Pre-Orders for Schlock Mercenary: The Tub Of Happiness will be opening at 8:00am Mountain Daylight Time (GMT -6) on Thursday. You’ll be able to place your orders at store.schlockmercenary.com, where you can pay with a credit card, Paypal, or print out a mail-order form and pay with Check, Money Order, or Don’t Send Cash Through The Mail.

You will also be able to place and pay for your pre-order (including a sketch edition pre-order) at Dragons Keep, 260 N. Univ. Ave., Provo. If you are coming to Mountain-Con in Salt Lake City this weekend, you can place and pay for your pre-order there, as well.

Please note… we don’t expect to have the books back from the printer until mid- to late- November. We decided to give the $5.00 discount for pre-orders in part because we’re going to be sitting on your money for at least 60, and perhaps up to 90 days before your book arrives. Hopefully that discount takes some of the sting out of the requirement that you be patient.

We know that some credit-card companies only extend buyer protection within a 30-day window. We won’t be shipping product within that time-frame, which may worry you. Without resorting to legalese, here is our guarantee — if there’s anything wrong with your order, we’ll make it right at no additional charge to you. Did the postman leave it in a puddle, or break the spine shoving it into your mailbox? Did you not get the right number of books? Was your book defective? It doesn’t matter — let us know, and we’ll fix it.

If you’re living outside of the United States and have shopped with us before, you probably know that the flat-rate Priority Mail International cardboard envelopes are the most cost-effective way to get your book. If you want a more durable container, there are shipping options for that, but they more than double the expense. My advice: gang up with your friends and buy a bunch of books at once. We can double-box them (little box inside bigger box, with padded fill) for uber-protection.

Here are some rough shipping prices: $4.51 gets the book shipped USPS Media Mail anywhere in the United States. Double that for priority mail or parcel post. $12 gets the book shipped Priority Mail International Flat Rate to Europe (or pretty much anywhere else in the world). Double that for Priority Mail International in a sturdy box. All the shipping instructions are available in the storefront, but if you’ve got questions, please don’t hesitate to email us.

Oh, and speaking of the storefront, it’s going down for a few hours Wednesday while we re-lay the pages. It will be back up in time for pre-orders. I promise.

No wonder this book took so long to put together.

I sat down Wednesday night and counted up the pages of bonus material. There are nine pages of bonus story, and then over a hundred more pages in the book that have new content on them.

So I started adding up column inches, and determined that of the two hundred and forty pages of Schlock Mercenary: The Tub of Happiness, the equivalent of fifty of them are all new stuff. There are concept sketches, character references, new bits of marker art, excellent guest artist pieces, author commentary, and even a page of commentary from Sandra.

But don’t take my word for it. Here is a seventeen-page PDF extract from the book, including the front and back covers (inside and out), the first page of the bonus story, eleven pages from the “Big Haunted Battleship” storyline, and page 240, the “blank” page I use for sketching. Have a look, and see how the new stuff fits in with the old.

Even at low-resolution, it’s a 6MB file. Ah, sweet bandwidth, how I will miss you.

From netmouse and delosd:

I filled out the form, and was told that these are my top ten options for careers…

1. Costume Designer
2. Set Designer
3. Website Designer
4. Special Effects Technician
5. Desktop Publisher
6. Technical Writer
7. Industrial Designer
8. Animator
9. Computer Trainer
10. Cartoonist / Comic Illustrator

Well… at least my current career made the list.

If I look at the things I’ve done for fun, for school, or for money (and include some of the world-building I’ve done for gaming and for the strip) I can honestly say that I’ve done everything on that list. I was really, really good at #6 and #9, suck rocks at #3, and managed to make money at #10 by learning to do #5 (and #s 1, 2, 3, and 7.)

Neato.