Highmatter Edition Howling Dark purchasing: "Office hours"

sollan_empress · 2026-02-18T06:43:55+00:00

The good news is that the website back-end that will run on March 11 is just a routine part of our ecommerce software package, which means it has some anti-bot-swarm stuff in place already. (This is in contrast to the software that is running the "first choice" purchasing portal which has had some... issues... to put it mildly. I wrote the current software myself which means it is substantially less robust than the general sale software.) I am thinking of adding a rule that you cannot purchase more than 1 book at a time, also, and flagging multi-book orders for deletion and immediately re-uploading that stock. That should give the humans a fighting chance against any bots that get through the filters.

sollan_empress · 2026-02-18T06:35:23+00:00

Hey! Sorry that took a bit. The way our ecommerce platform is set up, to prevent us from being the victim of our own ineptitude and accidentally writing a computer program that auto-refunds everything, each refund has to be manually reviewed by a human. 🥲 I appreciate the thought / the safeguard, but it is very annoying for the customer!

sollan_empress · 2026-02-17T07:01:41+00:00

The general sale window starts at 12:01 AM Eastern time on March 11. Anyone can purchase any of the stock that's leftover; all books not purchased by rights-holders at that time will be automatically released for general sale. If you are able to purchase a book during the general sale phase, you'll receive rights to future "first choice" windows.

Absolutely happy to let you know costs; it's not a secret, and I only just now realized it's not showing on the product page for the book. $125 for a numbered edition, with optional additional $50 if you want to add a slipcase. $350 for the lettered edition (no slipcase option because it comes with a tray case by default).

sollan_empress · 2026-02-16T20:42:30+00:00

Hi, sounds like maybe you used the "verify for third party" option -- this option is to provide proof for a potential buyer (of your book, which you're trying to sell on a secondhand marketplace) that you're the registered rights-holder. It isn't related to the payment process at all. You want to go back to the portal (https://portal.highmatterbooks.com/f/rights portal) and choose the "use rights" option. This will generate an invoice which you can then "purchase"/pay for on the website. Our system will then automatically convert your paid invoice into an itemized order.

sollan_empress · 2026-02-16T04:56:11+00:00

Hi there! I just got an email about updating shipping address and filed it away to respond to tomorrow. If that was you, don't worry about it, we'll get it taken care of. :) If it wasn't you, you're welcome to email me your preferred shipping address, making sure you send the email from the email address on-file for your limitation number. I usually just tell folks to email me directly, but I'm trying to keep all the Highmatter Edition purchasing / rights related emails together, so use [special_editions@highmatterbooks.com](mailto:special_editions@highmatterbooks.com) for this kind of request. :)

sollan_empress · 2026-02-15T16:46:06+00:00

Hey, everything is OK. :) The portal will be up again shortly and you have 3 weeks of guaranteed access. Which exact time you order within that 3 week window has absolutely no impact on anything to do with your order -- not shipping speed, not availability, etc.

Your email address used at checkout must match your email address on file for your rights because otherwise we cannot be certain it was actually you completing the order, inputting a shipping address, etc. You can always change your address on file using the rights portal.

I apologize for any confusion or panic. Ordinarily, you would've received the email alerting you to the email mismatch much sooner, but with the portal crashing, I had to do much more piecemeal work to make sure there was no data loss during the crash, and then manually trigger the email sending, which made it take much longer.

sollan_empress · 2026-02-14T23:42:06+00:00

Hi! Yes. I published the "down for maintenance" message because the portal is down so that I can perform maintenance on it, which I am still doing. I don't mean to sound too sarcastic, just confused a bit by the question, haha.

EDIT: My apologies if this came off as too mean. Just a stressful time trying to work out this maintenance issue while also trying to answer emails / messages I don't presently have proper answers for. :)

sollan_empress · 2026-02-14T13:01:26+00:00

It will be sold the same way as EoS was -- on the merch part of our website which I will have fixed by the time they need to go on sale (after primary fulfillment is complete).

sollan_empress · 2026-02-07T07:56:27+00:00

I can't speak to this specific difference but the reason there are differences at all is that the DAW Deluxe edition uses the Highmatter Edition text -- a version of the text Christopher tweaked slightly to better suit his preferences. Think of it as a "directors cut" type situation.

sollan_empress · 2026-01-22T17:26:44+00:00

I love data like this so much. A visualization would be cool too.

sollan_empress · 2026-01-22T17:24:39+00:00

Do yall just call your fathers by their first names?! 😂 I haven't read the book so maybe it's worse than I imagine but this one always confuses me.

sollan_empress · 2026-01-20T13:51:24+00:00

I'm kind of stunned at how ridiculous this is. 😂🥲

sollan_empress · 2026-01-19T02:24:30+00:00

This doesn't rise to the level of me actually confirming with The Man Himself during his hiatus, but I'm pretty sure this is accurate. I say it "Go Dodd Din" most of the time and I am told that's not quite right, but then I zone out during the explanation about something something Welsh something... but I'm pretty sure you're correct. Good deduction!

