At 12:00 noon EST on Wednesday, Feb 27th, I'll be pushing the Age of Legend Kickstarter live. To find the Kickstarter you can go to the
page posted at this link, and press the graphic.
Doing that right now does nothing but on Wednesday it will take you the Kickstarter
page.
HINT: You can also find the Kickstarter Page by going to Kickstarter and searching on Age of Legend or by looking for projects created by Michael J. Sullivan ;-).
So what are we offering through the Kickstarter? Here are the reward levels:
- $5 - SUPPORT THE ARTS - this will get you a Suri and Minna short story, some screen savers of Marc Simonetti's artwork, your name printed in the book, and access to online content that will be created during the Kickstarter.
- $10 - DIGITAL DELIGHT - will give you everything in the SUPPORT THE ARTS level plus DRM free ebooks of Age of Legend in .mobi, .pdf, and .epub formats delivered to you on....wait for it...April 9th! That's a full 3 months before the official release date.
- $35 - HARD CORE - will get you a signed hardcover and bookmark (at a $3 savings from the cover price). The book will be delivered as soon as it comes off the press, and while I don't yet know when that will be, it'll certainly be before the July 9th release date. Plus this level also gives you everything in the DIGITAL DELIGHT reward level so you'll get the ebook on April 9th.
- $99 - ALL IN - This will get you signed hardcovers (and bookmarks) for all 4 books in the Legends of the First Empire series, and also everything in the DIGITAL DELIGHT reward level so that means you get the ebook on April 9th as well. This is actually $22 cheaper than the list price of each of these books. So, in addition to getting Age of Legend early, you're going to save $5.50 per book. That's a savings of about 20%. If you've not started the series, this would be a great time to do so.
- $150 - NIGHT IN AVRLYN - This will get you a stay at our amazing cabin in Luray VA (in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley). This reward includes a homemade dinner, breakfast, accommodations for up to 2 people, and a signed/dedicated book of your choice. Oh, and of course you get everything in the DIGITAL DELIGHT reward level, so you'll get the ebook on April 9th. Plus, if you are a writer, or know someone who is, Robin and I will take a look at some of their writing and give critical feedback. There are only 10 of these rewards, and I expect them to go pretty quickly.
- Now there are two more reward levels which are (D)EARLY BIRD and (H)EARLY BIRD which are discounted versions of DIGITAL DELIGHT and HARD CORE. There are only 50 of these discounted rewards, so people who show up early can get those rewards for a savings of 20% (that's $8 for the ebook and $28 for the hardcover/ebook combination).
If you are wondering why we are doing a Kickstarter, it's a subject I've talked about in the past, but maybe you missed it. You see, we sold the audio rights for the entire series long, long, ago. When Del Rey purchased the rights to the first three books, that wasn't a problem and they licensed the ebook and print rights only. A few years later, when it came time to negotiate books #4 - #6, we found out that there had been a corporate policy change with Penguin Random House and they no longer let Del Rey sign any contract that doesn't contain audiobook rights. Well, with those rights already gone, that meant Del Rey couldn't sign the rest of the books.
For a while, we worked on getting another publisher to do the books, but we weren't happy with the release schedule they wanted, nor certain clauses in the contract. So we decided to self-publish the book. Now, we know how important it is for readers to have all their books in a series be consistent so we are using the same printer, paper, size, and even the same font, so the last three books will look identical to the first three. But doing a print run is going to be expensive, so we are using the Kickstarter to fund 1/2 of the production costs.
There is a lot of other information about the Kickstarter, too much to go into here, so here is a
"preview" link, that will let you see all the details before it goes live.
We're pretty excited about this Kickstarter, and we hope you will be as well. It's always a fun, and hectic time when we have one going on, but it's so great seeing everyone's excitement toward the project.
