Midwasteland Kickstarter Project Released!

Here it is! Please check out the link or the embedded HTML (assuming it works!). If you have any questions or feedback, please post in the comments section. Otherwise, let's make this work!

Midwasteland: The Kickstarter Experimet

I'm not sure how well known Kickstarter is, but readers of this site and my work will soon become very familiar with it. As I've been hinting, I'm going to try to publish Midwasteland, a post-apocalyptic novel set in the Chicago-land area, through Kickstarter. Basically the way it works is I set a goal (in this case $5000), and then offer a series of tiers with different rewards based on the amount of funding each person or entity pledges. Once the goal is reached, so is the project and people receive their rewards. If the goal is never reached, no money changes hands. It's an all or nothing way to connect with my fans AND give them reasons to buy. So...what are going to be the rewards for my book? Here they are:

-$5 pledge: a copy of the eBook

-$10 pledge: the above plus a signed copy of the paperback book

-$50 pledge: the above plus a DVD to accompany the signed book. This DVD will provide a hosted tour of the settings of the book as they are in real life Chicago and the surrounding area. It will also include an interview with the author detailing his creative intentions with this novel and a brief bit about his life.

-$250 pledge: the above plus the author will also agree to write one short story (between 10 and 15 full computer pages) on a topic, character, or setting of the funder's choosing. These can make for unique gifts or corporate media.

-$500 pledge: the above plus I will agree to name a non-major character after the funder or his friends/family upon release of the book. Please note that this is for real names only (no requests to name a character Wanker McSillypants).

-$1000 pledge: This is the corporate tier. For this, a donating company will get all of the above plus, as I have peppered the settings of the book with ruins and/or remains of generic businesses, I will replace those generic businesses with mentions of real world companies (a presence or planned presence in the Chicago-land area is required to be considered). This is a wonderful way to have your business woven into an original storyline (non-intrusive to the story of course) and to have it mentioned for promotional and posterity's sake!


I plan on launching this project on the Kickstarter website this coming Monday, the 16th, barring any unforseeable delays. I will need some help spreading the word, so please, if you like my work, please pass along links or post status updates on your social media pages once it goes live! I love writing and I do it as much for all of you as I do for myself.

And if you have any thoughts, criticism, or compliments, please feel free to post them in the comments!

Echelon Now Available In Paperback Form!

You can now get a copy of Echelon in paperback physical copy! Simply click on the title of this post or the link in the upper right of this page to go to my Lulu site to buy the book. For those of you with eReaders, you can also get a copy of the eBook for $5 if you wish to show your support. That said, you're of course always welcome to simply download it from the DocStoc link for free.

Thanks and happy reading!!!!

Experiment Tim! (Part 2)

Okay, since I'm not the best in the world when it comes to planning out a business model and all the costs and expenditures that must be factored in, I thought I'd throw this out to the gallery and see what comes back. Basically, I'm likely going to be trying the Kickstarter route for crowdfunding my novel release for "Midwasteland", using the mechanics in the previous posts for a tiered payment/funding model. I am planning on setting a goal for $10,000 in funding for the project. Sounds like a lot, I know, but when you consider all of the bonuses and/or benefits in the tiers in the previous post, I think it's a number that makes some sense. But feel free to provide feedback if you think I'm crazy.

But, more importantly, I took the step today to analyze and research what it will cost me in physical hard costs to do this project. I went to www.bookprintingrevolution.com to get an idea of the costs associated with printing hard copy paperback versions of the books and having them shipped to me. I also tried to factor in an estimated cost to send them out to my readers who funded me (after signing them of course). It seems to me that these two costs represent what I would need from the physical book costs portion of my plan. Anyway, here's what I came up with:

1. Setup fee through www.bookprintingrevolution.com -- $99.99
2. Cost for 200 printed paperback books -- $986.00
3. My estimate of shipping the books to my home -- $200.00
4. My estimate of shipping the books to individual readers -- $400.00
Total book printing/shipping costs -- $1685.99

So...what am I missing? Anything? The rest of the costs associated with the tiers in my past post (free eBook copy, signed paperbacks, custom written short stories, reviews/edits of others' work) don't have much if any monetary cost. The additional addons I've had since (a burned DVD w/commentary video from locations where the book is set, free PDF chapters from my work in progress, acknowledgement in the paperback, naming characters within my next work after the donator) also have little cost (namely the DVD-RWs and DVD sticker labels).

So tell me, what am I missing?

Because if the answer is nothing, then this seems clear. Adding an additional $500 for buffer and unexpected costs, that gets me to 2185.99 in total costs for this project, assuming it isn't popular enough that I have to buy more physical books (which I hope it is!). So, setting aside costs for marketing for the moment, that means that if I get 100 people to donate to my project, they would have to spend an average of $21.86 for me to break even. And that would be if I only sold half the books! To me, that is totally workable, but you're the customer. Tell me if/why I'm wrong....