show this one off because it is very fancy. Going to start with a bit of a disappointment though. The packing was pretty slipshod in my opinion. Okay, for comparison, here is the packing situation for Winning Pony.
Each of the three books came packed individually in envelopes like the one you see there under the book, with about two layers of bubblewrap around the book itself. Those pictures show the difference in size between the book and the envelope to some degree to show how padded they are. All three of those were in turn in a box that had some makeshift padding so they didn’t rattle around. It was a pain to unwrap the first book because of how it was packaged, but I was impressed with how thorough it was. Very nice in my opinion.
Now, the 3rd printing of Fallout: Equestria. Which was specifically intended to be a very fancy collectors edition. Which it is! Was packaged like this:
Yep. Four books just stacked on top of each other in a box exactly big enough for them. No padding, no bubblewrap, no protection whatsoever. Was very disappointing. Only seen very minor damage to the corners of the top volume, but it still was a curiously rushed looking way to do things. The packing of Winning Pony just throws it into even sharper contrast.
Enough of the complaining! The book itself is quite nice. Here is the cover:
The edges of the pages are done all gold and shiny, with rounded edges. Not to mention a ribbon:
The inside has some new art for many (but not all) chapters:
Hopefully you can also see how thin the pages are. Which is something I personally find a little annoying, but I bet it was the only way to get the entire story into a single volume that a single person could carry around and use.
Last picture. Wanted to show off what they used for scene breaks. The gears and line is the standard scene break, and the crystal orb and magic swirls are for entering and leaving a crystal orb memory. Which I thought was a nice touch.
The City of Doors 