[Sorcerer Kickstart] Is Live!

[Ron Edwards]

All discussion here!
Best, Ron

[Ron Edwards]

Wow! 10% of the primary goal in the first hour! I am resisting the urge to jump up and down and shout "Go! Go!" considering that we are talking about pledging money. But I do feel like running around hugging people.

Best, Ron

[Judd]

Wow, you can actually watch the money tally go up in real time. That is crazy.

[Ron Edwards]

It's insane! It's just shy of 30% to the primary goal, and I've hardly blinked! Who knew?
Best, Ron

[PhilKalata]

Gladly backed with an anticipatory extra $5 for hard copy shipping. Next step will be finding people to play with me.

[Hans Chung-Otterson]

Yay! Congratulations! Happy to see this off to a good start.

In the interests of adding something useful to the conversation, have you looked at Kicktraq, Ron? That link goes to the Sorcerer Upgrade Kicktraq. It looks at what your project's trending toward. Right now there's not enough data to reliably predict how it will end (I'm sure you know most projects spike in the beginning and at the end and have a slow middle), but it'll be fun to keep an eye on.

[Hans Chung-Otterson]

Oh damn, I forgot to put the link in there. Please merge this link in with my previous post: Kicktraq

[Ron Edwards]

Zowie! The Prince of Darkness (Joe Prince) took it to $512!
More to follow on the site. I had plans to juice the next step a little, but had no idea I'd have to make them ready this fast.
Best, Ron

[Ron Edwards]

I have a very blunt question which I think can only be posed within the constraints of this webpage.

Is there any imaginable reason I should create new stretch goals? Remember, I have no motive to blow the top value up past some amount over $10,000, either for profit or for ego. The Kickstart isn't intended to show how much I can make this way.

My current inclination is to be blunt: hey, if you want to pledge to get the books, that's great. Whatever value we end up with is merely an epiphenomenon as far as I'm concerned. There won't be another stretch goal - more people pledging only means that more people get books, and that's all.

If you can think of some reason that's not good - but remember, "But you could make so much more!!!" is not an argument in my book - then please let me know.

Best, Ron

[Jesse Burneko]

You seemed interested in doing some high end spiffy version of the book (and I think you mentioned involving Narrativa).  That is the only goal I would even consider adding.  And then I would only do so if (a) you have the cost break downs of that planned out and know exactly what you need to make that happen and (b) are willing to add a new reward tier that basically boils down to Pledge X and if we make it to Y, you will get this spiffy high end version of the book.

But that doesn't appear to be part of your agenda with this Kickstarter, so I wouldn't bother.  It wouldn't bother me in the least if you made a whole separate Kickstarter for an extra cool version of the book.  But then, I've not (emotionally) bought into the crazy Kickstarter culture.

So, no, Ron if you don't have any further goals, then that's that.

Jesse

[Justice Platt]

I agree with Jesse, and I have kinda emotionally bought into the whole KS culture, painful to admit tho it is.  That said, I would add the wrinkle that, if there is some kinda super-dream Sorcerer project (Sorcerer brand tequila?  Commissioning an opera? ) that this may be a very good chance to get there, since you may be benefiting from a large fund of goodwill built up over the years that may not be available as easily again. 

That, however, is literally the only argument I can think of for more stretch goals.

[Ron Edwards]

Thanks guys! I appreciate your thoughts and am looking forward to more of them.

As far as goodwill is concerned, my take is that fulfilling these great-looking books in a timely fashion will give everyone a great buzz of "we said we'd do X, and we did it!" With any luck, there won't be a decrease of goodwill, as if it were a tank of fluid that I'd just tapped, but rather a confirmation that it existed for a good reason in the first place, and therefore it's still with us, even strengthened.

Best, Ron

[Eero Tuovinen]

Yes, I agree with Ron on the good-will: one would presume that doing a successful small project would increase your stature and affirm the quality of your work to the audience. This then translates into a firmer and more active support base in possible future projects. There's no reason to think that you need to milk backers for as much money as possible all at once. The only concrete advantage of snowballing an individual crowdfunding drive as big as you can is related to publicity logistics, as you've already gathered the audience; pretty much the same advantage can be gained by asking all the backers for their email addresses so you can write them when your next project comes up.

I would have subscribed to the "you might not ever get this level of excited interest again" viewpoint a few years earlier, when crowdfunding was still new and doing it had an element of novelty to it. At that point it's possible that a significant amount of some specific project's funding might have come from novelty excitement that could not be repeated. (I don't know if this was the case in fact, I haven't followed the development of crowdfunding culture closely enough.)

Also, Ron: if you would, could you use the update feature of Kickstarter when discussing the development of the project with the backers? Putting your on-going commentary in the main body of the text makes it increasingly more difficult to parse for newcomers. You'll be getting new people who only just now hear about the project for two weeks, still, after all. Using the updates blogging tool enables you to add your own musings and document changes without putting it all on the main page.

[Ron Edwards]

Oooh! Update function? Who knew?

Best, Ron

[Steve Hickey]

I'm a huge fan of this focused style of Kickstarter - it's great to see it doing so well.

I just checked out the sample chapter annotations which are looking excellent, in context. In case you hadn't noticed it, there did seem to be an error with the examples of dice rolling, though: in the ties sections, G wins (rather than A), and J wins (rather than H).