(This post began as a post on G+, then got longer, then I brought it over here… and began adding even more to it. Also: NLtROG is a fairly terrible abbreviation.)
Already thinking about fundraising for Never Let the Right One Go. Have to figure out how to do a Kickstarter more than a handful of people will respond to, or an alternative means of raising funds. Also ought to contact those photographers & see if/what they want for high-res, commercial-use, et cetera, since it could have a huge impact on my fundraising goal. sigh.
(Note: I just sent messages to each photographer, via flickr. We’ll see what they say.)
If the photographers are awesome & generous, or at least not evil, the minimum I’d need to raise for a 50-copy limited edition paperback is around $400. Or around $800 to do it as a hardback.
Pretending I could ever sell all 50 copies, and adding the cost of shipping &c, I could price a signed, numbered, limited edition paperback flipbook (containing both texts) at $20-$25, on Kickstarter. For the signed, numbered, limited edition hardback I’d have to ask $40+, but … Hmm… How about a limited edition of either 50 or however many people pledge at that level (“to allow for more,” he said optimistically), whichever is greater, and at a quality level to be determined by the number of backers, based a little on:
The floor price for direct paperback sales (under my current pricing scheme) would probably be $10.99, and around $15.99 for the hardback, based on some top-of-the-head calculations. (And of course $2.99/eBook, though I’ll be offering them individually only.)
So, if the pledge point to get the paper book was $20 or $25, then if we only hit the minimum goal (say, $400, if the photographers are awesome), the print edition will be paperback, and if we pass a sufficient threshold (really just 35-40 backers, by my estimates), then everyone gets hardbacks instead. And if I’m wildly successful (thousands of backers, or tens of thousands) then I could afford to do offset printing of an even higher-quality book. And then die, trying to sign them all. Maybe I should limit it to, say, 500 copies?
Ah, wild, unbridled optimism. Who put that in my pessimism? I’m supposed to be all, like, “In my past Kickstarters, I’ve been successful only by the sale of one or two super-premium items, not by the accumulation of many paper book pre-sales. This time, I have no ‘original cover art’ to sell, and may in fact have to pay a significant sum for the covers I have in mind. This will never work!” Oh, well. Maybe I can find 16-40 people actually interested in paying $25 for my new books? Seriously, though. $25 for 2 books! What a great deal! I mean, if you buy new books, at all. It includes shipping? sigh.
