"Please, sir. I want some more..."
"What??!! MORE????"
With ten days left to go, the Winter in the City Kickstarter has achieved the 30% funding level.
By the way, for those of you who don’t know, I’m running a Kickstarter.
What IS a kickstarter? Oh dear. I’m remiss in my blog posts.
Kickstarter is one of a few sites out there on the interwebs where you can post a project and ask for crowd funding. It’s a money-raising platform for projects ranging in scope from television shows to the next ‘must have’ gadget.
The kickstarter I’ve..well..kicked off..is to raise the cash needed to put together an anthology of urban Fantasy stories.
Back in July of 2013, I did what I always do in July—and that’s attend ReaderCON. As a self-proclaimed Urban Fantasy author myself, I spent a lot of time attending panels geared toward the genre. During my travels on the convention floor I befriended fellow author M. J. King.
We started discussing writing, favorite authors and ended up attending similar panels.
By the end of three days at ReaderCON, the idea for Winter in the City had formed. What we wanted (and still do—thus the Kickstarter) was to build a short story anthology by professional authors spanning the speculative fiction genres with one common element: The City.
What sort of fantastical component said authors chose to play with would be up to them. But each story would take place in a different city around the world.
Quite frankly we chose “Winter” portion later…I loved the future concept of an eventual four book collection spanning the seasons, and dozens of cities.
I really am the eternal optimist, aren’t I?
Both M. J. and I agreed that we loved the idea, but wanted the anthology to be a top notch collection. That would require—first off—an amazing editor.
Fortunately, I know several. One of the best is Marty Halpern, who joined the project as chief editor.
Next, with significant help of Marty’s contact list, we needed authors. We piqued the interest of quite a few (The full list of which you can see HERE).
But here’s the thing. If we wanted the professionals, we needed to be able to pay good wages for them. Remember this statement—I’ll get back to it in a moment.
Heading down the traditional publishing route for me was a non-starter. For no other reason than I don’t actually have a name in the industry that people would pick up the phone for.
And I hate leaving voice mail. Especially voice mail that more than likely wouldn’t get returned.
So…eBook and POD was something we thought we could do at a minimum of cost.
But—going back to July and ReaderCON—there was something else we could try to get funding for our project that didn’t involve me, a brass pole and singing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President.”
Both M. J. and I attended a panel on “Crowd Funding.”
It was an interesting concept—present a project, and if people like it, they will pledge money toward it. Specifically we went through an analysis of successful book anthologies on Kickstarter.
So from July until September, we did research. We spoke to people and professionals. We developed a budget that would pay professional rates.
We developed a plan.
I budgeted a bit of my own money to build an online web presence (HERE, by the way), commission artwork and other designs by the amazing Kip Ayers and fund some limited social media advertising & backend stuff (fees/taxes) to get the program off the ground. I figured, after all, if I were about to open up the Winter in the City for public funding, I should have some skin in the game myself, right?
So now all we need is the crowd portion of our Kickstarter crowd fundraiser.
And that’s why I’m posting this today.
There are dozens of artists, writers and industry professionals waiting to create new stories just for you.
All we need now is you.
Donations, blogs, social media. Spray paint a wall with the URL. Tattoo the cover art on your bum.
Whatever will help get the word out will be very much appreciated.
Check us out at: WINTER IN THE CITY
Ten days, ten grand. Challenge accepted, Oliver. Challenge accepted.
