A mockup of what book 1 will look like (cat not included)
As of December 2014, an Indiegogo campaign to fund the printing of the first book of SSSS has reached the goal and support for the fulfilment part has been set up using Backerkit's services.
The book was originally said to include the comic up to and including chapter four, which concluded on the website on 20-Nov-2014. After completion of chapter five on 25-Feb-2015, seeing that the page count was still low enough for the shipments not to fall into the next higher weight category, the author decided to include that chapter as well.
Per the stretch goals, the book shall further include a bonus comic (which also magically grew from four to five pages) and a walkthrough of how the comic gets made.
As usual for Indiegogo campaigns, contributors could directly request perks for the money they pledged, and as the total sum climbed beyond the minimum amount, it unlocked stretch goals. The campaign ran from 21-Sep-2014 until 21-Oct-2014 and had a total of US$ 124,040 pledged, surpassing the 25,000 goal almost fivefold.
Minna sent the data to the printers around 18-May-2015, and the printed books were delivered to her house in central Finland on 05-Aug-2015. There were five foil-wrapped pallets with 10-books-each boxes, making for "a little over 700 extra" books beyond the 1700+ claimed by the backers.
On the same occasion, Minna announced that there will be a reprint, should demand exceed those 700 copies.
Available Perks[]
The campaign had an array of ten perks to select from.
A schema of the available "non-perks"
Again, the number of "perks with books" claimed does not match the number of books actually claimed, as more books could be added to the same shipment per "perk-less" contributions.
Skald's Archive
(US$ 7; 123 claimed) included only a PDF of the book.
Itty Bitty Kitty Treat
(US$ 25; 30 claimed) included the set of postcard prints as well.
Runo Spell
(US$ 45; 86 claimed) consisted of a copy of the book and domestic (Finland only) shipping.
Sheep Herder's Journal
(US$ 55; 600 claimed) had a copy of the book shipped to anywhere in the world, plus the PDF version of it.
Scout's Map
(US$ 65; 273 claimed) extended the Sheep Herder level by a signed bookplate.
Cleanser's Manual
(US$ 70; 73 claimed) extended the Sheep Herder level by a set of postcard prints.
Healer's Handbook
(US$ 75; 261 claimed) extended the Sheep Herder level by a signed bookplate with an inked cat sketch on it.
Troll Hunter's Bestiary
(US$ 80; 51 claimed) added a signed bookplate to the Cleanser level.
Mage's Grimoire
(US$ 90; 274 claimed) added the signature+sketch version of the bookplate to the Cleanser level.
Grade A Kitty Treat
(US$ 290; 35 claimed) expanded the Mage level by a portrait of the contributor's chosen character of the comic, "inked and with a happy little dash of color."
Stretch Goals[]
Only five stretch goals were set up for this campaign, as opposed to twelve for aRTD, so as to limit the additional workload incurred by reaching them.
The book contents have been expanded to include a "four-page" bonus comic and a walkthrough of how the comic is made. The electronic version of the bonus comic was made available to the backers on 24-Jan-2015 - and it's five pages! The walkthrough's digital version followed on 03-Feb-2015, with six landscape-formatted pages (that will likely become two-page spreads in the book).
A bookmark will be added, its back showing - per popular demand - a cheat sheet of the Nordic flags.
The miniprint pack has been expanded from five to six prints.
Last not least, the funds from the campaign ensure that the author will be able to continue making the comic for another year as a full-time occupation.
The content is as follows (entries of the book's own table of contents in boldface):
Table of Contents
2
Afterword
302
Prologue
4
Bonus Comic
303
Chapter 1
76
Comic Creation Walkthrough
308
Chapter 2
130
Thumbnail Sketches
314
Chapter 3
156
Lalli's Spell - summoning the Moon
316
Chapter 4
198
Misc Artwork
318
Chapter 5
246
Cast
end paper
Bonus Content
302
Flag Cheat Sheet
end paper
The Extras[]
The bookmark, with the flag cheat sheet on one side as promised, shows the heads of the crew (from the "sixtett" artwork) on the other.
A bookplate including signature and cat sketch
Just like with the aRTD book, the bookplate would be glued onto the left page opposite page number 1. However, it is rectangular, and it is the lower half that provides empty space for the ink drawing and signature, if any. No serial numbers were provided, but the bookplate has the words "first edition" preprinted along the dividing line. The upper half shows a Derpkitty with an extremely long, looping tail, even more exaggeratedly so than the Dagrenning cat's on arc 1 page 300.
The miniprint pack comes in a protective envelope showing a variant of the "main crew" artwork, blue shading replaced with reddish hues. It consists of six pictures (really not postcards, the backsides are plain white) showing scenes that haven't appeared in the comic (so far?), namely:
an adult Derpkitty sitting in a laundry basket
Emil at a campsite (four tents, two horses, and a camp fire) watching a smoking patch of forest in the background, presumably during a cleansers' mission
Reynir watching over five sheep in a gorge with a waterfall
Sigrun and two men marching on a trail along a fjord
Mikkel and a cow walking through a village of half-timbered houses
Onni, Tuuri, and Lalli with a rowboat landing on a steep, rocky lakeshore
.