The Monster Academy Kickstarter Is OVER!

Wow. I didn’t know if it would happen, but we had a great surge of backers and bumpers at the end of the Monster Academy Kickstarter, and we knocked it clear past all of the stretch goals I set up. This means:

  • Every backer at $50+ gets the BNW ebooks for free.
  • Every backer at $75+ gets the Shotguns & Sorcery ebooks for free.
  • Every backer at $100+ gets the Dangerous Games ebooks for free.
  • Every backer getting a printed book gets the Monster Academy ruler/bookmark and the 12 for ’12 bookmark for free.
  • Plus every backer will get the 12 for ’12 ebook for free too.

We’re also going to be able to ship out a number of truly cool slipcases for people who lined up the full collection.

It’s trite to say that I don’t have the words to express my gratitude to you all for every bit of the wonderful and fantastic support you offered throughout the drives, both with your generous pledges and with tirelessly helping spread the word. Instead, I’d like to say I have about 600,000 words to offer you in thanks, in the form of the books you backed. Starting tomorrow morning, I’m returning to my keyboard to work on them, rededicated to delivering them to you as fast and in the finest shape I can manage.

Thanks so much.

Five Hours Left! Stretch Goals Lowered!

It struck me that every time I’ve run one of the 12 for ’12 Kickstarters, I’ve lowered the stretch goals on the last day. Although we seem like we’re cooking along here with the Monster Academy drive, I’d like to maintain that tradition.

I’m pretty sure we’ll hit the $15k stretch goal, as we’re less than $100 $30(!) away from that now. That will unlock free Monster Academy rulers/bookmarks for all backers getting a printed Monster Academy book.

I’m going to lower the threshold for the free 12 for ’12 bookmarks to 365 backers. That’s one backer for every day of the year, which somehow seems fitting. That’s only 23 22 more backers than we have now, which I think we can break.

I’m also going to lower the threshold for the free copy of the ebook edition of the book I plan to write about 12 for ’12, which I’ll start writing after I finish all those novels. This will go out to all Monster Academy backers. The new level for that is $15,922. 

Why that odd number? Because that would bring the grand total of the 12 for ’12 Kickstarters to $60k. When I launched this plan back in November of last year, that’s the number I’d hoped to hit for all 12 books, and now that it’s within reach, I want to do everything I can to see it actually happen. And if we can manage that, I’ll toss in that 13th book to make it a full baker’s dozen for you.

We have just over five hours to go. Spread the word for this final push! And thanks so much for all your support!

Last Day!

Last night, just before I went to bed, the Monster Academy Kickstarter drive cracked the $14k barrier. This unlocked Stretch Goal #2, which means that all backers at $75 or more now get a total of nine ebooks (the Brave New World trilogy, the Shotguns & Sorcery trilogy, and signed copies of the Monster Academy trilogy), plus a softcover copy of the Monster Academy omnibus. That’s a pretty stunning deal. Thanks to all of you who helped make that happen!

At the moment, we’re gunning hard for Stretch Goal #3 at $15k. Once we hit that, everyone getting a printed Monster Academy book ($35+ levels) gets a free Monster Academy ruler/bookmark stuffed into their book. Just beyond that, at $16k, we unlock Stretch Goal #4, which gives $100+ backers all 12 ebooks of the 12 for ’12 novels.

There’s more beyond that, of course, but I’ll be thrilled if we get that far. At the moment, Monster Academy has moved up the ranks of the best-funded 12 for ’12 drives to take the #2 spot. The #1 spot still goes to Dangerous Games, which hit $18,002. Topping that is a tall order, but we still have 11 hours left, so let’s push hard and see what happens.

A quick round-up of some of the press from this week:

Probably the favorite thing I’ve done for all of this, though, is an essay I wrote for Jennifer Brozek’s blog about what I love about Monster Academy. It helped crystallize the story in my head and realize what the story’s really all about. Here’s the money quote:

It’s not a story of a chosen child who fulfills his destiny. It’s the tale of a bunch of kids who were supposed to grow up to be the bad guys teaming up to do the right thing in the end, despite all the odds arrayed against them.

That speaks to me. None of us are chosen ones, especially when we’re kids. We’re not fated to succeed. We have to work for it, often against people who don’t like us for reasons beyond our control.

To me, that’s a story worth telling. I hope you find it to be a story worth reading too. 

Thanks for all your phenomenal and fantastic support. Here’s to a big finish!

