The home stretch
over 4 years ago
– Fri, Jan 24, 2020 at 05:43:13 PM
Just a little over 2 days to go in this campaign. It's only been a week, but I feel the emotions of running a whole month campaign coursing through my veins.
I had absolutely no idea what to expect when I started this campaign.
Honestly, All I knew was this:
-The Godsverse has been an incredibly popular graphic novel series.
-I had already raised over $30,000 for it on Kickstarter.
- The books in total raised less than $1,500 out of an over $8,000 spend on them when I launched on Amazon.
-The books were great.
All of those things, minus possibly the last one, were objective facts that didn't make sense, and needed to be tested out.
-Did nobody care that I was writing novels?
-Did nobody want more of Akta or Katrina's story?
-Were all the questions people asked for over five years just to blow smoke up my ass?
-Or was it the fact that I was releasing on Amazon, and not Kickstarter, where I already had an audience of fans who wanted more Godsverse books?
Two weeks ago I had no idea what the answer to those questions would be, but now I have a good idea that:
a) people do care about my writing novels. At least 196 of you as of this morning, and thank you so much.
b) people do want more Akta and Katrina stories; a lot of you, actually.
c) While I might one day figure out Amazon, Kickstarter is the home of the Godsverse, and I should always give people a chance to pick up books early here as a reward for supporting me now across 10 campaigns.
d) ANYTHING can be overcome.
Seriously, that last one is so important. I spent the first half of last year in a literal suicidal depression like I haven't felt since I was in high school.
These books, and everything I had been trying to do, was completely failing. Every book launch did worse than the one before it.
I was devastated and desperate. That's when I turned to you, the fans, and to Kickstarter again. I went back into production on a second volume of Cthulhu is Hard to Spell, my singularly most successful campaign ever.
I even brought on another editor to lighten the load and it made the experience SO MUCH better. I barely had a panic attack AT ALL the whole time, which is like a record for me and anthologies.
On top of that, I went into production on a second, and soon third volume of Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter.
That was SUPER SCARY, because people had been asking me for more Godsverse for years, and when I delivered, crickets.
So delivering more of Ichabod was a really scary proposition, but I made a deal to you that if we could fund a print run for volume 1 (which had been out of print for about a year) along with issue #5, then I would do at least a full second and third volume of the book.
And when I brought that to Kickstarter, after raising less than $1,500 on all my launches all year, you all blew it out of the water and helped me raise over $16,000, more than 10x more than during the past year of launching, and really turned around my year.
I honestly do not know what would have happened had that not funded. It would have been a devastating blow, but with its success, I felt like I was getting my mojo back a little bit.
But one data point is not a trend, and this campaign was looming heavy in my heart. I wanted to launch it in January, but I hoped I would be able to get the Ichabod campaign out before it launched. As a special surprise to backers, I actually printed the book in hardcover instead of soft, which added a couple of months to the production time.
They came into port, and were delivered on January 3rd, and I spent the weekend packing, then dove RIGHT INTO setting up this Kickstarter.
I knew I was going to do a $1 goal, because I had no idea what to expect. After all, in a year I made less than $1,500 on Amazon, and I figured odds were that I absolutely would not do much better than that.
After a year of bringing books around to conferences, and launching some of this series, I was pretty spent, and I had only raised about $3,000 of the $8,000 I spent on production.
On top of that, every book I launched in the Godsverse was doing worse than the one before, which meant there was no trend that I could find that would help me recover these books, and I was wondering if I should even ever write another book again.
In the middle of the year, around the time I decided to focus on Ichabod, I decided to stop releasing books and just redesign everything. I edited the books again to take out a lot of the cursing, and rebranded them so they turned into what looked like a consistent series, even though each book starred different characters in different time periods.
And that basically brings us to now.
You all have revitalized my love of this series, and shown me there is a place for weird, fast-paced, fantasy thrillers, at least on Kickstarter.
Instead of starting this year with a $5,000+ weight on my head, I've been able to relieve almost all of that burden. At my best guess, right now, we're about $150 from paying off my production costs and leave me with the possibility of either doing a fifth book, or maybe even taking the book to audio.
