Thanks, Chris! Congrats on getting your second Kickstarter funded, and good luck with your next one too.

My first Kickstarter was for a novel and it went bust. I quickly re-planned a second “Kickstarter blitz” and only ran it for a week with a revised goal, and hit it. The next Kickstarter is a much larger undertaking and I’m not sure where to run it – under publishing or comics, as it contains both. I’m most likely to put it under comics as I think it will gain more attention there.

Really enjoying your blog, just discovered it!

Chris

Thanks for the clarification, Kelly. You did a great job with your drive!

Also, just for clarification, while the paperback and digital versions did not include interior illustrations, the limited edition hardcovers of the book DO include 16 pages of full color illustrations.

@Matt: Thanks so much for this great piece – I always appreciate seeing data breakdowns like this – and was especially happy of course to see that TGWWBK made the cut based sheerly on hard numbers!

– Kelly

To be clear, I’d be surprised to see the costs of a novel go past $12,000. However, I’ve seen some authors set their minimum goals much higher than that. For instance, Nancy Collins — who’s a well-known writer — shot for $27k for her next Sonja Blue novel here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/560256515/kill-city-the-new-sonja-blue-novel?ref=live

I haven’t shown any of my cost calculations here, but I will at some other point. Still, I don’t concur with your basic premise. Kickstarters can cover whatever the creator wishes them to. Moreover, I don’t think the backers particularly care about what the money goes to. They’re far more concerned with what they get out of it in the end.

For me, most of a Kickstarter drive goes to cover my effort. I write full-time, and I consider my time my biggest investment in a book. It’s how I feed my family. If I cannot cover the bare minimum cost of my time with the Kickstarter, I won’t write the books. I can hedge that a bit by considering the time a long-term investment, but there’s only so far I can go.

If you hired freelancer writers or designers for your game, I think you’d consider that part of the costs. There’s no reason not to pay yourself for your efforts as well. I’m going to write a novel as a stretch goal for the Exalted RPG Kickstarter, for instance, and I can guarantee you I didn’t agree to do it for free.

Thanks for being understanding about 7 and 10. They’re coming! 🙂

As for Jordan Stratford, who created Wollstonecraft, I understand the frustration, but in the long run I hope it’ll be good for both the books and him.