Unlocking Stretch Goals = Great Deals

The Monster Academy drive is cooking along at a good speed. We smashed through the $12k stretch goal yesterday, and there’s an excellent chance we’ll unlock the $14k stretch goal soon. This makes the higher-level pledges look even more attractive. It works like this.

Right now (since we unlocked the 1st stretch goal), if you pledge $50, you get a hardcover copy of the first Monster Academy book, plus six ebooks (the Monster Academy trilogy, signed, and the Brave New World trilogy).

Once we crack $14k, if you pledge $75, you get a softcover copy of the Monster Academy omnibus and nine ebooks (the Monster Academy trilogy, signed, the Brave New World trilogy, and the Shotguns & Sorcery trilogy).

If we hit $15k, everyone at $35+ gets a Monster Academy ruler/bookmark too.

If we make it to $16k, a $100 pledge grabs a hardcover copy of the Monster Academyomnibus, plus a full dozen ebooks – every one of the 12 for ’12 novels. I hope you’ll agree that’s an amazing deal.

I’m pushing hard to make all this happen, but I could use your help. Spread the word far and wide in what little time we have left. At midnight tomorrow, the clock runs out.

Thanks for your support!

12 for ’12: Kickstarting Advances

Since we’re just about to wrap up the last 12 for ’12 drive this Sunday, I thought it would be a good idea to explain some of my thinking behind it when I started out, and why I wound up using Kickstarter for it.

Last year, I had this insane idea to write a dozen novels this year, a plan I called 12 for ’12. I’d had fifteen novels released by major publishers at the time, but I wanted to self-publish these books for a couple of reasons.

First, the chances of finding a publisher interested in taking a dozen novels a year from anyone but James Patterson is nearly nil. Most of them just aren’t willing to swallow that kind of volume.

Second, I saw a number of my author friends making decent money by self-publishing their backlists as ebooks. That seemed like a wonderful thing to me, but since I’d started writing novels more recently – and had written many of my books as tie-in novels for games like Dungeons & Dragons and Guild Wars – I didn’t have a backlog of out-of-print books that would ever revert to me. Writing a dozen novels fast promised to provide me with the necessary critical mass of books to sell.

I’m a fast enough writer to pull such a feat off (or so I hope – I’m still in the middle of it), but I couldn’t just drop everything I was doing and take a year off to write, so I looked for ways to hedge my bets. I made the novels 50,000 words each, as opposed to the standard 80,000 most books clock in at nowadays (or up to twice that for second-world fantasy doorstops). This is still a novel-length work, as defined by most literary awards, but it’s a bit more manageable. It’s also, not coincidentally, the target that those who participate in National Novel Writing Month shoot for too.

The real trick, though, was figuring out how I could possibly afford to spend a year writing novels. When you write novels for a publisher, the contract usually comes with a lump-sum advance against the royalties they expect to have to pay you. Self-publishing doesn’t come with a dime, and the only thing you get in advance are aspirations you hope won’t get crushed straight out the gate.

With five school-age kids to help feed – a set of ten-year-old quadruplets and a fast-growing thirteen-year-old – I couldn’t just forgo a year’s worth of income. Starving puts a real crimp in your writing speed.

But then Kickstarter came along.

Kickstarter is the most popular example around of a crowdfunding platform. You come up with an idea for a creative project, what you think it will cost, and a deadline for your crowdfunding drive. Then you post your plan on a page on the Kickstarter website, along with a schedule of rewards for those brave souls willing to step up and declare their belief in your idea with pledges of financial backing. If you hit your goal before the deadline, everyone’s credit card gets charged, and you’re off and running. If you fail, no one’s out a dime.

This, I realized, was the missing piece of the 12 for ’12 plan. With Kickstarter, I could replace the advance for me, guaranteeing me a certain level of financial support for the project before I even started writing. And if it turned out to be a bad idea – one that not enough people believed in to make it worthwhile – I could walk away having lost only a bit of my time.

So I gave it a shot. I decided to break the dozen novels up into trilogies and run a separate Kickstarter for each of them. The first one launched in November of 2011, and it brought in over $13,000, which put it in Kickstarter’s top ten fiction drives ever at the time. I considered it a huge success and set to work.

The second drive brought in just a little under that, which worried me for a bit. I decided to put everything I had into the third drive, and that gathered over $18,000, which set my head spinning.

So far, I’ve written and published four of the dozen novels, and I’m hard at work on the rest. I try to give each book the time it needs for revisions and edits – over and above the allotted month of writing the first draft – and I’m happy to report they’ve all gotten excellent reviews so far.

