As I've mentioned in the past, the real nose-to-the-grindstone work on Book 1 will happen in February and March, when I take a sabbatical of sorts from my day job at an educational publishing company.

Publishing schedules being what they are, my last day in the office unfortunately needed to be pushed forward to February 5th. (Hopefully I'll be completely done with the book by the end of March, so I can spend some time working on the sketches and custom comics for the higher-level backers.)

sigh

The Multiplex: Chapter 3 eBook will be up by the end of February, with Chapters 4 and 5 to follow every month or two. The content should be done for them by the end of March, of course; I just want to space them out a bit.

I believe I've finished the Breakfast Club parody poster, which will appear on the Kickstarter backers-exclusive T-shirts — and probably be sold as a mini-poster, as well, in the near future. You can see the image a wee bit larger over in the Guest Strips section of the Multiplex site.

For the curious: The errored out pledges have been dropped, and the final tally now stands at 306 backers and $12,805.00 raised — before Amazon takes its transaction fees out, of course.

Thank you once again to everyone who has pledged!

And boy, did we ever.

Thanks to 318 generous pledges, the Multiplex: Book 1 Club of Awesome Kickstarter Project was an overwhelmingly huge success — not just raising the $7,500 goal, but nearly $5,700 more dollars, to boot —$13,194.50 in all. (I'm not really sure where that extra 50¢ came from.)

I've said for years that one of my life's goals was to get just one volume of my comics published in a big, fat book collection. I wanted to keep it attainable. :) But anyway, by pledging, you have really and truly helped make one of my dreams come true (or almost true, since now I just need to finish the book and have it printed). Thank you so incredibly much!

Some of you will have questions now, so let me anticipate a few of them:
When will my credit card be charged?!
According to Kickstarter, they have already started charging them! If it hasn't been charged yet, give it a day or so. In any case: very soon.

Kickstarter will attempt to remedy any issues related to pending or errored transactions for the next 6 days and 15 hours. Any remaining pending or errored backers on December 18th at 11:59pm CST will be dropped, so please respond promptly to any e-mails from Kickstarter about your payment information!
What happens now?!
Well, first off, we wait. I'm already working on the book, of course, but as I've mentioned before, I am taking two months off from my day job — in February and March — to finish up all the new material for the book and get it ready to go to press.

The bonus strips that I create will be posted as Kickstarter backer-exclusive updates (possibly spaced out a little so that, you know, there's still new stuff to post as we get into April, May and June).

If everything goes according to plan, the book will be ready for the printer by April.

Proofing will take an undetermined amount of time; we certainly have enough funds to go through as many rounds of proofs as it takes to get it right. Hopefully the printer I go with will get everything right the first time, and hopefully I will, too! I'm a professional pre-press artist, after all. This is my livelihood.

Which printer I use will have to be decided in March, because printing quotes are only good for about 30 days or so, but all signs are pointing to one of two printing companies based in China.

Once everything is proofed and approved, they require about a month window to do the actual printing, and then the books will spend two months slowly making their way across the Pacific to me.

So: we're looking at a July or August availability date. (If everything is relatively smooth.)

The books will, of course, be available in the Multiplex Store, but I hope to make them available through comics retailers and bookstores everywhere, as well. I will be enlisting you in a grass-roots distribution scheme to help get retailers to order the book from me directly — at a deep discount, of course.
When will I get my pledge rewards?
$5 backers and up: You'll continue to receive coupon codes for the Chapter eBooks as I finish them. I'm hoping to get #3 out in about 2 or 3 months (Winter 2010), then #4 out in Spring, and then #5 out in Summer.

$30 backers and up: Uh, obviously, the book will be available around July or August. I'll ship it then. 'Til then, you'll have the eBooks. :)

$50 backers and up: I will produce the Backers-exclusive T-shirts in April or so. I need to finish the illustration, of course. I will e-mail you when I'm about ready to go to print with them, in order to get your size and address.

$100 backers and up: I will send you your sketches with your books. (I will draw them after the book has been sent to the printer.) When I e-mail you for your addresses and T-shirt sizes, I'll ask you which character you want me to draw then. Remember, it's ONE character, and no complicated backgrounds!

$200 backers and up: I will contact you before February or so for photos of yourself, for your likeness. (More than one would help.) At this time, you can tell me if there's a particular Star Wars character you'd like to be dressed up as for the prequel comic.

$300 backers and up: I will contact you about what subject you'd like your strip to be about. The hand-drawn strip will be sent along with the book.
If you have ANY other questions, feel free to ask them now!

There are 46 hours left in the Kickstarter funding period, $11,395 raised (and counting), and Multiplex has just been named the Kickstarter Project of the Day. I'd say that's a good way to start off the day.

Thanks to your incredibly generous pledges, I'm most likely going to order 1500 books instead of the planned 1000. (For roughly $700 more, I would get 500 more books — enough to send review copies around to lots of comics, book, and maybe even movie sites, and possibly get the per-unit cost down low enough to unload some to distributors. Hopefully. Even if they sit in storage for a year or two before they sell through, it'll still be much cheaper than a second printing.)

If you have pledged already, thank you so much for helping make this book exist (well, soon). Your cards/Amazon Payments account should be charged on Saturday, or shortly thereafter.

If you haven't pledged yet, this is your last opportunity to (sort of) pre-purchase all of the eBooks, get the Multiplex/Breafast Club parody T-shirt, or get a cameo appearance in the prequel story in the book! If you just want the book, that's alright, too, of course; feel free to just wait until the book is available — late Summer 2010!
UPDATE: 300 backers. $12,236,50 raised (why the extra 50¢?). 15 hours to go!

