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Pricing, plans and presents

Dr Deadstar wishes you a Merry Christmas

Terry Pratchett wrote the curse “May you live in interesting times” – and the times have certainly been interesting for the past few years. Pretty much a constant flux of change and uncertainty. We are hoping that 2023 will bring some stability.

As 2022 comes to an end we wanted to lay out what lies ahead. After a pretty disastrous two years with very few shows and our coffers drying up, where we ended up in almost a dormant state just to keep costs low enough to survive, we’re now starting to look to the future with a bit more optimism.

We’re looking at new titles, better ways of connecting with you all, and how to ensure we can keep bringing you the types of weird and wonderful stories we’ve specialised in since 2010.

Things in the pipeline

In the next year we want to release the following:

  • Volume 2 of our Dexter’s Half Dozen trade paperbacks. This one will combine issues 4-6 in a remastered format.
  • Dolphin Squad book 3. Danny is hard at work on this and from what we’ve seen so far, it’s going to be well worth the wait.
  • More 7 Shades (the second issue from season 2 is now ready for release, and Dave Clifford is hard at work on the rest of the season).
  • Age of Savagery 2. This was originally due for release mid 2020. It’s a compilation focusing on spotlighting new and rising talent. If you’d like to get involved there’s still time and you can find more info here.
  • There’s more… but we need to be realistic about what we can afford to print and promote… so they may fall into our 2024 release schedule instead. Watch out for another blog post in a few months.

Cost of living

It’s pretty difficult to ignore the economic scene around us. Prices have gone up for most things. Petrol, postage, costs for tables at expos and more. We raised our prices in 2018 for the first time ever and now, unfortunately, we have to announce the same again.

From 1st February 2023 we’ll be raising the prices as follows…

  • For our colour comics, the cost will increase from £4.50 to £5
  • Black and white comics will go from £3.50 to £4
  • Our graphic novels will go from £12 to £15
  • Our bundle prices will also increase – but you’ll always get a better price buying a bundle than from picking up individual items.

There are a few things that won’t change… a big one is that our ebooks will stay the same price. With no storage or print costs associated with them, we feel we can maintain their current prices for the moment.

Social media…

Right now, we have presences on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. Those won’t be going anywhere (hopefully! We’re looking at you, Twitter…) but over the years we’ve noticed those sites (particularly Facebook) squeezing us and stopping displaying our posts unless we pay for visibility. They sites are businesses so we can’t really object to them wanting to make money… but with our budget after the past few years that’s something we can’t often afford to do.

As such we’re going to be more active via our newsletter (did you know that if you sign up then you get a free ebook?). This won’t replace our social media – Facebook is still the best place to see our cosplay photos from events, for example – but will allow us to ensure that you receive the really important bits direct to your inbox and saves us having to compete with kittens for the favour of The Algorithm when we want to share something cool with you.

…and Future freebies

In the past we’ve offered select titles as part of Free Comic Book Day and other similar promotions and we’ve had a lot of great feedback from that (after all, free is a fantastic price to pay!). Over a decade of in-person events has also taught us that people like to see what they are buying before they commit, and that isn’t the easiest to do online. To counter that, we are going to make the following ebook titles available for free throughout 2023.

  • Dexter’s Half Dozen #1 (the non-remastered, original comic that started the series)
  • 7 Shades #S1E1
  • New Wasteland Fairy Tales #1
  • Dolphin Squad: Heroes of the Sea (but only the main strip. For all the bonus features from the book, you’ll still need to buy a full copy)

That way you can see the artwork and make an informed choice about which series to read next.

Wrapping up

2022 was an odd year for most of us. Many of the events we were due to attend were cancelled, and Covid is still a thing. But the year has also shown us that we can continue, and we intend to.

Dr Deadstar wishes you a Merry Christmas
Dr Deadstar wishes you a Merry Christmas

Happy Christmas, Solstice, Hanukkah and any other festivities. We’re going to wind down for the rest of the year and will see you in 2023!

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Life is expensive

© Creative Commons Zero (CC0) via ID 96918400 | Dreamstime Stock Photos

I don’t think it can be denied that life is expensive – every year costs go up a little bit for this, or that, or something else. For us, unfortunately, it’s time to do the same. After 8 years in business we’re introducing our first price rise.

© Creative Commons Zero (CC0) via ID 96918400 | Dreamstime Stock Photos
© Creative Commons Zero (CC0) via ID 96918400 | Dreamstime Stock Photos

What’s changing?

When Deadstar first started in 2010 we set our prices based on what we felt was fair based on what we’d seen on the market and what we felt comfortable spending to build our own collections, so our graphic novels were set at around £10, and our single issues of comics were either £3.75 if they were in colour, or £3.00 in black and white.

Over the past few months though it’s become apparent that we can’t sustain those prices in face of rising costs – so from May 1st 2018 we will be raising prices on some of our products. An example of that is Dolphin Squad II (oops… spoilers) which will retail for £11.99 instead of the £9.99 price that we released the first book for. Likewise, our colour comics will rise from £3.75 to £4.50 and our black and white comics will go from £3.00 to £3.50 each.

Why are we telling you about this price rise now?

With our prices having stayed the same for eight years we felt our loyal customers deserved to know in advance to give you the best possible opportunity to buy any last items missing from your collection at the old price.

We selected the new prices based on the same criteria we looked at in 2010: what other people in the community are charging, and what we’re happy to spend on similar products. We hope that despite this price rise you’ll feel our titles are still good value for money.

Is there anything that won’t be affected?

As things stand, we aren’t looking to increase the cost of our ebooks. Some publishers price their ebooks at the same rate as their physical releases on the basis that the same amount of work went into their production… while we feel that’s true, there’s no stock costs associated with ebooks. Once they exist, they will always be there and there’s no need to manage print costs, postage, table hire and travel to sell them… so we prefer to keep our ebook prices as low as possible.

If our rising costs have put you off buying a physical book or comic from us, at least take solace from the thought that, comparatively, it will now be cheaper than ever to start that ebook collection!

Hopefully, we won’t have to make another announcement like this until 2026!

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Dexter’s Half Dozen #9

Yesterday marked the release of the latest issue in Jamie Lambert and Dave Clifford’s highly praised WWII comic with a supernatural slant. It’s available now from our shop and all good retailers.

Dexter's Half Dozen #9 - The Abberrant
Front cover for Jamie Lambert and Dave Clifford’s Dexter’s Half Dozen #9 – out now from Deadstar Publishing,

Over the next few weeks we will link to reviews as we become aware of them. If you want to review the comic yourself, email us with your details and we’ll send you an ebook version. Alternatively, you can sign up for our reviewer programme and be notified in advance when new titles will be released to reviewers.

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Competition winners

A few days ago we ran our Cardiff Comic Con competition with our Mk. II doomsday device. The response was fantastic with guesses ranging from 75 grams to 17 tonnes!

After we sorted and counted the entries, first prize went to Danni Coakley who the Android tablet, our ebooks, a tee shirt and a mug. Second prize went to Michael Voysey (pictured below) and he won a tee shirt, a mug and 5 of our ebooks. Third prize went to Alexander Keattch who won five of our ebooks!

Photo: Well done to our prize winners! First prize went to Danni Coakley! She won the Android tablet, our ebooks, a tee shirt and a mug. Second prize went to Michael Voysey (pictured) and he won a tee shirt, a mug and 5 of our ebooks! Third prize went to Alexander Keattch who won five of our ebooks! Congratulations guys! Your prizes are on the way!

We’re already thinking ahead to our next competition. Keep your eyes peeled!

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Ebooks, you say?

If you’ve visited our store at odd times in the night you may… just may… have caught a fleeting glimpse of a new category. That’s right, we’ve been working on digital versions of our books and comics for a while now and we’re almost ready to launch our ebooks range.

Previously you’ve been able to find select titles on Wowio, but these have been limited in format and we haven’t really done enough to promote them. For the next few months our focus will be on digitising the rest of our range and making them available in a variety of formats. For financial reasons we’d always like you to buy direct from us… but we appreciate people love Amazon as well as more traditional bookstores, so we’ll be making our ebooks available from them too.

To start with Suncaller, Rising Stars vol. 1 and Not as Pointless as You Think will be the only three available in all formats but we intend to have all of our titles available as ebooks by Christmas.

So. when will this all happen? Well, last night we made Suncaller and Rising Stars volume 1 available to sponsors of the Faustus IndieGoGo campaign that we supported over the summer. We’re going to give them a few weeks to enjoy their rewards… and then on November 1st we’ll open up the store for everyone else to enjoy!