Yesterday I got a little yellow box from DHL with a nice little surprise in it - my first copy of Megatokyo Volume 4.

If you ever find yourself publish books, you find that you always remember getting your first copy of those books. This is the fifth time i've experienced this phenomenon (remember, Volume 1 has been published by two different publishers.) You look at the box, gulp, and and hope that it looks ok and that you won't immediately open the book and find all sorts of errors as you open the book. Thankfully, this was one of those times when i opened the box, looked at the book for the first time and felt good. Really good.

I sat on my porch for about an hour yesterday just giving in a casual read. At the tail end of production, you are so sick of looking at the book content that it's really hard to get a sense of how the finished book is going to feel. Getting a finished copy a little over a month later is a refreshing experience, and a nice, satisfying reward because the final product is always a reflection of how much work you and others have put into it.

The CMX folks did a really nice job with it. It feels good, the paper is right, the size is right, the tweaks we made to the cover really made a difference (i hate dealing with color proofs, it gives me a headache) and the print quality is nice and sharp. The artwork in these two chapters, chapter 6 in particular, is far more dense and has much more contrast than my earlier works, and i was worried how it would come out, but it looks very good. The Circuity stuff, some it with far more density than i've every done before, printed really well and reads nicely. This book is a bit heftier than previous volumes (at 240 pages, If it gets any bigger we'll have to charge more for it. For the this book, the price is still $9.99 here in the US.) but it feels good. A nice, solid addition to the Megatokyo series.

The good news about all of this is that the books have printed, shipped and already in the various distribution systems they need to go through to find their way to your local bookstores and comic book shops. I can announce with a comfortable certainty that the books WILL be available and in bookstores stores the week of June 25th, so be ready to go out and snag one (er, if you want one) :)

At MegaGear we decided to not do pre-orders on the books this time around, mostly due to difficulties with processing pre-orders. We will make the book available in our store as soon as we have a solid ship date and can be ready to ship your order shortly after you place it. So, if you are interested in picking up a copy of Volume 4, you can do one of two things - head out to your local bookstore (Borders, Barnes & Noble, etc) the week of June 25th and buy your

copy there, or watch this site for when we announce that the book is available through the MegaGear store.

Switching publishers really delayed book 4 by at least six months or more, and it was a very difficult process to go through, but now that i sit here holding a finished copy of book 4 in my hands and it will soon find its way onto store shelves, I feel it was worth the effort. A lot of effort by a lot of people went into this book, and i'd like to thank everyone at CMX for putting up with me and helping me get it done right.

It's been a fairly quiet month here at Megatokyo in some ways (except for poor Kimiko and Piro), but i've been working towards a lot of things that will be going on this summer. I had mentioned in a previous rant that i might be doing a book tour at the end of this month, and hitting a number of cities including Los Angeles and ending up at Anime Expo - unfortunately, this won't be happening for a variety of reasons. I will eventually be doing a book tour, but it will be this fall. Also, i think it's better that i'm not going to be away from home for an entire week - we all know how many comics i get done when i'm traveling. I'm going to focus on chapter 8 instead. The only real bummer about the whole thing was that i was looking forward to going to Anime Expo, and i'm real sorry that i won't be able to attend.

Looking ahead, however, Seraphim and I WILL be at San Diego Comic Con July 20-23. Also joining us over the weekend at SDCC will be Hawk and Ananth from Applegeeks, so it should be a fun show. To that end, Hawk is auctioning off some of his artwork to try to raise some money for the trip, so head be sure to check out their latest auctions.

Oh, and i'd like to say thank you to all the people who emailed me with their thoughts about my last rant and my 'blurred' site. Your support and comments helped me feel a lot better about something that made me pretty sad. Thank you.