Book!

Posted byRandall 123 Comments on Book!

There’s an xkcd book!

xkcd: volume 0 will be released in the xkcd store next week, and I’m going to some events in New York and California next weekend to celebrate the release and also help out some nonprofits.

The book contains strips chosen by me from the first 600 xkcd comics, including many of my favorites plus some which were acted out by fans or otherwise had a weird real-world effect.  The project took a little longer than expected because I went back and redid the comic selection and page layout myself.  I also reconstructed a lot of the old comics from scans (many high-res versions of early comics were missing, and others were lost in my 2007 laptop theft).  Throughout the process, I added various marginal notes and doodles.  It will be initially available in the xkcd store (and possibly later in some bookstores).

The book is being published by BreadPig, an adorable company set up by reddit founder Alexis Ohanian.  A portion of the profits go toward build a school in Laos, via the charity Room to Read.  There’s a possibility we’ll get to name the school; I wanted to name it ‘the xkcd school’ because of how confused it would make the kids who are trying to learn English phonetics, but I think they’re vetoing that idea.

We’ll be in New York on September 19th, San Francisco on September 21st, and Silicon Valley on September 22nd.  For more information on the events, check out the BreadPig announcement.  I’ll be doing some events to raise money for Room to Read and the EFF, including a Q&A where the questions are selected by reddit users.  You can add questions and vote here (hey, Reddit admins — if I bribe you with free copies of the book, will you artificially vote down the terrifying Romanian question?).

I hope to see you at the events!

123 replies on “Book!”

  4. Great success. Also: I propose that we name the school “Elementary’); DROP TABLE SCHOOLS;–“, if only to wreak havoc on the educational IT infrastructure in Laos (joking, joking).

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  5. Yeah, good news!

    Could I hope you to come in paris and then sign the album I’ll buy?…

    Or do I have to find a sign date in the U.S. to have a little unique drawing?… 🙂

    cheers, anyways! very good news for me! 🙂

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  12. At last!
    I hope that it won’t be a problem to ship them overseas! I also hope that there will be enough of them, it would be quite awful not to get one.

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  13. “I wanted to name it ‘the xkcd school’ … but I think they’re vetoing that idea.”

    I would hope so. What kind of egotistical douchbag would a) name a school after their webcomic and b) name a school after their unpronounceable webcomic?

    Oh… wait… nevermind.

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  14. Sweet! Does the book include the ALT text from the images?

    I recently pointed those out to a friend who hadn’t noticed them and he promptly re-read the archive.

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  15. Cool but… building a school in Laos? Couldn’t you do one laptop per child or something more technology related?

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  16. I can’t see why alt-text wouldn’t be included. I’m curious, though; are there any particular comics included that didn’t appear online, or went unpublished over the years?

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  18. It sure took you a long time! The NYTimes article was a long time ago! Anyway, I can’t wait to buy it.

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  22. The concept of an xkcd book is too delicious for words.

    And it’s made even more so by you donating money from the sales towards building a school; you have my utmost respect for that. I hope you sleep well at night, you should do ^_^

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  23. I can’t wait to read your webcomic strip after it’s ilegally pirated and uploaded to some tracker 😛

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  25. Please say this will be available through another publisher. The library I work for is very lame about smaller indie press works and we *NEED* to have this in the collection.

    Obviously I’ll need to start slipping roofies into admin’s drinks. 🙂

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  26. Nice! I’d love to get this. But what’s the price? I hope it isn’t $40 or something. I’d pay $25 for an XKCD book, but not $40.

    The response: “Supply and demand, biotch!”

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  27. Pingback: An XKCD book? I’d buy that. - Benny Ling’s Bling

  30. If it’s $18 or under, I’d be in for ten copies.

    Like, now. Immediately. Is there any way to pre-order copies?

    This is going to sell out and need reprinting. A LOT.

    Thanks,
    -d

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  31. For naming the school:

    Clearly you should solicit suggestions and have fans vote on the top ten suggestions.

    As with all things, there is a wrong way and an AWESOME way.

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  32. I’m definitely buying this, but, as was said, not if it’s anywhere NEAR $40. I’ll go up to 20, maybe 25 if I start getting antsy.

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  35. I think the scholl should be called:

    A school of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

    ^^)

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  36. It’s too bad the events in New York and Silicon Valley are so exclusive… Only 100 people with tickets that will probably be over $100… Man why couldn’t you have an event like the $30 San Francisco one in New York?

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  38. Agreeing with coming to Australia. I’ll be buy at least 2 of these books, but an autograph on one would make it so much sweeter.

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  40. Is the alt text going to be underneath each comic?

    If it isn’t, then this is kind of a dealbreaker for me.

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  41. ooooooooooooooooo best news since sliced bread 🙂 Whippeeeee. It can go alongside my PhD Comics books (that I still also have to buy :)!).

    I hope it has the Mr Bond centrifugal force and Fourier transform of my cat comics….. the best!

    ps: Come to New Zealand for signing! And not just Auckland!

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  42. Naming a school? That’s the kind of decision best left to the Internet, which is known for its good ideas. Wait, no, not good ideas, the other thing. Porn. My mistake.

    Anyway, here are a few more suggestions, none of which are pornographic (yet):

    -The Xtreme Kansas College of Dentistry
    -The Velociraptor Research Academy
    -The Munroe Book-Learnin’ Institute
    -The Learndromat

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  43. Congratulations! Publishing a book is an amazing achievement, and I’m happy to have seen xkcd come this far. I am unable to go to the promo events (one of which is on my birthday D: What a present that would be), but I will definitely be buying the book! Looking forward to…uh…volume -1?

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  44. There’s no such thing as “english phonetics”. In addition to the standard problems with overlapping letters (b and v, k and q and c and s and z), you have entire syllables that disappear and the vowels are all over the place, completely inconsistent. So don’t worry, those kids will have bigger things to worry about than their school name.

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  48. `École d’anglais’ would be pretty confusing (but the project isn’t only about teaching english so it’s not that good, actually).

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  49. this comic – Locke and Demosthesis!!!

    BRILLIANT!

    you should do *more* Ender-verse – you could do one about Jane running Ender’s life – you could do the BattleRoom again from Bean’s perspective (I mean, OSC did it with a second NOVEL, you could write a second STRIP!)

    endless fun!

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  50. Demosthenes – sorry, i wrote that little bit in Word, and for some reason it auto-corrected? or something… sorry!

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