I test-printed several copies of the Book of Maps galleys from Lulu to review formatting, images, etc., and in all those copies, the cover art came out fine. However, due to how dangerously close to the edges of the book I go with the ornate floral border design, in some copies that people are ordering, the gold margin part gets cut off. Sigh.

Here’s a BEFORE cover design preview. The pink part (the bleed) is where the cuts are made. The shaded in pale green part on the front and back covers are the margins, but in theory all of it should still show. It’s just a cautionary note that you’re getting pretty darn close to the bleed.

And here is the high-res 300 dpi 5 MB printable and free downloadable JPG image file for the BEFORE cover art:

You can click on that image file to download and save it. If you’ve ordered the Premium Package, then as you know, your order of the digital e-book (in PDF form) means you also have a limited personal license to print physical copies of the book for your own private uses.

The Lulu.com unlisted, private, direct hyperlink is just for your convenience, in case you want to print a physical copy of the book but don’t want to go through the personal fuss of figuring it out. =)

If, however, you want to print and bind a physical copy of the Book of Maps on your own, then download the above JPG image file (high-resolution) if you want to go with the “BEFORE” formatting.

Personally I prefer how the before version of the cover art looks, with the outer gold filigree margin as narrow as possible, but the logistical problem with that when you’re printing a via third-party site is quality control. There will be a percentage of books printed where the gold gets cut off and the green border part comes way too close to the actual edge of the book.

So to eliminate that percentage and make sure all of the orders people place with Lulu will have the outer margin of gold filigree, I have to adjust the proportions.

Here is the high-res 500 dpi 12 MB printable and free downloadable JPG image file for the adjusted AFTER cover art:

Even though this is 500 dpi and 12 MBs, much larger than the before image file, printing at the trade paperback size of 6″ x 9″, you shouldn’t see any differences in sharpness or quality.

The above screenshot from Lulu’s preview pages now shows where the AFTER pink bleed and green shaded margin areas are. Compare that to the before version.

About Purchasing the Premium Package for the E-Book & the Printed Paperback Version…

I’ve tried very hard to make this as clear as possible, and again, apologies if I’ve missed the mark. Let’s try this again. =)

I do not sell printed, paperback physical copies of the Book of Maps. Period. End. That’s it.

Instead, what I sell is the e-book, or digital copy of the Book of Maps, sent to you by e-mail (electronic mail, in your inbox only) as a downloadable PDF file when you order the Premium Package. It does not come with the Standard Package.

With that purchase, which is the +$10 upgrade from the Standard Package to the Premium Package, you also get a limited license to print personal copies of the Book of Maps for your own personal, private, non-commercial uses.

That means you can print out the PDF e-book from your home or office printer, all 722 pages of it (it’s formatted with mirror margins, so you’ll have to print on both sides, front and back of each page) and, say, three-hole punch it and put it in a three-ring  binder. Or get creative and find a way to bind it yourself into a book. Or take it to your local print shop to get it printed.

Or… for your convenience, you can also simply order a physically printed paperback copy from this third-party print-on-demand website called Lulu.com.

You’re not purchasing a physical copy of the book from me.

You are paying Lulu.com to print out and bind a physical copy of the book for you, and to ship it to your doorstep.

For your convenience, I’ve gone through the work of uploading and preparing the book for printing on Lulu, and then creating a private, unlisted, direct hyperlink to that prepared file so that you can easily and conveniently order it from Lulu.

The cost of physically printing the book looks like a “normal expensive book price” (I don’t know how to word it, haha) on, say, Amazon or Barnes & Noble because, look again– it’s a 722 page full-color book. It’s huge. And it’s print-on-demand, not mass production. That means the website prints just one single copy of that book just for you, when you order. Therefore the cost is going to be higher than what a mass produced book with a large print run is going to cost at retail.

SKT Revelation Tarot Study Journal

I talked a bit about the tarot study journal in a previous status update posting, here (you’ll have to scroll all the way down, past the Book of Maps stuff).

