I said I had a lot of news this week. This is part of it.

So, those of you who have run into me at various places online may know that a few months ago I let drop that after Shadow of an Empire released (Which it did on June 1st of this year!) I would be once again looking into the possibility of print copies of Colony at last.

Well, I have done so. And unfortunately … I’ve got some bad news.

Colony is just too long.

There is good news. KDP services now do proofs, which is great. Getting a physical edition hooked up and ready to go is easier than ever for indie authors with the number of options open to you. But … there are still some limitations, and one of them is size.

Normal books have this too. There’s just only so many pages you can fit into a binding without pulling of some special tricks. Which in turn means a more expensive book, usually quite a bit so.

So currently, the print limit available to me as an indie author is … 820 pages.

Now, for most authors this would be fine. Many authors will never hit 400 pages, much less 820. But then there’s me …

As of KDP’s last, revised estimate for printing, Colony would be around 1350 pages.

Yeah, I’ll bet you can see the issue there. Note that it’s not like Colony could be cut up into a trilogy or anything. As most reviewers point out, despite its length, it’s very much a self-contained story, and you don’t even notice the length there’s so much packed in there. But that length does leave it with some problems in the print department.

Which in turn means that Colony is back at the old “solutions” that have faced it since day one. It’s possible that I could shrink the text down to a small enough size to fit inside the 820 page limit … but at that point the text would be about half the standard size for a paperback. I don’t know how I’d feel about having magnifying glasses in the “Customers that purchased this item also purchased …” section.

The other old option would be to break it into two books, a “part 1” and a “part 2” that would need to be purchased as a box set. The issue there is that a box set is a bit out of my capacity, as far as I am aware. Plus that involves getting an actual box slipcover to go with the books, which is another project and increases the costs … It’s not off the table, but it’s certainly an edge case that’d be a harder sell to folks just looking for a book.

So, unfortunately, a print copy is once again in a nebulous place. Sorry folks. I know you guys want one (I get plenty of messages about it), but it’s still just out of reach.

On the plus side (and more on this later this week) Colony continues to sell at a solid, steady pace. In fact, it’s doing better than ever, and has gained some steady, constant momentum in the last few months. Shadow of an Empire‘s release saw it gain a nice boost, too.

Like I said, more on that later this week. For now? Unfortunately, a print run of Colony is still out of reach unless a publisher comes knocking asking after print edition rights.