Transformation: The Marvel UK Website and Now Book! Plus Dalek's Other Published Works.

Post by **inflatable dalek** » Tue Jul 21, 2015 8:08 pm

The man!

The book is basically all ready to go now, it's just a case of finding the free time to sit down with Lulu to set it all up.

This is going to be the final cover from Mr. T:

https://twitter.com/InflatableDalek/sta ... 8807327744

Post by **Denyer** » Tue Jul 21, 2015 8:29 pm

Classy. I'd be tempted to make a few minor tweaks (guessing at spine thickness) --

http://i.imgur.com/5WUnwMQ.jpg

Haven't found scans yet, but there are discs they might be on. Will rummage at weekend.

Post by **inflatable dalek** » Wed Jul 22, 2015 6:21 am

Niffty, but I think it's too late to much about with the full size version now (not without breaking Andy anyway!). This assumes I achieve my plan of setting it all up this morning anyway.

[Yes, I did write the backcover blurb myself. Oh yes, it is snot dribblingly egotistical].

Post by **inflatable dalek** » Sat Jul 25, 2015 10:50 am

PROOF COPY HAS ARRIVED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

https://twitter.com/InflatableDalek/sta ... 2992997376

The cover needs a minor bit of rejigging but the contents are sexier than me. Once that's fixed it should hopefully go on sale either on Friday or just after.

Post by **Denyer** » Sat Jul 25, 2015 6:17 pm

Do Lulu insist that one input file is used to cover the reverse, spine and cover?

Post by **inflatable dalek** » Sat Jul 25, 2015 8:49 pm

Yeah, presumably for making it as easy as possible for amateurs (which is fine for me).

The problem is the actual dimensions of the book and the dimensions listed on the options page are almost microscopically not the same, which threw off Andy's designs. The text has been automatically shrunk slightly as well but you can't actually tell with that bar the illustrations being slightly off centre (officially that's a design choice now. Shh, don't tell anyone. TBH I think no one else but me would notice/care).

Post by **inflatable dalek** » Thu Jul 30, 2015 7:05 pm

I'm really going to start pimping this out heavily over the weekend, but for now Transformation Volume 1: 1985-1987 is on sale and available to buy from Lulu right now!

It's also set up for distribution on Amazon, which should take about eight weeks to activate.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/stuart-webb/tr ... 89496.html

As I don't think I've made this offer here yet: Anyone going to Auto Assembly who wants to pick up a copy in person for just £10, let me know via either here or twitter.

Terome · Post by **Terome** » Thu Jul 30, 2015 8:46 pm

Good work! I'll pick one up at AA if I may. I am definitely still going to that.

Ryan F · Post by **Ryan F** » Thu Jul 30, 2015 10:54 pm

I've just been over on TFW2005 and started a news thread over there about it - this really does deserve as wide an audience as possible. Really looking forward to snagging a copy at AA, hopefully it sells bucketloads!!!

Post by **inflatable dalek** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 2:46 pm

Thanks, it seems to have caused an insane spike in visitors to the site at least. And all that before I started applying the emotional blackmail to my readers to spread the word!

Post by **inflatable dalek** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 4:23 pm

At risk of annoying people who bought already, I've just been made aware of a discount code Lulu are currently doing that will knock 2.25 off the price: FWD15

They do these a lot throughout the year on and off, so it might always be worth Googling beforehand to see if there's a current code if you're reading in the future.

Skyquake87 · Post by **Skyquake87** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 9:11 pm

...I am reading from the future

its amazing.

I will be making a purchase of this on half past wednesday and am right looking forward to it

Post by **inflatable dalek** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 9:17 pm

And if the opinion of a bunch of drunken people who don't like Transformers and think the only representative way of doing a book on a comic is for it to be fully illustrated counts: Everyone in the pub was slightly in awe of sitting next to a published (it counts!) author.

Post by **inflatable dalek** » Sun Aug 02, 2015 2:29 pm

BEHOLD THE YOUTUBE VIDEO!