The above image file is hyperlinked so you can download the high-resolution cover art for the spiral-bound journal.

You can also download just the single cover art by clicking on the free download below.

If you’re crafty and can create your own trade paperback (6″ x 9″) size blank journals, lined journals, or some sort of typed up reference book for the SKT you’ve written up for yourself, or that you are sharing freely to other folks working with the SKT Revelation deck, then yes, please feel totally free to use the above image files for the cover art for the paperback book thing you’ve created. In fact, that’s exactly why these high-res cover art image files are here for your free, accessible download.

If you’re nuts about fonts like me and want to keep the styling and layout design of all your SKT things as cohesive as possible, here’s a list of the font types used for all SKT Revelation things:

Yes, please feel free to share what you’ve created (for educational purposes) with peers and colleagues on the Spirit Keeper’s Tarot Facebook Group. I don’t run that group, I didn’t create or start it, and I don’t in any way monitor it. However, I am a member and it’s a really positive and lovely place.

If you’re wondering where I stand on that kind of thing, as an artist/author, here’s the deal. If you’ve created something with these files, like an SKT Revelation study journal, or blank lined reading diary, or wherever your inspiration takes you, and use these cover designs just so there’s some aesthetic cohesion to all your SKT texts, and you want to share it with tarot peers, such as those in the SKT Facebook group, go for it!

If you’re savvy and you’ve figured out how to upload and create a private, unlisted, direct hyperlink to your creation on Lulu that you can share with your tarot peers, do it. I’m even cool with you adding $1.00 net profit to the order price so that you get a tip for your labor/work/time providing such a resource for others. Just don’t make it public.

For the legalese, what you’re doing is you’ve got a limited license from me to use these copyrighted images (the cover art and design) to create the SKT Revelation thing you’ve created.

My biggest condition to you if you do this is to make it explicitly clear that what you’re providing is unaffiliated with me and doesn’t have anything directly to do with me, and that it’s something you’ve done entirely on your own, but of course with my blessing. But I have given no oversight, no quality control, I didn’t supervise or review it in any way, I don’t approve or not approve of the content, etc. etc. Like, it’s all you, for better and for worse. 🙂 So long as you make that clear, I’m good on my end. ❤ You do you. =)

When it’s done in the spirit of goodwill, charity, kindness, and for educational purposes, you’re rarely going to hear a gripe from me.

It’s only when, as an artist, like most artists out there, I feel exploited or undercut, ya know, that’s the only time you’re ever going to see me get irate.  😀

Production Status Update: One Month Delay

Just an FYI: I think there’s going to be about a one month delay in the delivery times I initially gave.

Right now, everything is in the hands of the printers. They’re printing 3,507 decks, boxes, and little white booklets, and on the slow end, will take up to 50 business days. Then it’s the shipping time it takes for the containers of decks to get from there to here. In these global times we’re in at the moment, I can’t even give you a reliable projection for shipping time.

However, we’re estimating that physical receipt of the decks by us won’t be until the last week of August. (We had given the August/September delivery time.) Once we get the boxes, we need to do some quality control on our end, get the assembly line organized so J knows what he’s doing and I know what I’m doing and our home is transformed into a warehouse and production assembly line.

If you weren’t around for the First Edition status updates back in 2018, here’s a blog post with photos to revisit to get a sense of what goes in to packing and shipping your deck. And remember: what you see there in that post was for 1,000 decks. This time around we’ve got 3,507 decks. Basically, everything you see there, visualize that x 3.5. More than triple.

The above photo is what delivery of 2,000 Vitruvian decks looked like sitting outside my front doorsteps back in 2019.

Once that’s set up, we start packing and shipping. In case you need a visual, it’s not like all 3,000+ decks go out on the same day. We have to do it in small batches daily, and we then we take the packed decks in batches to the post office every other day. Assuming we start first week of September (or heck, even if we got ambitious and started that last week of August), delivery is now looking closer to September/October, instead of August/September.