Oo, new book soon!?

[ChrisWaher]

Hey everybody!

I do know that the 'next book' discussions about when they will be released and whatnot are highly frowned upon, but I am not actually asking when the next book will be here. I am merely predicting that it might not be too long now and am pretty excited!

It has now been exactly 188 comic strips since the last book and almost three years. The previous books had 121, 180, 182 and 187 comic strips in them.

I am pretty excited! I have actually stopped reading OOTS from the web, mainly because it has become serialized and less punchliney and I now prefer the comic book format that tells a better story as a whole. I recently went through all four books (and the supplement books) again and I am quite excited!

Does anyone know if the next book is actually planned and what it might be called?

[Nimrod's Son]

Considering he hasn't finished writing it yet and also the mammoth pile of extra work created by the Kickstarter, I'd say the chances of seeing it this year are virtually nil. And no, no one but Rich knows what it will be called (if he's even decided himself).

[hamishspence]

How big a gap was it between the last strip of Don't Split The Party and it being published? That might provide an idea of how long it'll be this time.

[Porthos]

Thing is, as I have said on more than one occasion (:smallwink:), it's not just the strip count that matters but how many extra length strips accumulate.

Dungeon Crawlin' Fools had 122.5 pages of online content (121 strips and 1.5 pages of extra strips)
No Cure for the Paladin Blues had 197 pages of online content (180 strips and 17 pages of extra strips)
War and XPs had 242 pages of online content (183 strips and 59 pages of extra strips)
Don't Split the Party had 226 pages of online content (188 strips and 38 pages of extra strips)

So far, Book Five has 212.75 pages of online content (188 strips and 24.75 pages of extra strips)

If we presume that WaXP is the largest size for a book (probably a safe presumption given previous statements), then there is still room for around 30 pages of updates. That presumes that the amount of bonus content (bonus strips, splash pages, commentary, et etc) is the same of course. But it's been pretty consistent so far, so that might be a safe guess. :smalltongue:

[Sorator]

We also have to wait for a good point to end the book - that may be coming soon, but I don't think we've seen it yet.

And yeah, it's definitely going to be a while before it gets published anyway, because of the Kickstarter stuff.

[King of Nowhere]

Yes, we are, at most, a few dozen strips away from next book. after that there will be the extra scenes and commentary (but I think rich started making those along with the regular strip starting from after book 3, because book 4 came out very soon after the regular srip), and the time for printining.
So rich, that has so much free time he don't know what to do with it, it's not like he made a kickstarter that overshoot the plan by 20 times and committed to do a big lot of stuff by himself, will have no problems finding the time to publish the next book.

so, basically, yes, a new book will come out soon, but "soon" will probably mean "not before one year". the current story arc looks like it will need at least a dozen strips before it can reach a resolution, and after kickstarter the update pace has slowed down to somewhere around once every 10 days.

On the plus side, the first backer-chose story will probably be out within a month or two, and I'm looking forward to it.

On another plus side, if rich needs money to print the new book, I don't think any bank would refuse him credit now.

P.S. I agree that oots is better if read all at a time instead of waiting for every strip (even if reading every single strip like that you get more details), but if you can really stand still and not read it when you know you dozens of unread oots are just a few clicks away, then you really maxxed out your will save.

[Yendor]

How big a gap was it between the last strip of Don't Split The Party and it being published? That might provide an idea of how long it'll be this time.

About three months between the end of the strips and the book announcement. But for War and XPs it was nearly a year, so there's no real way of telling.

[factotum]

We're clearly nowhere near a suitable stopping point for a book right now, and as already mentioned, Kickstarter work is likely to take precedence for a good year or more, so I wouldn't hold your breath if I were you...

[Winter]

Even if Rich finished the next book "just now", it'd probably take a least half a year before it's ready (proofing, printing, shipping). Given we know his dense kickstarter-schedule and the massive heap of Todos and that the online strip is not near a fitting stopping point, I'd estimate the book will not show up well into 2014.
We might get the announcement in 2013, though.

We also do not know what Rich was working on before the kickstarter-madness followed, so it might very well be he was working on another side-book (like the prequels, the games etc) that is due before the next story-book shows up.
Given he usually seems to be working on the mentioned "side stuff" beyond the comic and only announces those projects when they are ready, I'd consider it probable he's still having one or two half-finished projects-we-never-have-heard-about on his desk.

I'd suggest to the OP he reads the online strip up to the current point from the last book. That way, he gets at least some new OotS for an afternoon while he waits. ;)

[Bulldog Psion]

We're clearly nowhere near a suitable stopping point for a book right now, and as already mentioned, Kickstarter work is likely to take precedence for a good year or more, so I wouldn't hold your breath if I were you...

This. The book looks like it's going to be longer than usual, because this story arc needs a lot more material in order to be done properly. 12 or 15 more strips would force a rush job, which is something I really doubt will happen.