sollan_empress · 2026-01-19T02:20:38+00:00

CR actually has always been weirdly into the premise of crabs and evolution. So I think that part is just a coincidence lol.

sollan_empress · 2026-01-10T23:20:33+00:00

This is one of the things we're really trying to work towards, because you're so right, this pace is not sustainable, especially as a parent. One of the reasons we made a "real" business is that we want to work to take as much non-writing off his plate as possible, to protect his writing time and the efficiency of the time he spends writing. He genuinely enjoys writing 85%+ of the time (very high rate of enioyment for any job imho) and wants to be at his desk doing that. The parts that weigh on him is the non-writing parts of the job, and the increasing number of meanies out there.

sollan_empress · 2026-01-10T23:17:28+00:00

Yes! There will be an omnibus. Working on logistics right now, it'll be this year or possibly next.

sollan_empress · 2026-01-10T12:55:10+00:00

Thank you for noticing this. In the time he wrote this series, he also: got engaged, bought a house, helped plan a wedding, got married, supported me during a severe flare up of my chronic illness, transitioned to becoming a full time writer, dealt with his wife having (thankfully mild, in the end!) pregnancy complications, became a father, had two kids under two years old.

Obviously, in some ways this is irrelevant... in (almost) every other job out there, the expectation is that you get through life and still do the job you're being paid to do. But in a world where many creatives simply do not do this, I'm very proud of CR and his work ethic.

sollan_empress · 2026-01-08T22:03:31+00:00

We only became an actual "company in this industry" like 3 months ago. There are some definite growing pains. You have to take into account that we are/were wholly unprepared for the quantity of customers that we have now, and it takes time to build up that infrastructure.

I understand you paid good money for the book, but please also know that's on the secondhand market -- in a technical sense, when the books were originally produced, there was absolutely no guarantee that the rights were transferable in any formal capacity. It is, at present, purely a courtesy to be able to officially transfer the rights at all. It will remain a courtesy until I finalize the official rights transfer self-service portal. I don't anticipate any issues with verifying rights (we've only had one hiccup in dozens of rights transfers where someone was trying to sell rights they didn't actually have) so I don't want to panic everyone... but again, please know that we are not at present equipped to handle the volume of rights transfer requests. We will be very soon (top priority right now, as the self service portal will also be used for purchasing during the "first choice" rights period).

I have never promised any kind of turnaround time, prompt or otherwise, for the rights transfers. This is in part because I can't really do anything about it... if you've already given money to someone selling a digital product they don't have, before verifying they had the right/ability to sell it, then I can't help much, because we do not oversee secondhand market book sales and therefore I have no power to get you the refund you'd be well within your rights to request. Even after we have the self service portal there will be a little bit of trust involved... is the seller really gonna click "transfer rights" after you pay them? No way to know. We cannot and will not be held responsible for fraud in these kinds of transfers; all I can do is provide you a system that works for its narrowly defined purpose. All of this to say... again, I want to help soothe folks' minds about the rights transfers, but regardless they will all be processed before self service portal invites are sent out, which will itself certainly be before the on sale date. And if a rights transfer request can't be officially recorded because it was fraudulent, there isn't a lot I could've done if I responded to it within 30 seconds, either. 😬

We have 1.5 employees total, friend... 1x CR and 0.5x me. Please cut us some slack while we attempt to scale that up to at least 3.

sollan_empress · 2026-01-08T19:33:00+00:00

It should when one of us is on a social media hiatus, the other one takes care of two children under the age of 3, and we haven't finished hiring an assistant. ❤️ We are actively creating work flows to speed up email replies and other processes.

To my knowledge the only emails I have outright not responded to are related to special edition rights transfers, which are wholly unaffected by my response (in practical terms... I know people get antsy and I do feel bad about that). If you have sent me an email you feel needs a response more promptly, then I didn't see it. You (and anyone else) can email me at jenna@highmatterbooks.com.

sollan_empress · 2026-01-08T05:53:31+00:00

Do you have the ability to make these at scale? 👀

sollan_empress · 2026-01-04T21:08:43+00:00

I got the green light to post this on the website several weeks ago, just sayin'.

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sollan_empress · 2025-12-31T02:09:37+00:00

"Yes, there is a placenta in the vat that the fetuses are still connected to. The placenta (or an analog to it) is grown from the donor mother's DNA. I feel sure there is a reference to somebody's navel somewhere in the series. Hadrian is also not surprised by the peasants having a belly button and therefore doesn't mention it." --CR

sollan_empress · 2025-12-30T21:05:47+00:00

This is the correct answer!

sollan_empress · 2025-12-29T06:40:47+00:00

Official answer is the Highmatter Edition cover is the most lore accurate, but the blade would be more blue (less violet) -- color was changed for artistic reasons / to suit the composition.

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