I’m reaching the end of the fourth Kickstarter now, for a trilogy of young adult fantasy novels called Monster Academy. These are set in a nation in which the good king decides that killing young monsters who haven’t hurt anyone — yet — is wrong, so he sets up a reform school for them instead. We hit the minimum funding goal of $10,000 early Saturday morning, and we’re in the final push until the deadline this Sunday, September 16.

While I’m grateful to Kickstarter for being there to help make that happen, the real credit goes not to the platform or even to me. It belongs to the people willing to step up and take a chance on this crazy plan of mine, not just with words of support but the dollars to make it happen. Thanks to all of them for being so brave.

After this final 12 for ’12 Kickstarter ends, it’s nothing but writing until the end of the year for me, racing against the calendar and the clock to deliver fun and fast-paced stories to the people who believe not only in them but me as well. And for a working writer, what could be better than that?

56 Hours to Go!

Earlier today, the Monster Academy Kickstarter cracked through the first stretch goal at $12,000! Thanks to Kent Wayson for knocking it over. We also broke 300 backers!

The drive comes to an end at midnight Eastern time on Sunday, September 16. As I write this, that means we only have 56 hours to go, maybe less by the time you read this. We’re heading into the final push.

That leaves us two remaining Respect the Streak stretch goals at $14k and $16k, which bring free ebooks to backers at the higher levels. There’s a good chance we’ll be able to crack those, and to reflect that, I’ve added a $75 level so that people who want to get in on the second stretch goal can bump their orders up to that.

Don’t forget, if you want printed books from the previous trilogies, you can add those onto your pledge now. All those dollars count toward breaking stretch goals here too.

Now hold on to your seats. I have a slew of new announcements for you.

Slipcases!

First up, I have a new add-on that many of my staunchest backers have been requesting: a handmade slipcase designed to hold all four 12 for ’12 omnibuses! Since they’re being fashioned individually, they can be made to fit the hardcovers or the softcovers as a set.

I’m working with brilliant bookhacker Sara Hindmarch (wife of my pal Will Hindmarch and a wonderful creator in her own right) to get these done. At the moment, I’m thinking of having them covered in black cloth with the 12 for ’12 logo splashed on the sides. If you have other suggestions, I’m open to them though.

Because these are handmade in a small lot, they are not cheap. The add-on cost is $75 for US orders. Add $10 for shipments to Canada and Mexico, or $15 for orders outside the US. That covers the slipcase, shipping, and the cut that Kickstarter takes, but not much more. Depending on how it shakes out, I might make or lose $5 per slipcase. This is not a profit center for me but a way to say thanks to my most loyal backers. I don’t expect to sell a lot of these treasures, but I know they’ll be given excellent homes.

Bookmarks!

Now, for stretch goals! If we hit $15k, I’ll produce a Monster Academy bookmark made to resemble a six-inch ruler from the Royal Academy of Habilitation. That will go out to all backers who order a printed Monster Academy book, and I’ll slip it in with your book when I send it to you.

If we crack 400 backers, I’ll produce a 12 for ’12 bookmark with the covers for all 12 books on it too. Again, this will go out all backers who order a printed Monster Academy book.

Plus a New Book!

Now for the big one. As well as the 12 for ’12 plan has gone, I just have to sit down and write about it, if only so that I have a place to point people who ask me about it. I plan on running a separate Kickstarter for it next year, after I’ve completed the 12 for ’12 project. However, if we hit $20k with this drive, I’ll send the ebook edition out to every backer for free as soon as it’s ready.

As part of this, I’ll list everyone who’s backed all four drives – a.k.a. the 12 for ’12 Hall of Fame – in the back of that book too.

Now, $20k is a looong way from where we stand now. I don’t know if we can hit it or not. If we do, I’ll be dancing-at-my-desk thrilled, and we’ll have ebooks for everyone. If not, well, you’ll all have a chance to get it next year instead. Sound good?

Once again, my deepest gratitude goes out to you all for your support. I could never have done any of this without your help, and I truly appreciate it. We still have 58 hours to go, so keep spreading the word, and don’t hesitate to get your pledge in – or up it if you like the new goals and add-ons.

Thanks!

Kickstarters for Your Consideration

I don’t just run Kickstarters like my Monster Academy drive, which just cracked $11k last night. I also back them too. In fact, I’ve backed more than a hundred Kickstarters in my time, not all of which funded, for which my bank account is grateful, even if I’m not. Here are a few (all right: several) amazing projects that I’m backing (or at least loving from afar) at the moment, arranged by the time they have left.

