EVE General Discussion

Hey all, today is the one year anniversary of the day when the Kickstarter campaign for my book about Eve Online's history concluded. I wanted to pop in to give you all an update on how the book is coming along.

At this point, production on the book is nearly complete. I'm making final alterations to the layout design, and doing the final tweaks to the text. Within just a couple weeks I'll be sending the files off to the printing factory to get a proof copy before approving final manufacturing.

There have been a few changes since the last time I talked with you all about the book here. First of all, I changed the title, because I slowly realized how terrible the original one was (A History of the Great Empires of Eve Online.) Nobody could remember it. Even my wife had to ask, "What's the name of your book again, honey?"

So it's been renamed Empires of Eve: A History of the Great Wars of Eve Online.

I also discovered that I was able to find a much stronger narrative, and a much deeper amount of information than I ever imagined possible. So the book changed its scope a bit. I wrote over 100,000 words covering the entire first decade of nullsec, but discovered that trying to cram everything into one book made it a confusing story. Rather than scrapping the last 1/5 of the book, the last two years (following the conclusion of the Great War) were split off into a companion ebook that all backers and pre-order customers will get for free. It will also feature some cut sections, and research materials that I could never put in the main book. I'm looking into a print-on-demand service for people who would really like the companion ebook in a physical form.

In this month's Kickstarter backer update (which is open to anybody to read) I included a rough timeline of the book and what the narrative covers. It doesn't include everything in the book, but it will give you an idea of the main plot points, and how I chose to approach telling this massive history in an understandable way.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sciencegroen/a-history-of-the-great-empires-of-eve-online/posts/1243517

In order to keep the story clear and understandable, I had to stick pretty close to the main narrative. Which meant fairly few opportunities to tangent and talk about non-major powers. The Curatores Veritas-Ushra Khan conflict for instance couldn't be delved into. (However, I hope to explore smaller-but-equally-fascinating stories like that in the future.) Whenever possible I tried to use sidebars to acknowledge important or interesting events that aren't tied to the main narrative.

So far, feedback on the near-final book from Eve veterans has been really great. I've been fortunate enough to have more than a dozen veteran players (some of them sources in the book) read chapters - or in some cases the entire book - and offer their criticism. Occasionally one or two have disagreed with the portrayal of events, which is to be expected. But in every case I was able to work with them - and their adversaries - to get closer to the truth. In every case, we were able to find a chronology that even blood rivals agreed upon. More often than not, people didn't disagree about the facts of what happened in any given situation, they simply disagreed with what I chose to focus on.

Anyway, I wanted to drop in and give you all an update. If you have any questions, feel free to let me know and I'll do my best to answer. It's not 100% sure how long the manufacturing of the books will take, but I'm likely looking at a September 2015 release window.

Andrew

Fun times were had in the past