The Stones of Change

When the Light Goes Out is the first book of The Stones of Change, a fantasy saga by Z.S. Kerran. When we started, the manuscript was finished, and the world of the story existed in one other place: a map the author had drawn himself.

The site had two jobs. The first: show the saga’s world so that visitors explore it rather than read about it. The second: find the first readers before the book comes out, send them the book and hear back from them. So the site belongs to the saga, not only to the first book; the domain thestonesofchange.com stays for the books that follow.

The landing page is a writing desk at night. Under the lamp lies a book in brown leather with gold blocking, and beside it a horn, a dagger, coins and a letter under the author’s wax seal. The camera drops from the desk onto the map: a three-dimensional world built from the author’s drawing, with rivers, lakes, forests, mountain ranges and 35 roads with traffic on them. More than 70 places stand on it, from great cities to a lone hut, lit at night by fires and crystals.

A click opens a realm or a place. The camera flies to it, and a sheet of paper settles over the map with its description and an embroidered banner that unrolls from its rod. We drew the banners of the realms and cities ourselves. The pages on the book, the characters, the banners, the names and the author are old paper with dark ink, set in Cormorant Unicase and Spectral.

On a phone the map fills the screen, and a place opens as a card from which the paper unfolds over the map.

Applications for the beta reading are open until 31 December 2026. The readers the author chooses get a personal link where they download their copy, say how far they have read, and leave their feedback and a rating. Every copy is made for one reader: the reader’s name and the copy’s number are written into the book, which comes as EPUB and PDF.

The copies also carry a map of the world in the manner of a pen-and-ink drawing, drawn from the same data as the 3D map. Once the copies reach the readers, a conversation between them opens. Anything that gives the story away is covered automatically, and the author approves first posts straight from his email.

On a site readers open before the book is out, what it leaves out matters as much as what it holds.

• No accounts, no passwords. Each reader has a personal link. There is no password to forget and no store of passwords to protect.
• No DRM. A copy opens in the readers and apps people already use. What guards it against sharing is the reader’s name inside the book, not a lock that would make reading harder for exactly the honest readers.
• Reviews only from readers with a copy. Only readers who received the book can post public reviews and comments, and each says whether they know the author personally. The label shows beside the review.
• The world at the start of Book One. The site gives away nothing a reader learns only by reading. Places, characters and banners appear as the reader meets them at the start of the story.
• A lighter map instead of a stutter. When the site recognises a weaker device, by its graphics card’s name or by how fast it draws, it loads a lighter version of the map: a lower resolution, 30 frames a second, no forests and no traffic. On phones the map runs at 30 frames a second so the device does not overheat while you explore.
• No analytics on a reader’s page. A beta reader’s personal page loads no measurement tool at all, so their link never ends up in a report.

Besides the 3D map, the site is made of pages, forms and emails that visitors only notice when they fail. What we include in a build, from planning to hosting, is set out on our page about website development.