Twilight's List Book Orders Open · 9:34am Jun 15th, 2013
Yes, you read that right. I'm opening orders. Orders will remain open until 9 pm Central Time on Saturaday, June 22nd. That's a little over a week.
How this works:
If you want a copy, this is how you'll get it:
Send an email to: kitsuneymg+twilightslist@gmail.com.
You'll need to include
Subject: Book Order
Your name and address OR your name and tell me you'd like to pick it up at BronyCon.
How many you want.
Any short, personalized message you'd like.
Price:
This is the part that sucks. Dust Jackets, nice covers, nice paper, it all adds up. I'm estimating 25 orders, if I get significantly more (like 75-100), I'll be able to drop the price, but until then...
Book and US Shipping via USPS: $50
For international orders or for FedEx/UPS, I'll have to do a case-by-case thing. Mention it in your email.
Payment is due before Monday 24th.
There is one way to save some money.
If you want to pick it up at BronyCon, it'll knock another $5 off. You'll probably want to give me whatever name it on your badge or something too.
If you'd like me to sign or otherwise personalize with a short message, put that in your email. I have moderately okay handwriting and will do my best to make it legible.
What Will Happen:
Next week, when I close orders, I will put my final order in. It takes 10 days to get an order filled, but I am requesting a proof copy first. It never hurts to be careful, right? I'll get the proof copy in and, hopefully, not have to change anything. Then I'll give the go ahead for the rest to be made. They'll take 10 days and then be shipped via UPS ground from NYC to Alabama. I'll take 'em, personalize 'em, and mail 'em on out. BC orders will be able to stop by my and Alex's vendor table to pick theirs up.
What the hay are you buying?
You'll be buying a 6"x9" trim sized, trade hardback copy of Twilight's List. The cover is going to be a blue cloth wrap with gold lettering. The cover will say "Twilight's List" and include the author's name, "Kittyhawk Contrail". The spine will have the title, "Kittyhawk" and 2013. The book will also come with a dust jacket.
Book Text (incld. .125" bleed on all pages): Here
Dusk Jacket (incld. .125" bleed): Here
There are twelves pieces of internal artwork that are black and white and spread the full page.
Shown Here
Why didn't you wait until you had the proof to post orders?
This is simple. It seems that the number you order is fixed at time of submission. At least the test one I never bought has no area to edit the order amount.
Who is your printer?
I'm using Book1one. Colorwise was an option, but I'd need to sell over 100 of these to make it affordable. They appear to make actual plates to mass-print orders. Each setup was over $1000 min just to get going.
Any questions can be emailed to the same address as orders or PM-ed to me on fimfic.
EDIT
Questions:
What types of payment?
I will send you an email/invoice once I have everything totalled and you can pay with paypal. If you want to just pay the $50 for US delivery, you can. If, by some miracle, I sell 50 or more of these, I'll figure out how to refund some of that.
Where do I send money?
kitsuneymg@gmail.com is my paypal address. I'd advise you to wait until next weekend, simply because the price might go down if I get enough orders. If you want to pay early and are having it shipped somewhere in the US, be sure to have your paypal memo include your email/name so I can keep everything together! International and/or non USPS-shipping people will need to bug me to figure out how much shipping to you is, so drop an email.
When you pay, please select that you are paying for a service! Not a product!
Thanks
- kits
But I'm broke...will there be a second round of orders possible?
I've sent in my order.
Yikes, fifty bucks. That's... way rich for my blood.
Curiosity: How are you avoiding Hasbro's legal machine on this one? I'd think they'd catch wind of something like this and bring a hammer down.
1146152
It would cost them about 200x the gross revenue of this to do that. But essentially, the exact same way Past Sins, FoE, and Platinum Crown do. Which is the same way every bit of commissioned art, tshirts, shot glasses, mouse pads, thumb drives, car decals, and plushies do. That is, to not care.
1145973
I kinda doubt it. I mean, these things are super expensive until you get to 100 or so. If I get 25 orders, $50 means that I've made less on this than I do on art commissions (I get one every 2 months or so). If I can sell 50 of them, the price drops almost $10. At 100, I'd be able to sell them for $40 and actually make enough to pay for the vendor table at BC I'm sharing. I priced this originally so that I can basically cover the cost of the proof copy (not cheap at all, it's $125+shipping for a proof) and call that "mine".
In order to get the price down to normal book prices ($29.95), I'd have to order 250 of them. Small runs ain't cheap.
I'll probably order a few extra just to try to move at BC, but unless there is significant interest, I doubt I'll be doing a second run, sorry.
money is tight right now, wish i could, but just spent over $600 on ps4 and games for it. glad i got a trading card from you....seems to be the only thing of your that will be in my collection :/
anyway if you do get the orders you need and make a new blog post mentioning the reduced price, then maybe, but i don't know if i can. i do however wish you luck with this :)
Do you take debit? I'd like to get a copy, but I don't have Paypal...