Now, if we hit $10,000, which is a far stretch right now, we will LOCK IN a fifth Godsverse book. If we hit $9,000, that will put it on my roadmap for the future, after the next book in my special new project list. I know you haven't seen that new project yet, but I promise you you'll flip for it.
I am so honored to have your support, and I wanted to bring you through this journey a little bit. This campaign has seriously lifted me up in a way I didn't expect, and as with all my Kickstarter, shown me that there is a loving and wonderful community that surrounds me.
Thank you for always being there for me. Now, my goal is to finish this out strong and get you that fifth book.
Oh, and did I mention that if we do happen to hit $10,000, I'll throw in the fifth ebook for free to all backers?
Because you would have helped fund the production of it, I think it's only fair that you get a taste. Plus, if you want an even close relationship to me and the process, I also have a Patreon where you can answer questions about this book, and more books. Plus, I throw in special goodies each time I release something.
I'm going to start doing that once we reach $100/creation. Right now it's just sitting in statis, at $53/creation, waiting to be unlocked as a cool bonus feature for all of you if you choose to accept it.
https://www.patreon.com/russellnohelty
Soon, I will start to release some free content over there, too, but right now that stuff is going straight into this post.
That's all for now. Once again, thank you so much.
Russell
700,000%!
over 4 years ago
– Tue, Jan 21, 2020 at 04:18:28 AM
We're nearing the home stretch.
Just a couple more days to go and this morning we just passed 700,000%
If I were a betting man, I would say we're going to be close to 900,000%, jumping us past the Katrina Hates the Dead campaign, and making us the second most successful Godsverse campaign ever after Pixie Dust.
It won't quite get us a new book, at least not right away. However, I'm going to funnel all Godsverse related book sales from my convention today toward the cause, including the two graphic novels, to try and get us over the hump.
Godsverse books are INSANELY expensive to make compared to the rest of my work because they are almost double the page count. Even though I don't know the exact word count yet, I am estimating based on the other four books that it will come in around 90,000-100,000.
I'm confident that during this year I will surpass that deficit for the Godsverse, and then be able to write that fifth, Avengers-style team-up book sometime this year or early next year, as I really want it as much as you all.
I will tell you the title is going to be And War Followed Behind Her, and I have the choice of a couple of awesome covers I have in my stable already to choose from which would work perfectly for it.
Who knows, I might even still slot it in after my next project, and then just sit on it until the book sales until they clear enough to write it.
I'm estimating $1310 in excess funds needed to clear recovery in order for me to justify writing that book without taking a loss upfront.
However, if we can get close to that number, then I'll still put it on my roadmap in the near term future. My estimates say we're on track to have about $500 of that from the Kickstarter funds, and then I'll have about $500 in excess stock, meaning by the time I burn through that stock I will have close to $1,000 in funds to use for the Godsverse.
And if fulfillment goes well like the last couple of times, I might even have more than that and we can clear through fulfillment.
I'm just finishing my first book of the year, as part of my currently secret Obsidian Spindle Saga (which you'll love by the way), which combines mythology, public domain characters, portal fantasy like Narnia or The Magicians or Dorothy Must Die, and Lovecraft, into one big epic fantasy universe.
I need to finish the fourth book in that series for SURE early this year because of secret reasons that might involve a mid-year Kickstarter, but that's the only book I 100% need to finish soon, and then if the fates allow, I can get onto And War Followed Behind Her right after that if the numbers make sense, possibly in March.
I don't travel out of the state until May, and I don't have a big show scheduled until April, even though I have a couple of smaller shows that will eat into my time.
So, if I can write book four next month, I might even be able to hop only the Godsverse in March, as I don't have my fourth book of the year planned to write until August as I will pretty much be traveling non-stop between May and August, and then again in September.