So after my meeting with the tax advisor, we've figured out a (legal and ethical) way to defer any tax payments on the Kickstarter funds until next year, so it's safe to say that income taxes will not need to be factored into the Book 1 budget now, which is awesome news.

We're getting down to the final week in the fundraising period now! Last chance for people to join the Club of Awesome and get free copies of the eBooks, a copy of the book reserved in their name, an exclusive T-shirt, cameo appearances, and of course access to all the backers-only bonus material! It won't just be the strips from the upcoming book — I'll be doing some other special stuff, too. But after December 11th, you won't be able to see it unless you've already pledged!

Below (at the Kickstarter Updates page, anyway), you can see a work in progress of the Breakfast Club parody poster that will be featured on the exclusive T-shirt (for $50 backers and up). It's very much unfinished; there will be a lot more detail going into it as far as patterns on the clothes and lighting — and at least a couple of the characters will have more '80s-style hair.

This is — potentially — one of the best ways I've been wrong about something: I spoke with a tax consultant who assures me that most (if not all) of the Kickstarter funding will not count as taxable income.

We have a more in-depth meeting about it (and my other business affairs) in a couple of weeks, so I will let you know if his opinion changes after reviewing things more closely, but it looks like I can operate under the assumption that most — possibly all — of the Kickstarter funding will not count as taxable income. (This does not mean it's "tax-free" — it just means that the income taxes may only come out of the book profits next year, not both the funding and the book profits.) This would be, of course, fantastic news, because it would free up the $2,500 I was planning on setting aside for income taxes — and pushes the Kickstarter project into the black in the process.
If you previously increased your pledge specifically to help me with the tax load, please feel free to adjust your pledge downward! (You may want to wait until after my meeting, though, because it's not 100% sure just yet.) Whatever the conclusion is, rest assured that every penny of the Kickstarter funds will be applied towards the printing, distribution, and promotion of the book (and the pledge rewards), and that I will account for every penny in future Progress Report/Kickstarter updates.
Now Hiring at the Multiplex 10 Because of this tax news, I've canceled the $12,000 Challenge — but not the "Win a Job at the Multiplex 10 Cinemas" giveaway! That means I will just be giving away the "job" at the Multiplex 10 Cinemas to one random backer shortly after the end date, whether or not we reach the $12,000 mark. All the other rules apply: all past, present, and future backers at any level are eligible!
Paper Stocks I am looking into sturdier paper stocks than what I had quoted out before, so the printing costs will be rising somewhat when I get around to that. But I got some samples in and the stocks I'd initially specked out just seemed kind of… flimsy. I want to make the Multiplex: Book 1 collection look as good as it possibly can.

The exclusive Kickstarter backers' T-shirt (at the $50 level or higher) will sport a parody of the poster for The Breakfast Club, with some of the Multiplex gang standing in for the original Club. I'll unveil the finished art for this once it's made — before December 12th — but I've got to finish the (ridiculously long delayed) Multiplex: Chapter 2 eBook first.

Anyway!

For the final pledge drive special prizey prize giveaway thing — one and ONLY one lucky winner will win a job — at the Multiplex 10 Cinemas. The exact specifics of the character and how you'll be used will be decided once a winner is chosen, after December 12th, because I'll want to cater it to you at least somewhat — but you'll have a minimum of three appearances in or around the summer of 2010 before you unceremoniously quit, get fired, die, or something, and yes, you'll have dialogue. If the winner is a bit too old to be a staff kid, we'll work something out — perhaps it's having your teenage self takes your place, or you're a shift manager transferred in from another theater, a second security guard, or something.

(As with the cameo appearances, you must grant me rights to your likeness for the Multiplex strip and any print books in perpeuity and you have no control over how I draw the character based off of you, how I characterize you, or what happens to this character. Because it's not really you, obviously. It's a comic strip.)
And just so nobody who's won a comic or a poster/button pack will get bummed out: all backers at any level — including people who have previously won prizes — are eligible.
In Other News The Multiplex: Chapter 1 print comics have come in and will be mailed out early this week to anybody who has pre-ordered or won a copy!

Also, the winners of the Multiplex/Memento poster & button prize packs have been notified via a Kickstarter message. As soon as we get all your mailing addresses in, I'll have my merch guy Jackson send those out, as well.

I've updated the Multiplex: Book 1/Kickstarter project budget with the latest numbers and a few more accurate estimates on costs. It's not too different than the original estimates. As the project stands, I'll be covering approximately $1500 of the book and Kickstarter expenses out of pocket (not counting my living expenses, mind you).

As I've mentioned before, I have some money of my own saved up for the book, so the book is definitely a go; there's absolutely no question of that! But any additional funds raised through the Kickstarter project over the next month will certainly offset how much I'll be spending out of pocket and help me eat and pay rent and such while I'm finishing the new material for the book in February and March. The more we raise now, the sooner I'll also be able to get started on Multiplex: Book 2! Boring Details I purchased a series of ten ISBNs because for some reason that costs less than buying one individual one ($275 versus $125 for one). Weird, I know. I'm only counting 1/10th of the cost of that batch towards the Kickstarter project here, because it wouldn't be fair to make backers pay for ISBNs on other books I release down the road.

You'll also note the higher T-shirt cost than the previous graphic; this is partly because I'm angling towards a full-color design that will cost a little more per shirt, and because I need to produce more of them, for all the recent backers. Obviously, this cost will rise depending on the number of people who pledge at the $50 level or higher.

Here's a graphic for those of you who like to stare at numbers: