I’ve decided not to release a large book in 2012. I want to try something different for our third book, and see where that leads me. So instead of one big book, I’m going to try to publish two (possibly three) smaller books in 2012.

As always, I won’t share details until these projects have gathered enough momentum to be unstoppable forces, but here’s what I can say for now. One is GMing-focused, and we’re almost to the point of inking a contract and starting work on this project. If all goes as planned, it will be out in print and PDF in time for GenCon 2012. The other book is not GMing-oriented, and is proving tricky to price out in a way that makes it affordable to produce and affordable to purchase.

If you want to know more as soon as new details are available, I recommend subscribing to our RSS feed.

In a bit less than 4 1/2 months — less than two quarters of sales — we’ve sold over 700 copies of Masks!

Masks is scheduled to ship to retailers in the next 2-3 weeks, and should be on store shelves in time for Christmas shopping.

Thank you to everyone who has picked up Masks and helped to make this book a success!

Engine Publishing has teamed up with Fear the Boot and Gnome Stew to bring you a charity auction to support the March of Dimes!

The team behind Eureka and Masks has put together what we think is a pretty awesome package of goodies for this auction:

• One copy of Eureka in softcover, plus the PDF.
• One of the final copies of Masks in hardcover, plus the PDF.
• Be a gnome or command a gnome: Either write the first-ever guest article on Gnome Stew (subject to review), or command us to write a system-neutral GMing article for you which will appear on Gnome Stew, your choice.
• Online game with Patrick Benson: Gnome Stew’s own Patrick Benson will run an online game you and your friends based on Eureka and Masks.
• One black-and-white character portrait by Christopher Reach, the cover artist and one of the interior artists on Masks.
• One black-and-white portrait of your adventuring party by Christopher Reach.

100% of the profits go to the March of Dimes, a great charity that helps moms have full-term pregnancies and give birth to healthy babies. We’re proud to be able to support them, so we pulled out every stop we could think of for this auction.

I hope you’ll take a look, spread the word, and consider placing a bid.

Our fulfillment partner, Studio 2 Publishing, didn’t sell out of the limited run hardcover copies of Masks that they brought to GenCon, so they’ve made them available on their website at our request: 24 copies are available at $39.95 in the S2P webstore.

This book is gorgeous in hardcover, and for a table-oriented book the extra durability is nice. These are the last 24 copies of the hardcover that will be made available for sale, out of less than 175 overall in the world. We have no plans to reprint Masks in hardcover.

As of today, Masks: 1,000 Memorable NPCs for Any Roleplaying Game is an electrum bestseller on DriveThruRPG.

DTRPG uses their “metals” system to rank top-selling products; electrum puts Masks in the top ~2.45% of all products on DTRPG.

Many thanks to everyone who has bought Masks, and helped to make it such a successful product for Engine Publishing!

With our latest numbers from GenCon and retail sales now in, Engine Publishing has crossed 2,100 lifetime product sales.

When I founded the company back in 2009, I wouldn’t have predicted that — maybe on a longer timeline, but definitely not this soon. It’s awesome, but also humbling.

A little part of me still doesn’t quite believe that we publish real gaming books that people buy and that are available in stores. Many thanks to everyone who has picked up one of our books!

If you’ve been waiting for Masks: 1,000 Memorable NPCs for Any Roleplaying Game to come back into stock, your wait has ended!

You can now order Masks in print (with a free PDF copy) from our online store.

It’s also available as a standalone PDF, as well as in a package deal with our first book, Eureka: 501 Adventure Plots to Inspire Game Masters for 20% off (in print or PDF).

To say that we’ve been blown away by the reception Masks has gotten would be one hell of an understatement. It has sold over 400 copies since preorders opened on July 5th, and the PDF hit #1 on RPGNow, #2 on DriveThruRPG, and #1 Small Press on DTRPG.

Masks has also received rave reviews, and we’ve linked to all 15 of them for your perusal. You can also download a free 17-page preview of the book to check it out.

Thank you for being patient — it took me longer to get these inventoried and ready to ship than I expected.

After a marathon session last night, with a great deal of help from my lovely wife, and after 90 minutes at the post office, $900 in postage, and a 13′ receipt, all preorder and contributor copies of Masks have now shipped!

Thank you again for your patience. I’m going to go fall over now.

I now have copies of the Masks limited run hardcover in the house, and packing them up to ship to preorder customers is well underway.

I’m aiming to bring all preorder books to the post office this Saturday, at which point the shipping time for the mailing option you chose (Media Mail, Priority Mail, or First-Class International) kicks in.

Engine Publishing is a one-man shop, and we don’t skimp on packaging — which unfortunately means that it takes me a while to do a mass pack-and-ship operation like this one (127 books). Each book (or books, if you ordered the package deal) will be going into a box with bubble wrap for padding, and between folding the boxes, cutting the bubble wrap to size, and taping and labeling each box, it’s a time-consuming process.

Thank you for your continued patience!

Softcover availability

I also have the softcover edition of Masks in stock, but am holding off on making it available for sale in our online store until I have 100% of the preorder and contributor copies mailed out. As soon as the big mailing is done, I’ll post again to announce the availability of the softcover.

Courtesy of Masks designer, author, and project manager Phil Vecchione, here are Masks and Eureka on the shelves at the Studio 2 Publishing booth at GenCon 2011:

Never mind that we’re on our second book and into our second year of publishing — that’s never going to get old!