Because I'm currently out of pocket on Ichabod Jones Monster Hunter to the tune of $1,000 every month for the decided future, Cthulhu is Hard to Spell until that Kickstarter in March, and the Obsidian Spindle Saga until we run a Kickstarter for that maybe later this year, and I have six non-Godsverse books which haven't cleared expenses, I just can't take on ANOTHER project that puts me in the red right now.
You are amazing though.
It would have taken me YEARS to claw back even a fraction of these funds without your help on this campaign, and the fact that I'm even talking about a fifth book is kind of amazing, because last week I was running a -$5500 deficit for these books, with no hope of pretty much ever writing that fifth book, but now not only am I talking about it, but it's actually on the roadmap.
I have a plan for it, and a week ago that wasn't the case.
As you can see, just about every dollar I make goes back into projects, either paying off old projects or paying for new ones.
My Kickstarter for Ichabod Jones #5 in September cleared the expenses to make that issue, but I'm still deeply in the hole on issues 6-8 until that Kickstarter runs later in the year. Even AFTER that campaign, I'll have already almost paid for the entirety of volume 3, which I have no plans to run until September of 2021, unless somehow Renzo gets pages done faster than my plan.
Even my Patreon is all about raising funds to make books. I'm going to start using it more as we get to $100 in overall per creation revenue, but if you want to help a little more you can sign up for that, too. https://www.patreon.com/russellnohelty
I will begin updating it regularly very soon, at least with free blog posts and insights into my process, like this.
Even when I do fun things like travel, it's almost always for either a convention or a research trip. You'll be seeing a LOT of travel to Italy coming up in all three of my main series, for instance, and I wanted it to be right.
This went on a lot longer than I intended and gave away a bit of the inside baseball things that happen behind the scenes, but I hope it was informative as to the process, and how even an uber-successful campaign does little but break me even on the costs associated with it. The better I do with the campaigns, the more new projects I can afford to take on at any one time.
If you are wondering how I make "profit", then I do that by traveling the country to different conventions with the stock paid for by Kickstarter, some direct channel distribution, royalties from publishing companies, payments from Comixology, KDP, and other sources, speaking engagements, course sales, and managing book marketing for other authors.
Still, though, that does little more than keep the lights on, as you can see in my total income breakdown from December of 2019. https://thecompletecreative.com/income-report-december-2019/
In all last year, I paid myself $19,087.23 in 2019. Health care reimbursement was $4,203.36 of that, and $8,406.12, was to reimburse me for expenses taken from my personal accounts for business funds.
The rest of it went back to book production, rent on my home office, convention appearances (yes, I pay for those out of my own pocket), editorial, contractor payments, printing (when I offset print in other campaigns for comics, I could be paying $10,000+ just for printing), shipping these lovely books to you, meals with customers and clients, travel for research for future books, and other expenses.
I am not complaining. I absolutely LOVE this work, and making things for you. I just wanted you to know that every dollar really does matter, and lets me keep making these things which both you and I love.
I am happy to go out of pocket on these weird moonshots as long as you guys are willing to read them, but a consequence of taking moonshots is that you only have so much production funds to go around, and you have to be more judicious as you are more and more reliant on those shots to pay off.
Thank you so much. One of the great joys in my life is packing up boxes and noticing the people who have helped make this crazy dream a reality.
Fingers crossed, we can overperform in the last few days and get that 300,000% to unlock the next book in the Godsverse.
Russell
630,000!!!!
over 4 years ago
– Sun, Jan 19, 2020 at 02:30:18 PM
Thank you so much for believing in the Godsverse! I am so absolutely thrilled that we've already become my most funded (by percentage) campaign ever. We're already at 640,000% funded in just a couple days.
Take that other campaigns! I'll bet this is one of the most funded campaigns in the history of Kickstarter, at least in the publishing category.
And it's all because of you believing in this project, and the Godsverse in general. This is the celebration of 10 years spent building this universe out, and I'm so excited to share it with you.
Thank you so much. We're still 360,000% from my internal goal of 1,000,000% funded. I tried it once before and we didn't get there, but I feel good about it this time. I think we can do it.
Onward!
Russell