And if I may climb atop my soapbox, y'all need to quit complaining about the price. It serves no purpose, and only makes the author feel bad for no reason. Printing books is expensive as hell. I don't meant to jump down anyone's throats, and I'm sure y'all mean well. This just irks me to no end.
Sorry. I'll shut up now.
1146785
I don't see how I could take debit. That requires I have some sort of merchant account, right? I think paypal will work with a debit card, as long as it's back by visa or mc.
I guess I could accept an official cheque or a money order. If that seems like something you think you could pull off, email me and we can work out the details.
And yeah, printing is fucking expensive until I get to around 250 copies. I mean, I could try to use blurb but their quality is apparently very poor lately and I'm just not willing to accept something not amazing if I'm dropping mad cash on this. Plus, it would STILL be $40 for printing and shipping :| Book are heavy, yo.
I guess I could have gone for stiff board instead of hardback, but dammit, I want a real hardback book, not a #100 printed cardboard thing.
1146681
If I get enough orders, I will post reduced price. If the rate of orders continues as it has today, that will happen on Friday (I doubt it will. These things are more front-loaded than linear.) But that would be a $5 decrease. Until I hit 100 orders, which isn't going to happen unless theirs a cabal of List lovers out there who are merely biding their time for some reason.
So like, I just heard tonight that people who have tried self-publishing with preorders have had trouble getting the money to use for printing because Paypal. Are you aware of this? :B I just wanted to make.
1146949
Never heard of this. Why is paypal having issues? I mean, if a bunch of people send donations, sure, but I plan on using that invoice system that every small paypal oriented operation uses. (Donations = paypal doesn't get its cut).
I can deal with money being placed on hold, I just don't want extra copies of this lying around.
1147139 just do not let paypal know what you are doing. if they ever ask, say something like "people are donating money to me for X personal charity"
there terms say you can't use it to basically crowd source a book. basically you must already have the physical copy to sell to them to take there money.
1147325
Ah.
That seems a rather stupid rule, but okay.
If I thought it was worth their time, I would have kickstarted it.
do we have an exact cut off date for when we can order this, i do not get paid till saturday june 22. if the cut off is after then, i can buy it, if not, then i will be unable to do so. i will send a message to the listed email address as well, expressing this issue, as well as my interest in purchasing the book.
1147362
the cut off is 9 pm central time on the 22nd to order. You got until that following monday evening to pay.
1147325 Couldnt you also list the money as for a "service"? As in, something that doesn't need to be shipped (yet), like what artists have to do with their commissions? Im fairly certain it could count under that, technically.
With artists, the reason they get their money eaten by Paypal is because the commissioner had listed the money sent wrong, so pay pal is expecting a physical product to actually be shipped, whereas by listing it as a "service", nothing is needed to be shipped for the product, since it technically doesnt exist yet.
Also, kits, have you thought about actually running this as a crowd funding thing, like kickstarter? That way you can set up stretch goals so that people can just donate money to the cause, and people who pay $50 can get a copy of the book (shipping within the US included, outside the US need to pay more depending on Location), and people who donate above that could get like, an honorable mention in the AN's at the back, or a signed copy, or something?
1147558
The thought had crossed my mind. The only issue I had was that kickstarter takes some of the cash (8-10%) and it's already too damned expensive. I'm signing them anyway because $50 is a lot for horse words.
I guess I could/should have done it that way, I just didn't think something that's going to net < $1000 was going to be worth it to them.
Just looked at the .pdf
The list image on page 3 has some "burs" left that extends to the edge that you might want to remove. Same with page 7.
Page 15, 25, 37, 113, 129, and 151 have some bleedthrough on the left side from the images on the page before, which may or may not matter.
I made my order. It'll be worth it to me. Making $160 bucks this week.
Edit: Question though...Is that final period in your email address, the period AFTER "com", supposed to be in the email?
1148025
Nope.
The periods don't actually matter for gmail.
kitsuneymg@gmail.com goes to the same place as k.i.t.s.u.n.e..ymg@gmail.com
I just use the dot and the +twilightslist to make it easier to write filters!
1148266
Okay, thank you. I trust you received my order?
1148272
yeah. I'm just in teh middle of art so don't want to spreadsheet right now. Spreadsheets are evil, soul sucking monsters D:
1147338
Yeah, it's the crowdsourcing/donations thing. From what I was told, if I remember properly, it's about dodging taxes and charging for something that doesn't exist. They're okay with using Paypal for face to face transactions, just not if you're posting it online. If you're not tremendously careful, you can get your account suspended or flagged or whatnot, and make things much harder for yourself in the future. :( Don't let that happen, bro.