Kickstarter

This morning, a reader at AaronPogue.com asked what happens if the campaign isn't funded. It occurs to me that some of you might be wondering the same thing.

If it isn’t funded (and that doesn’t look likely at all, at this late hour), no money changes hands and no rewards are sent. That’s Kickstarter policy.

The book will still be published (of course), but it will not (yet) become public domain. We will still be able to post occasional updates here, sending notifications to the backers. So if we try this again with another book, or if we try something else ambitious with this book, those of you who have expressed interest in the project should hear about it.

I certainly have seen an interest in preordering the books and a willingness to pay a little extra for signed copies. Using Kickstarter just to fulfill that need is a little cumbersome, so we’re looking into ways to offer those things through the Consortium Books website and through our author blogs. As soon as that’s available, you can be sure I’ll advertise it shamelessly.

More importantly, I know a lot of you believe in our mission to secure books for the public domain. We've set up a page on our company site dedicated to our new Public Works fund. Check it out:

http://www.consortiumokc.com/consortium-public-works-fund/

Thanks for all your support!

Sincerely,
Aaron Pogue

In the first week of the campaign, I announced that everyone who made a pledge before the end of the day on May 31st could get an Advance Reading Copy (ARC) of the book once one was available.

I hope to have the ARC available no later than Wednesday of this week (nearly two weeks ahead of the book's public launch). Those backers who made their pledges on or before May 31st should receive their download instructions at that time.

But several of our backers have only learned about the KickStarter campaign since then. If any of you would like another shot at requesting an ARC, please visit the offer page at AaronPogue.com.

http://aaronpogue.com/the-books/advance-reading-copy-of-the-dragonprinces-heir/

Thank you again for your support!

Sincerely,
Aaron Pogue

It might seem a little early to be talking about overages when we've already passed the halfway mark and we're not quite at 15% of our goal, but we're just now really starting to receive some press attention. We've seen a lot of new pledges from just a couple articles, so we have high hopes for an avalanche once things really get rolling.

So now seems like a good time to tell you what we'd do with that avalanche! Consortium Books is currently publishing twelve books from five different authors. One of our goals as an organization is to acquire the rights to all those titles and release them all to the world.

So far, the other Dragonprince books are the only ones that have generated enough income through retail sales to achieve that goal. If we can acquire The Dragonprince's Heir through this KickStarter, any excess funds will go toward purchasing more.

$60,000 would put another book into the public domain. $90,000 would bring us to a total of five! But even if it's only a few dollars past our goal, it's a foundation to build on.

Thanks to everyone who has already shown support! I'm amazed and humbled by each new donor.

But this is just the beginning. A major goal for this KickStarter project is to draw public attention to the idea of a new patronage and to the Consortium's approach. If we can fund a $30,000 book project, you can bet we'll get a lot of public attention.

And as of yesterday, our big PR campaign is finally getting into gear. We published a press release at ConsortiumOKC.com, and we're mailing that out to a ton of local media outlets.

I'm also personally contacting a few celebrities from the geek crowd who might be excited about what we're doing. I don't know if any of them will listen, but I've got to try.

You can help, too! Please spread the word. You don't have to be a fundraiser for us, just let people know there's a writer on the internet trying something crazy. Point them my way, and let me make the pitch.

I'll certainly let you know if we land a celebrity endorsement, but we could do this thing entirely on our own. That's the magic of KickStarter.

Thanks for everything,
Aaron