We’re keeping it simple today. Each cover is $100 for the designer work, about $50 extra for other garbage I have to do to make them happen. I’m tacking on a 25% “I have to put up with this” fee, and the entire amount will be increased by whatever percentage backerkit and kickstarter will take. It’ll be in the kickstarter, assuming there is sufficient interest.
I am not footing this bill myself, because paperbacks don’t sell all that well for me because I’m an indie. (I do mass market because that’s the size I personally like.)
Like the mass market, the trade versions will be larger font and line spacing for improved visibility for the visually impaired, which means additional printing costs. (I am not sorry for this. I want the books to be accessible for most people, and as someone who suffers from impaired visibility, this is important to me.)
I would charge $25 for each paperback for the kickstarter, which would be autographed. Maybe swag, maybe no swag. Swag will be a surprise, and probably determined by how much excess swag I have kicking around from the convention in November.
The tiers will be set to the following to make my life easy: 1 book, 2, books, 3 books, 4 books, 5 books, 10 books, complete mag rom com series (18 books), complete royal states series (8 books), and complete set of both series. (If you want 15 books, you will need two kickstarter accounts and submit two different pledges, sorry. Thems the kickstarter rules.)
Fulfillment will tentatively start in January 2022 or February 2022, depending on when I get the kickstarter put together. I might be able to do a very limited number of Christmas deliveries, but it would be very limited. I’ll fulfill as time allows, with updates on where we’re at in the process of getting the covers designed. It’s a huge amount of design work on my designer, and can’t be done all at once.
Books will be individually wrapped in kraft paper for shipping, groups of books will be individually wrapped and then wrapped together into a bundle before being shoved into a box. Newspaper/padding will be tossed in as needed to protect the books. Shipping fee will include the cost of supplies to ship the books.
That’s it, that’s all.
If there isn’t enough interest in trade versions, this idea goes to the grave. I have NOT selected the trade size yet, but it’ll probably be 6×9. What I have done in the past has no bearings on the choice of trim size for this kickstarter.
Happy reading!
If the kickstarter does well, a new tier to do the witch & wolf books will be opened, with a large tier of all three series available.
Will the mass market still be released normally??
Yes. Mass market is what I pay out of pocket for and will continue for as long as I do print editions. This is just for trade, which is a hugely extra expense. I’ll basically save anything way extra over the goal amount to do future trade paperbacks until the money earned from the kickstarter runs out, so the better it does, the more books will come back into trade edition. The Bernadette books will not be coming into trade edition; they just are too small.
Yes yes yes my sister has a Kickstarter so she can help me
As I have gone completely over to ebooks, I would not be interested in the trade paperbacks. I hate to see you go to all the extra work involved unless you can see a clear profit from them.
Thank you for your wonderful books.
That’s the whole point of a kickstarter. That way, when they go to distribution, anything they make is profit.
I have to agree with the above
Kickstarter for audiobooks? Afraid I already have thousands more print books on hand than I ever will be able to reread.
Not happening. It’s too difficult to distribute the audiobooks, and I’m not up for that.
As a handicapped old fart who lost my 97K library when the bank stole my house during the 4 and 1/2
years it took the system to admit that I was handicapped, I read only on my nook nowdays so I’m not a
paperback option. I do have and reread all your work under whatever persona you chose to use.
Do what you enjoy and profit from with the least hassel to yourself. I will enjoy anyway. Love your book dragon concept (hahaha).
I think people have the idea it’s a “If I do this other things are stopping” thing… which is not. Everything is going on as normal. This is just an addition, but one I am not paying for out of pocket. It will cost me 3-5 whole hours over a 6 month period of time, so I’m not particularly worried about it. Shipping time will be about 2-5 hours on top of that, but I’ll get my husbutt to help me with it.
It’s okay if you’re not interested. Really. This is for those who ARE interested.
You can format paperbacks on Lulu.com and interested parties can by from there. They print to order. And you can leave all the books you’ve made up on the site.
Lulu makes really inferior products and they do not have good distribution. I use ingram. I already own software that I use to format, so I don’t need any of that stuff.
I used Lulu in 2005-2007. Quality was extremely in consistent. Shipping fees were outrageous. The only positive I had at the time was availability of printing in multiple countries.
No idea how they are doing now. But more than happy to defer to R.J. since she has as system that works.