Steve D. Wall

http://kck.st/3QCybh5

Ok, guys.  The kickstarter is officially live and, before I get into the mandatory self-promotion, if you are reading this and you have already backed my project: Thank You.  Sincerely, I woke up after our first day live and we have already funded almost 10% of our goal.  That is huge momentum and I have no one to thank but the people reading this.  If you haven’t backed us yet, I have set up early bird prices for the first 72 hrs of the campaign.  Basically, each tier is a bit cheaper and you’ll get more bang for your buck. I did this to show some extra appreciation for these early backers, because like I just said, the momentum is everything. 

My wife and I are doing some work in the background for merchandise options.  If there is something you want TELL US! So far we’ve settled on the following and they will be available in a store front so that each can be customized with cover or character art.

• Stickers
• Bookmarks
• Mouse pads
• T-shirts
• And more to come!

For Character Art, I’ll be getting Devo, Dellioph, Ulric, Gali, Aari, and Lyrrun drawn up. I’ll post one of them as an example soon😊

What I’m watching/reading

Currently I am making my way through the huge sprawling saga of One Piece (by watching the anime). It falls into several of the typical pitfalls of anime, but I can definitely see why many call it one of the greatest pieces of world-building and macro storytelling in all of fiction. Overall, I am enjoying it, and I’m getting several good ideas for future works of my own.

WHY I ran a Kickstarter

I could cover the costs of the cover art, editing, and formatting to publish the ebook/print book on my own, but the costs for producing an audiobook are too much for me to handle. I could wait and save up to pay for it all myself, but 1- I wouldn’t want to deny you guys the audiobook for that long, and 2- I don’t want to deny me the income from the audiobook for that long. (In the fantasy genre, audiobooks sell more copies, and therefore make authors more money. This is even more true when you’re a small name author with a such huge name for a narrator, like me with Steven Pacey)

So, if I didn’t run a crowdfunding campaign, I would either A- have to wait who knows how long in order to produce an audiobook with Steven Pacey, or B- have to settle on the quality of narration or audio production. And the latter is something that is noticed by readers/listeners, especially for self-published books. It’s a little unfortunate that a slightly worse sound will stop someone from experiencing the story (because say: the freelancer voice actor which the author could afford had to work out of a home studio, which is pretty good, but not as good as the audiobooks from big publishers) but I can understand why. Stories are about immersion, and anything that upsets that immersion, no matter how small, is actually quite the big deal.

And of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t address the fact that I am working with a true titan of the industry in Steven Pacey. “Surely you could have found someone cheaper?” you might ask. And to that I say, I’m not writing these books simply to put them out in the world and sell them. If that were case, I would do everything in the most efficient way possible to make my profit margins as big as possible. I want to create something that I love, to make a dream into reality, and I’m just a total fanboy of Steven Pacey’s. If I had to take out a loan and put myself into debt in order to make this happen, I would do it. Luckily though, crowdfunding exists and is a much better option, so I don’t have to.

Crowdfunding campaigns are also an incredible tool for marketing and customer engagement, and it’s the best method for offering exclusive, limited content. So yeah, I’m going to keep doing them. 😊