Hi, this is **maxdefolsch** (u/maxdefolsch), from the Monogatari Series Short Stories translation project. This was originally posted on Reddit at [https://www.reddit.com/r/araragi/comments/9zzl0y/monogatari_short_stories_translation_project/](https://www.reddit.com/r/araragi/comments/9zzl0y/monogatari_short_stories_translation_project/).     # Three years of short stories Three years ! Today marks three years since the short stories translation project started, and two years since I posted the [**short stories masterpost**](https://www.reddit.com/r/araragi/comments/5eilqt/monogatari_short_stories_translation_project/). The history of the project itself is already detailed there, so I won't repeat myself. And today, we are proud to show you the first edition of the **Monogatari Series Short Stories book**. *** # Monogatari Series Short Stories book - First edition ## File : Monogatari Series Short Stories book - First edition - Web version.pdf   You might be wondering, what does this book offer compared to the original translation project posts ? * **Book presentation** : the most obvious one, this book is entirely designed to look like an actual novel (and more specifically, we've tried to make it resemble the official English Monogatari novels by Vertical), which means the stories, dialogues and translator's notes have a novel-like formatting as opposed to the dry Reddit formatting. We even made a custom cover using one of VOFAN's gorgeous drawings. The content of the short stories masterpost, with all the relevant information, is also included in the preface, introduction and special thanks sections. * **Updated translations** : it appeared that proofreading had been pretty sloppy during the whole project. Here, we fixed pretty much every mistake and typo we could find, and we're now confident our numerous checks got rid of close to, if not all of them. We also revisited all translations to make them consistent through the entire book, and improved their quality wherever we felt it was necessary. * **Additional material** : not only does this book contain all the available main short stories, it also includes what I call the "additional material" in the short stories masterpost, interspersed through the main stories, often with a design quirk to go with it. * **Cover art** : each story has its own black-and-white picture to accompany it. VOFAN art for every main short story, and various other artists for additional material.   Here's the table of contents. The numbering of the short stories corresponds to how I wrote them in the masterpost. Contents | Page -----|------- Preface | 4 Introduction | 6 Short stories 01-05 (Hitagi Buffet, Mayoi Room, Suruga Court, Nadeko Pool, Tsubasa Song) | 11 You and Nadekko - Chapter 1 | 46 Short stories 06-09 (Tsukihi Eternal, Karem Arm-Leg, Hitagi Neck, Shinobu House) | 57 Black Hanekawa's Cat Sign Astrology | 78 Short stories 10-14 (Tsubasa Board, Mayoi Castle, Hitagi Coin, Nadeko Mirror, Shinobu Science) | 85 Challenge to the Readers | 111 Short stories 15-18 (Hitagi Figure, Hitagi Salamander, Hitagi Throwing, Suruga Palace) | 116 You and Nadekko - Chapter 2 | 144 Short stories 19-23 (Yotsugi Future, Ougi Travel, Suruga Neat, Rouka God, Shinobu Figure) | 154 The Stray Snail | 183 Short stories 24-27 (Karen Brushing, Tsukihi Brushing, Koyomi History, Yotsugi Stress) | 192 Princess Beauty | 237 Short stories K1-K5 (As a human, Something wrong, And then, Why, With caution) | 243 You and Nadekko - Chapter 3 | 267 Short stories 29-32 (Hitagi Dish, Hitagi Hermit Crab, Sodachi Mirror, Mayoi Name) | 277 Special Thanks | 293   As you can see, omitted from this book are : Mayoi Welcome (short story 28), which I can't find anywhere; the crossover stories, Mazemonogatari and Tsubasa Lion, both because of a lack of translations and because they could fill an entire second book on their own; and the transcript of [Hyakumonogatari](https://www.reddit.com/r/araragi/comments/3zivre/monogatari_short_stories_hyakumonogatari/), the Bakemonogatari Drama CD, for similar concerns of length.   *** # You can even print it ! > One idea that someone submitted to me recently and that I like was to make a booklet, a printable version, with all the short stories in it. That would be nicer than having to search the link and read it with the dry Reddit formatting. ## Files : Monogatari Series Short Stories book - First edition - Print version.pdf Monogatari Series Short Stories book - First edition - Cover.pdf   As I mentioned, the original goal was to make something that people could actually print, so that they could have a nice physical copy and read the short stories even offline if they wanted to. Therefore, we designed our book from the start with that in mind. Earlier, I gave a link for a **web version**, and now, here's one for