  • Deadlands: Raven: A graphic novel based on the Deadlands RPG, which I helped publish during my Pinnacle days. Greg LaRocque’s art looks sharp, and Chuck Sellner and Matt Cutter will bring a great story to it. Time left: 34 hours!
  • An E-Module That’s More Than a PDF: My friend Mike Bohlmann pushes the boundaries of what you can do with an iPad or ePub-formatted Pathfinder adventure. Can’t wait to see how well this works. Time left: 35 hours!
  • Megalopolis: An all-new graphic novel by Gail Simone and Jim Calafiore. When the city’s superheroes go on a killing spree, it’s time to put the town in your rear-view mirror – if you can. Time left: 49 hours!
  • Camden: A great tile-laying game designed by James Ernest, illustrated by John Kovalic, and published by Boyan Radakovich, all of whom I’m proud to count as friends. In it, you and the other players are shopkeepers in London’s market district, competing for the tourists’ cash. Time left: 50 hours!
  • Unexploded Cow: A classic Cheapass Game from my pal James Ernest. You heard mad cows into fields filled with unexploded ordnance from WWII. Even funnier than it sounds. Time left: 60 hours!
  • Perils of the Surface World: A set of adventures for Hollow Earth Expedition produced by my friend Jeff Combos. Great, pulpy tabletop RPG fun. Time left: 3 days!
  • Heroes of Metro City: I don’t know a lot about this game, but it’s a deckbuilder featuring superheroes, which is a double-bonus for me. Hopefully it could hold me over until Devin Low’s Marvel deckbuilding game comes out this winter. Time left: 3 days!
  • Dungeons & Dragons: A Documentary: A film about creation of D&D and the profound effect it’s had on our world. It had me at D&D. Time left: 4 days!
  • Tenra Bansho Zero: Jun’ichi Inoue’s tabletop fantasy RPG was a big hit in Japan. My friend Andy Kitowski’s bringing it over here, and it looks great. It’s smashing through its stretch goals too. Time left: 4 days!
  • Numenera: My pal (and fellow Alliterate) Monte Cook’s first brand-new RPG since D&D Third Edition features a science-fantasy setting placed a billion years in the future. Illustrated by the fantastic Kieran Yanner (also a friend), this already shattered the record for best-funded tabletop RPG ever. Time left: 5 days!
  • A Blossoming Honey Business: The cutest story of a girl here in Wisconsin who’s trying to raise money to expand her honey business. Sweet in many ways. Time left: 8 days.
  • 13 True Ways: An expansion book for 13 Ways, the upcoming fantasy RPG by my fiends Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet, both longtime D&D designers. I don’t even have the core book yet, and I want this. Time left: 10 days.
  • Gaming Paper Colors: My pal Erik Bauer makes the wonderful stuff he calls Gaming Paper, large sheets of gridded paper on which you can draw maps for your tabletop games. Now he wants to bring them to you in different colors. Time left: 11 days.
  • Are You a Werewolf? From my pals at Looney Labs comes an innovative version of the fantastic party game in which you use little plastic viewers to find out who you’re playing the game. Simple and brilliant. Time left: 11 days.
  • Invasion of the Saucer People: My pal (and fellow Alliterate) Lester Smith returns to game design with one he made for his grandson. It’s a light, fun card game with some cool stretch goals, including more games! Time left: 14 days.
  • Electric Velocipede: The award-winning speculative fiction magazine from my friend John Klima. Good reading on a regular basis. Time left: 14 days.
  • Burnt: An SF novel from fellow Geek Dan contributor Curtis Silver. It’s got a premise as sharp as Curtis’s tongue. Time left: 14 days.
  • Stay Alive – Not Undead: A zombie coloring and activity book from the talented and funny Dan Taylor. I’m looking forward to handing this to my kids. Time left: 16 days.
  • Tilt-Shift: A graphic novel written by Jose Torres-Cooban, reflecting his time serving as a combat photographer with a special operations team in Afghanistan. Time left: 16 days.
  • Transforming Collections: A book about all the unofficial Transformers toys and accessories out there, by my pal Phil Reed (of Steve Jackson Games fame). No one knows his toys better than Phil, and his passion shines through here. Time left: 18 days.
  • Dreadball: A minis game that comes off as sci-fi Blood Bowl. That’s enough to sell me right there. Time left: 18 days.
  • tremulus: A tabletop RPG of Lovecraftian horror from my friend Sean Preston with a brilliant design. I liked it so much, I gave Sean a blurb for it. Time left: 19 days.
  • Cthulhu Claus Greeting Cards: A set of Cthulhu-themed holiday cards illustrated by Jody Lindke and inscribed with words from my buddy Ken Hite. Fun for all ages. Time left: 23 days.
  • Art of Brom: Brom’s one of the greatest fantasy artists to emerge in the last 20 years, and his cover for Deadlands helped us sell a lot of copies of that tabletop RPG back in my days with Pinnacle. Here’s a gorgeous book filled with his best stuff. Time left: 23 days.
  • The Coriolis Defect: A fantastic time-travel tabletop RPG from Jay Little that, with some very cool mechanics, allows you to rewind time in your games. Right up my alley. Time left: 29 days.
My own Monster Academy Kickstarter is still going on too, of course. It ends this Sunday, so you have four clock-ticking days left to join in the fun. Take a look at these others while you’re at it. There’s a whole lot of cool going on there.
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Oh, plus a couple more I missed in that initial onslaught:
  • Geek Love: An anthology of geek-themed erotica in prose and pictures, edited by Shanna Germain. Features work by James Sutter, Jaym Gates, Lee Moyer, and many other talented folks. Time left: 15 days.
  • Skew: A SF anthology of weird stories on the Philip K. Dick scale, conceived by Ben Lehman and edited by Isabel Cooper Kunkle. Features stories by my pal Greg Stolze, among other entertainingly twisted souls. Time left: 21 days

