That’s exactly what I needed, Gary. Thanks!

CreateSpace does do hardcovers, but for it’s only for direct orders (i.e. the author buying his own book) rather than POD, so it’s not listed on their default options.

It’s $6.50 + $0.015 per B&W page (regardless of trim size, I believe). For a collector’s edition, you might use a fairly large page size (7×9?) that would allow you to fit a good-size novel in 300 pages or less, so that’s a printing cost of only $11 each. There is a $199 set-up fee for hardcover, though, so that does inflate the cost a bit if you have a very small print run. (I can’t imagine you’d be printing less than 100, and even then your cost would be only $13 per book.)

This is one of those things where you have to email their customer support directly to get the line on hardcover printing and set it up.

Hope this helps!

I like your idea of running four different kickstarts better than one big one. You run the risk of loosing peoples attention if they have to wait a year to get their rewards or to see a bill show up. If you do run the four, having more options in the lower to middle range would be better as you are more likely to get repeat investors rather than people who would put up one sum at the beginning of the project and then be tapped out.

I haven’t been able to find a price list for hardcovers on CreateSpace, but I’ll poke them harder.

I’d thought about paperbacks, but I want the limited editions here to be something special for early backers. Once I do a wider release, I’ll include paperbacks for sure.

Matt,

Check CreateSpace.com for hardcover printing. You should be able to get printing costs down to $15 or less depending on length. (My 400-page 8.5×11 hardcovers for e20 are something like $13 w/ their POD service, and shipping isn’t too expensive.)

Second, when I mentioned a hard copy, I didn’t mean just hardcover — don’t forget paperback. CreateSpace does those for something like $5 – $6 as POD. That’s what I was thinking of when I suggested $10 per additional hard copy. ($15 might be better for you, though.) Extra hardcover copies should be around $40 each, I’d think, given that the printing would be in the $15 range.

Obviously, you can get significantly lower prices if you do an actual print run, but this should cover small prints quite well.

As for giving away the 2nd and 3rd e-books, I see your point. At the very least, you should give them the option to buy them once you cross each threshold (an extra $5 or so).

I agree. It’ll depend on how the first one works out, of course.

And yes. Within weeks of the Kickstarter patrons getting their copies, these books will be published more broadly, at least as ebooks and POD.

(((The other option is to ditch all this and try to raise at least $60k for all the novels at once. )))

Eeeegad, no. Okay, you need $60K for all 12 novels – but you don’t have to raise the entire $60K via Kickstarter. Presumably you’ll also be selling the ebooks on Amazon and B&N after all the Kickstarter patrons get their copies, right? If those additional sales contribute a substantial amount toward the next threshold, it would serve both you and your patrons to count that income toward unlocking the next book.

Thanks for the extra thoughts, Gary. I see where you’re going there, but the costs don’t ramp down that well for the print books. To produce a hardcover costs a good chunk of change, and all that comes out of my bottom line. It would have to be at least another $30 each unless I get enough orders for a small print run. The omnibus becomes a great deal if all three books get funded.

As for giving away the ebooks for free, they don’t cost extra to make, you’re right, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have value. I would, when I hit those levels, add in new levels so you could get books 1 & 2 for $10 and all three for $15, without the bells and whistles. I actually lose money on the hardcovers compared to the ebooks because of the printing costs, but I’m hoping that we overfund a bit and can cover the extra expenses from some of the ebook sales. I expect most of my sales will be at the $25 level, which costs me nothing per unit to deliver, and I’d like to encourage the lower pledgers to step up to that.

Good questions:

1) The easiest way to get all the ebooks is to grab the $25 level. I might, as we reach funding goals, add in new levels so you could get the ebooks 1 & 2 for $10 and all three for $15.

2) For the print copies, you’re best to upgrade to the $100 level once the second book gets funded. It’s not cheaper for me to produce separate print books but there’s a bit of savings if I pack all three under one cover.

3) The best way would be to get the $100 level for all three books in print and ebook format.

4) You have that absolutely correct.

Thanks, Toby! I’ll make sure to make that clearer. I think it is a bit clearer on the Kickstarter page itself, but I just copy and pasted much of the material over here, and it doesn’t translate as well out of the Kickstarter layout.