I can finally share the project I’ve been working on nonstop for the past month!
It’s the Christmas Demons book in hardcover! With full-color pages, new layouts, and 3 new, never-before-seen Christmas demons. It’s really, really good, you guys. I put a lot of hours into drawing new comics, writing new stories, and re-working the old stuff that you know and love.
Here are some of the new characters you’ll find in the book…
Ever since I first released my Christmas Demons comics, I’ve gotten lots of requests for a gift-able book form, and it’s finally here! It’s even family-friendly, so you can share it with your kids (well, it’s family-friendly as long as your family isn’t terrified of demons, a defecating Yule log, and the word “fluppin” instead of swears).
BUT…
you have to order it NOW if you want it to arrive by Christmas.
Here’s the link, if you’re ready.
And here’s the story of why it’s only available now for Christmas shipping…
The past several months have been nothing short of a whirlwind in the old Haunted Librarian household. I had plans to create a Christmas Demons book as far back as December 2020, but the launch of this Substack and nurturing this community took priority. I found that creating quality comics, learning how to run a business, and creating designs for prints took more time than I’d ever given to my professional life before. This is a little funny to me, because I actually set out on this path specifically to make books, and not a webcomic, but making new weekly comics felt like a bigger priority as I grew my little Haunted Librarian community.
I finally decided to move forward with the book in September, and mapped out a publishing schedule to make sure I could release this book by mid-November.
Then I faced the busiest, almost-hardest two months of my life. I found myself constantly putting out fires—both personal and professional, and trying to publish new comics and my first ever book at the same time. If I had to do it over again, I would’ve managed my entire life differently throughout those two months, but by the time I could finally hit “publish” on my book, it was already the first day of December, not mid-November.
I comforted myself with the knowledge that, in 72 hours, the book would be available with two-day shipping on Amazon Prime (😈) and for the next three weeks, I could focus 100% on promoting this awesome, December-appropriate book that I lost so much sleep over. I fretted a bit about releasing it early December instead of mid-November, but I reasoned that there would still be several weeks where people could order the book as gifts.
Dear reader, this was not so.
Yes, you can order the book on Amazon right now. Will it arrive at your house with the promised 2-day shipping that was long foretold by the elders of Amazon?
No.
Will it be available before Christmas?
Possibly, but only if you order in the next 24hrs. If you click on the link here, you’ll see that the estimated arrival time for this book is around December 20-23. (If you don’t have prime, you have to pay for shipping for it to arrive on time.) Essentially, my book has been back-burnered by the printers over at Amazon, and I’m not really sure why.
Perhaps I did not appease the Amazon gods enough. Maybe Jeffrey Bezos is still offended by this specific comic. I don’t know. For all the time I spent on the phone with customer service people, the only answer they seemed to have was: “when you print a book, you have to print the whole thing—all the pages, the cover, everything. It’s like, a lot of things you have to do.”
So helpful.
I’m trying not to weep uncontrollably over it. I even considered pushing the release date until December 2023, but it’s DONE and READY and a few of you will probably order it in time to get it before Christmas! Others of you will have to kick it old school and celebrate the 12 days of Christmas as originally intended: through January 6th.
ALSO, I did have the foresight to order some bookplates so you can turn your normal copy of the book into a SIGNED copy of the book! You can also order a 3-pack of high quality, limited edition vinyl stickers to make your gift even cooler, for yourself or someone else.
The bookplate looks like this:
The stickers look like this:
And you can put the bookplate in your book when it arrives, like this:
The signature is done by me (not printed on) so you can really make your Christmas Demons book shine. I can ship these stickers anywhere, so feel free to buy them for yourself or for someone else!
Just hop on over to my shop and peruse the various sticker options. If you’re a paid subscriber here on Substack, I will send you a signed bookplate and sticker pack for free! Just check your inboxes for a code you can enter in at checkout. Also, if you become a paid subscriber this month, or if you buy a gift subscription for someone else (which you can do here) you can also have the sticker pack sent out for free. It’s a nice way to get something physical and gift-able along with the online subscription. A code will be sent to you via email when you subscribe.
If you don’t receive the code, just let me know, and I will verify your purchase and send it to you personally.
There are also a handful of prints left in the shop from the last print drop, so if you’re quick, you can snag one of those, too!
Thank you for being here, my friends. I hope you enjoy the Christmas Demons book—it was a joy to make, and I have loved imagining this book making its way into your homes this Christmas.
Yours truly,
🖤Becca Lee, Haunted Librarian🖤