This time last year we had 33 publications on the schedule. Due to so many different reasons—printing and shipping, working with people who have dumb day jobs until they can sustain themselves through their art, being people who have dumb day jobs until we can sustain working solely on the stuff we love, illness, families, moving... you know, life, etc.—we only got 27 of them out before the clock ran out. But in The Age of Covid, 80% is not bad. Not bad at all. And it's still our biggest year to date. (Read all about it here.)
2021 Year in Review
But this year...
In 2022 we're doing even more!
Why, if we didn't accomplish all we'd set out to do last year, would we add even more to the schedule this year? Great question, and one we've asked ourselves, too. Which is why we've made some changes (again, you can read about it in more detail here ).
Basically, we've staffed up and streamlined processes so that we have greater capacity to work with more artists and authors and game developers.... ohhhhh myyyyyyy.
Here's a few of the things we're working on this year:
16 novels including:
- 8 New Novel Serieseseses
- 2 Debut Novelists
- Expansions to 4 existing novel serieseseses
20 Comics and Graphic Novels including
- a wide expansion to the Outland Universe, the revival of several of Barry Blair's 1980s comic series
- 2 expansions to other existing comic serieseseses
- 5 new comic serieseseses
- 7 graphic novels
- 1 Outland original reboot
13 Games including:
- 1 kids game
- 9 RPGs
- 1 card game
- 1 board game
5 Anthologies featuring even more diversity in contributors and content than ever.
2 Children's Books and 1 Children's Card Game
1 Cool Artsy Book that doesn't quite fit into a category but is amazing.
Over 20 Kickstarters just in the first half of the year.
And expansions to many Outland Worlds including Althingi; Outland Universe; Nightfell; Hopeless, Maine; Sorghum & Spear; and Vikingverse.
I can't tell you how excited we are for this year's publications.
But wait, there's more!
In addition to all this yummy stuff going out, we're making changes to the way we do things. Some of this is behind the scenes and includes bringing on more people from diverse backgrounds, nurturing our community of creators, and streamlining some of our processes. But what you can expect to see this year is:
- Outland presence at Planet Comicon KC with a double end-cap booth, in-booth interviews and creator tables, panel sponsorship, game room presence, convention-exclusive items, and probably more... we're still planning... AND we're going to be at Baltimore Comic-Con.
- More content on our blog and socials, including more Worldsmiths features, Outlandish Reviews like this Instagram live as well as on our blog, Professional Practice advice to share with other creators, content that uses platforms' special media features like short videos, and maybe some transmedia content that is actually a part of our IPs and Worlds. (Tara's fingers are crossed.)
- A semi-annual (maybe more) state of the union address, similar to this one but live on our socials, where we let you know what we've been up to, where we are, and where we're going.
- Reaching out to an array of venues for publicity, interviews, reviews, etc. as well as "local" shops for free test games and possibly Outland sponsored events, etc.
We love this little community of people we're building, and we hope you find a place with us, whether as a reader, game player, or co-creator. Or all of the above.
So thank you for being with us this far.
And we hope you're excited for what's to come your way this year. In fact... as a little bit of a spoiler... we're going to suggest you might want to catch up on the following:
What are you hoping to see more of from Outland this year?