Change of Direction

As I was finishing Double or Nothing, an opportunity was presented to me that I could not pass up. Cooperative Press has decided to clean house, and allowed its stable of authors to decide how we wanted to proceed with them. Having just committed to a self-published book which was going smoothly, I expressed interest in taking back the rights to my first book, Extreme Double-Knitting. Since then, there have been various delays — but I have been given at least a verbal confirmation that I will be getting my rights back for the book. The exact timeline has not been finalized, but I expect to be hearing from CP at some point in the near future.

The plan is this: I will be taking the rights back for Extreme Double-Knitting and releasing a revised and expanded edition under my own Fallingblox Designs imprint. I don’t have a solid timeline on this project, but I expect it to take about a year. I will hopefully have something ready for next Spring’s big shows.

Why a new edition? To put it simply, I’m not happy with the book in its current state. I made a number of decisions that seem strange to me now, and I have learned quite a bit since then. I’d like to incorporate my current knowledge and understanding of the subject matter (while keeping the substance of the book largely unchanged). In addition, there are several patterns which I would like to redesign for a number of reasons. It turns out that several of the yarns that I used are no longer produced or distributed in the US, and I will need to make new yarn choices. Some of the patterns were done in twisted stitches, an option which I’d like to play down. Some of the patterns were done in heavier-weight yarn than is ideal, and I’d like to redesign them in finer yarns. One of the patterns sorely needed grading, but I didn’t have the time. So there’s a significant amount of work; redesigns, new charts, new photos, revision of the text, new layout. I’d like to say it’ll take less time because much of the work is already done — but it’s still going to take a significant amount of time.

I’m going to do something similar to the last book and begin an email list for announcements. This isn’t a preorder mailing list; I’m not using it to make decisions on how many to print. I’m just providing information. If you’d like to know when Extreme Double-Knitting is revised, expanded and ready to purchase, sign up on the mailing list today. I won’t be spamming the list with regular updates; for that stuff, come here or follow me on Facebook.

One thing which I am concerned about is how to give an incentive to people who bought the book originally. Since I don’t have sales records, and probably won’t be able to get them, I have no way of giving a discount code to previous customers. I have some ideas of how to do this in the future, so I’ve put a “promo code” field in the signup form. There’s no use for that code field right now, but it might be useful in the future.

I will try to post book updates on the same frequency as I did with the previous book project: about once per month, toward the end of the month.

Thanks for your interest and stay tuned!