Kickstarter Progress Report

I think it’s safe to say the Goblin Queen Kickstarter is going well!

This is my first time doing a Kickstarter, so I tried to keep things relatively conservative. I set $3500 as a base goal that would let me cover the expenses of getting the book published.

Well, we raised that in the first four hours. We hit the first stretch goal later in the first day. Stretch goal #2 on the second day, stretch goal #3 on the third, and goal #4 on the fourth.

I don’t actually have a fifth stretch goal…

As of this afternoon, 215 people have pledged almost $9000 in total, which is amazing. Thank you all so much!

Of course, this doesn’t mean I’ll be $9000 richer 25 days from now. I don’t have an exact breakdown yet, but here’s where that money will be going…

• Kickstarter’s cut: 8-10% total, if I’m reading everything correctly. Call it 9%, or $810. Oof…
• Cover art
• Interior art (stretch goal #1)
• Bookmarks and stickers (stretch goals #2 and #4)
• Copies of Tamora Carter: Goblin Queen – 215 books so far
• Additional books for other reward levels – about 20 books
• Envelopes and postage

There’s also a significant time investment. I’ve got a lot of books and bookmarks to autograph. Then there’s printing out address labels, getting everything packed up and mailed… And all five of the critique rewards have been claimed, so I’ll need to do those as well.

I know there are services that can help with reward processing and fulfillment. (They’ve been sending me messages every day.) For now, I’m planning to handle this myself, but we’ll see how it goes.

From everything I’ve learned, Kickstarters get most of their funding at the very beginning, with a second spike near the very end. Things will probably slow down a lot for the next three weeks. I have no idea what I’ll be looking at when we finish. One of the Kickstarter projection sites estimated we could be looking at anywhere between $9000 and $21,000. I’m guessing it’ll be closer to the $9000 side of things.

In the meantime, I’ve got an artist working on the cover, and I’m going through the book to try to pick scenes for the interior artwork. I’ve asked an artist about doing the fire-spider sticker art. I’m slowly getting the manuscript ready for printing and ebook conversion. And of course, I’m doing the live readings every Friday night at 8.

I’m happy with how it’s going. Reaching the goal the first day helped a lot with the anxiety, but there’s still a certain level of stress. But it’s more than balanced by the excitement of seeing how many people want to support the project, and of moving forward on publishing this thing.

Thanks again to everyone for your help and support!