I'm not saying it's a good book, but it's got me literally foaming at the mouth (when watching it back my main thought was "Have a glass of water man!").

Post by **Denyer** » Sun Aug 02, 2015 3:23 pm

At least the typo on the back is fixable with a black marker.

YouTube's got this relevant recommendations thing down to an art...

http://i.imgur.com/FrZhPal.png

Post by **inflatable dalek** » Sun Aug 02, 2015 3:30 pm

Well obviously that image of me is the "after" one.

Post by **inflatable dalek** » Mon Aug 17, 2015 4:48 pm

I'm not going to go spamtastic with these codes (if nothing else, they seem to come along often enough that keeping on top of them would be a full time job), but as it ends today and gives a good chunk off, CWW25 will knock 25% of the cost off.

Post by **inflatable dalek** » Tue Aug 18, 2015 2:15 pm

And just to be really shameless, this is now available on British and American Amazon as well.

Full links can be found on the pretentiously titled Book Shop part of the site:

http://thesolarpool.weebly.com/book-shop.html

Cliffjumper · Post by **Cliffjumper** » Mon Sep 21, 2015 9:38 pm

Finished it the other night. Largely found it to be very enjoyable; I only dip into your blog from time to time as a lot of the original posts have coincided with baby stuff so it was a nice fresh read. Found you have a good feel for the level of "summary" detail that works for a book like this - i.e. no solid eye-glazing synopsises that get skipped but plenty of contextual information rather than "What Prime's saying on page 9 is stupid!". Lots of fresh theorising on there and the approach in general felt nice and fun, especially the willingness to admit you'd over/under-estimated several stories before this reading approach. Going to be a fun thing to dip in and out of whenever I'm re-reading stories myself, and looking forward to a second pass and picking out some specifics to go over. It also pulled a lot of information that's probably buried across Wikis and IDW trades together, which was really handy as I personally won't buy the latter as I have no need, and there are probably a lot of people with Titan trades who feel the same.

Nicely presented too, found the format really good and the typos unobtrusive, though there's a spell about 80% in where a few columns reverse order that is quite disorientating.

Negatives for me I'm afraid; some of the preambles haven't aged well and make the book read like some old blog posts pasted into Lulu; we're probably only talking a handful and it's something I can emphasise as I often find the hardest part of any review or similar to write is a preamble before launching into the nitty-gritty. But some really are "WTF?" and jerk you right out of the book by not really linking into the main body well, just being whatever was relevant a year or two before.

The ones where this was largely dispensed with in favour of "well, last week I said this so let's see how it goes" really did flow better in the context of the thing being a book rather than a blog archive, and I must confess my eyes skipped over some of these and just latched onto the first paragraph that was actually about the comic itself.

But overall a hugely enjoyable read, very much looking forward to the second volume and I'm sure I'll be re-reading before then.

Post by **inflatable dalek** » Wed Sep 23, 2015 5:22 am

With that last bit you've actually hit upon one of the harder parts of turning this into something that worked solely as a book rather than a collected website. Cutting out all the contempoary references actually would have been fairly easy (and a lot did go), but I did very much want to keep the feel of this being a "Journey" in real time where the stuff going on in my life did have an impact--be it good, such as the fun of reading Enemy Within whilst sat at a bar near Simon Furman, or bad, hello ReGeneration One fans!---on how I went into each issue.

Making that still flow well though was tricky (just changing the tenses was rarely enough) so I'm not surprised some of it has wound up a bit chunky.

The other tricky thing was not heavily reworking my opinions. Up to three years later some of my thoughts have shifted a bit (especially as I reread everything again, and doing it quickly creates a different feel to weekly), but I wanted to keep the "This is what I thought as I did it" approach. The only area I cheated there was with Robo Capers as I enjoyed them a lot more this time round. As I'd only talked about a few of them on the blog I thought it'd be sensible to bring those bits more in line with the new material I was writing so as not to look completely schizo.