a **print version**. What changes in the print version ? * The cover is given in a separate file instead of being directly included in the document. It also has a 3mm overflow on each side. * The margins have different widths to account for left and right pages. * The page numbers are also on the left or right sides instead of the center. * Blank pages have been inserted between the stories so that the first page of a story would always be on the right. * Images are not compressed, resulting in a significantly greater filesize. * Some graphical parameters are optimized for printing. (CMYK vs. RGB, for example)   However, even if we did make this book so that it could be printed, it doesn't mean that we actually have a way to do it and have them delivered to you currently. There are several problems with that : first, we have to find a printing service that simply can print the whole book to our exact specifications, which needs a fair amount of customization. The cover, the colors, the mixing of text and images, the layout, all of that needs to be set precisely. It's possible to find such custom printing services on the Internet, but we have yet to find one that would make everything work perfectly and that would allow a very low number of copies (they're usually made to work in batches). Then, there's the whole money part. Without even talking about the copyright issues and possible legal ramifications of profiting off content that wasn't produced by me, I refuse to earn money for this project, as it obviously is something I've always done because I'm a passionate fan who wants to share cool stuff with the rest of the community. A consequence of that is that, if I want to have copies of this book physically printed (which I at least wanted to do for bluex and myself), it has to come from my own pockets, and so I can't do that for everyone who asks. So at the very least, you'll need to be the one to pay for the printing and shipping fees, and the logistics of me acting as a middleman between you and a printing service would probably be a nightmare. For the time being, the only way to get a physical copy will be to search for a printing service yourself and get in contact with them without my involvement. Still, I do want to try to figure something out. We're not done with this book yet (more on that in the next section), which will leave us time to get it done. **If you're interested in buying a physical copy of this book in the future, [please leave your Reddit username or your email address in this form](https://goo.gl/forms/GUYP4sVWYqSqwFM42), so I can contact you if we're able to set up an arrangement with a printing service. This information will not be shared with anyone else or for any other purpose, and we'll only use it to contact you in the event we do manage to set this up.**   *** # What's next ? As we all know, Nisio can't stop writing, which means more stories will always be released, and this project can never reach a state of completion. But that doesn't mean we can't strive to improve on it anyway ! We're publishing a first edition now, because we've already been working on it for half a year and we judged it "good enough" to post and share it with you as soon as possible, instead of staying stuck in "endless improvement hell" to try and make it "perfect". So, future editions of this book are definitely planned ! They will contain not only newer stories, but also little translation and design improvements that we still have in mind but didn't get to implement yet. There's no set date for it yet, we'll release it when we think there's enough new content to justify a new edition. Could be in three months, six months, a year, we don't know. And as explained above, we also want to use this time to figure out the "physical copy" matter. It wasn't a big focus of ours until now, since we were, you know, busy making the book, but now that it's "finished" and that we'll have less to do about the actual content, we can try to change the focus to the printing stuff. Hopefully we'll find something, and if we do, we'll tell you here.   *** I want to express my gratitude again, not only to all the translators, proofreaders, and raws providers who are the heart of this project (I may be the instigator, but I'm really just a guy who asks them nicely to do work for me), but this time in particular to bluex for everything he's done for this book. I can't overstate how proud I am to be able to show you all that stuff today, and it's pretty much entirely thanks to him. It makes me happy to see how much can be done by pure passion and dedication from fans. I'm glad to be part of this community. Hope you enjoy reading this book as much as we enjoyed making it, feedback is appreciated as usual, and I'll see you next time I have something cool to post !