And an IndieGoGo drive too:

  • Dry Spell: A romantic comedy film by Rockford, IL, native Travis Legge, about a woman trying to set up her soon-to-be-ex husband on dates. Looks like fun all around. Time left: 4 days.

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And another book suggested to me today:

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Plus more! I could probably do this all day:

  • Cheap Shot: A card game that combines rummy with taking cheap shots at your friends, by Lisa Bowman Steenson. Looks hilarious. Time left: 3 days.
  • Fallen City of Karez: A semi-coopertive fantasy board game by Elad Goldsteen. Time left: 24 days.
  • Low Life Miniatures: A line of metal figures based on my friend Andy Hopp’s gorgeously odd designs for his Low Life RPG. Time left: 10 days.
  • Wreck-Age: A stylish post-apocalyptic tabletop RPG and minis game. Time left: 3 days.

Geekerati Tonight! Google Hangout Thursday!

I’ll be on the Geekerati radio show tonight with hosts Christian Lindke and Shawna Benson. Listen live starting at 8:30 PM Pacific. If you can’t make that, don’t fret, the podcast version will get posted soon after that.

I’m also planning to self-host a Google Hangout on Thursday. Come watch me make a fool of myself and try to answer questions being shot at me through Google chat. Hopefully I’ll have figured the thing out ahead of then. Come ask me anything you like, and I’ll fake the answers as best I can.

12 for ’12 Add-Ons for Monster Academy Backers

The Monster Academy Kickstarter broke its funding goal late Friday night! That means every 12 for ’12 Kickstarter succeeded – four in a row. Thanks to all my backers on each one of my drives, including this one, for all your support!

One problem I’ve seen throughout the drives is that people who found out about the 12 for ’12 plan after the earlier drives ended wish they could have gotten in on the ground floor. I think I figured out a way to turn back the clock for them that still respects the support that so many fantastic people have given already.

During the remainder of the Monster Academy drive, backers can order printed books from the previous drives as add-ons to their pledges for this drive. These are the Kickstarter editions of the books, but they won’t be signed, and they won’t have the newcomers’ names in them as backers. That’s reserved for the people who backed the drives when they were live.

If you missed any of the drives, this is a great way to fill in the holes in your collection. See my latest Monster Academy update for details about our current add-on options and stretch goals. We only have six more days to go on this final drive, so get in on it while you still can. Thanks!

Monster Academy Is a GO!

Earlier tonight, the Monster Academy Kickstarter smashed through its funding goal and kept going strong! As I write this, we’re 101% funded, which means I’m going to start writing Monster Academy books this winter!

Thanks so much to each and every one of you for your support. It’s been one humbling year, for sure. When I started out with this idea, I had no idea it would go so well, and all of that success comes down to you.

I have some ideas for stretch goals beyond the Respect the Streak goals. I’m on the road at the moment, though, and I want to take the time to make sure I get everything write and explain it so it’s clear. I plan on having that up on Monday.

At the moment, we still have eight days to go on the project. That means there’s still plenty of time to get the word out so that more people can join in on the fun. For right now, though, I just want you to bask in the glow of getting this done. Four Kickstarters funding a full dozen novels. It just boggles the mind.

Thanks.