Boom, there it is!
over 4 years ago
– Fri, Aug 30, 2019 at 11:41:12 PM
So you did it. We passed Age of Legend's number of backers (2,553) and by doing so we reached our third stretch goal! In every measurable metric (except one), this project has exceeded all my others (each of which were "big"in their day). As I mentioned elsewhere, I don't think we'll be able to take the #1 slot as that would require 4,670 backers, but how can we be anything but happy about how it's going?
Because people are curious about the numbers, Robin crunched some and this is how my two best projects stack up against one another.
I think hitting $100,000 (less than $7K away) is a pretty safe bet (and would be absolutely amazing as only 5 fiction Kickstarters have done that), but beating Age of Legend's funding ($110,865) seems a bit of a stretch with the time left to go (especially considering these things tend to slow down after an initial wave), but we'll see how it goes.
Anyway, we are going to make the next stretch goal an easy one ($100,000) and we're calling this our "something old, something new" goal. We've been getting emails from people who are bummed out that they missed the Age of Legend Kickstarter (especially given all the bonus digital perks it had). Well, since we already have those items made, and it won't be much extra work to provide those things to people of this Kickstarter, we decided to throw most of them in. Which ones? Here's the list:
- Short stories: 3 additional tales: Pile of Bones | The Game | Burning Alexandria.
- Music: 10 original compositions by Will Musser which were inspired by Age of Myth, Age of Swords, Age of War, and Age of Legend.
- Screensavers: We'll give you the illustrations to the artwork Marc Simonetti has done for both Legends of the First Empire and two of the Riyria Chronicles, that's 6 different designs and 11 sizes for a total of 66 files.
- T-shirts, Posters, and Puzzles: No, we won't be making these items and shipping them (because that is a logistic nightmare), but we will make the graphics available, so you can have them printed at any number of online stores that accept custom graphics. This will include: 3 t-shirt designs, 6 posters, and 6 puzzles.
Now, that's great for new backers, but it doesn't provide anything additional for people who have supported both projects. So let's throw in something that will be new to all backers, shall we?
- Short Story: Little Wren and the Big Forest. Most know of Brin's hatred for Gronbach, a lying dwarven magistrate who betrayed Persephone and members of her party when they were ridding Neith of the Balgargarath. But few have read the fairytale she created that helped make him so despised. This story was written for Grim Oak's Press's Unfettered II anthology, so giving it away won't put any additional writing burden on me or editing work on Robin's shoulders.
In other news, we've added a few more foreign countries to the 1-book and 5-book reward levels, and we've calculated the various discounts that will exist for the 40 combinations of 2-book, 3-book, and 4-book packages.
I know that's really hard to read, so click on the graphic for a high-resolution version. Bottom line, non-US people who will be purchasing the hardcover of Age of Death and at least one additional hardcover from the series will save between $14 and $57 off the cost of shipping.
Well, that's about all for now. We have officially finished the 8th full-day of the Kickstarter and we have 10 full days and one partial left. It'll be interesting to see how high this can climb.
