Guess what happened last year that I never got around to talking about?
In 2014, for the first time, Worldbuilders raised $1,000,000.
Last year two things happened that pushed us over the top.
1. We had our best holiday fundraiser ever, raising more than $880,000 (as you can see if you look at the Worldbuilders website.)
2. We tried an experimental mid-season fundraiser on Indigogo that was so successful that I actually lost a bet with the Worldbuilders team and was forced to buy everyone milkshakes. (As I wrote about in a blog over here.)
Despite the fact that this was a pretty big deal for us. We haven’t made much noise about it. Partly because after the holiday fundraiser we were all exhausted. And partly because we were focused on getting everyone’s prizes shipped out to them in a timely fashion.
But the fact remains that we did it. And I wanted to mark the occasion because it’s a milestone that took us 6 years to achieve.
I wanted to make a challenge coin. Because I think they’re kinda cool. I’m a geek for coins, I like the way they feel in my hand, and people have given me a number of challenge coins over the years. Personally, I’d love to do a new one for ever year of Worldbuilders.
The rest of the Worldbuilders team was skeptical. They didn’t know if y’all would be interested in something like that. But eventually I persuaded them to give the idea a trial run.
And here we are:
Because we’re really not sure whether or not people will go for these, we’re only getting 500 of them made.
If people end up buying them, we’ll know y’all are interested and we’ll do more things like this in the future. If not… well… then I guess I’ll use these for poker chips, and the rest of the Worldbuilders team will mock me for coming up with this idea.
(Do not eat coin.)
The flipside of the coin shows our beloved Monkey Puppet drinking a celebratory milkshake in honor of our first-ever million dollar year.
If you’d like to see a better picture of that, or if you’d like to buy one, you can head over to the Tinker’s Packs and order one now.
As always, all proceeds from the Tinker’s Packs go to Worldbuilders.
(Fair warning: these might not ship for a week or two…)
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Since we’re on the subject of the Tinker’s Packs, we might as well celebrate the first day of spring with a Novelties blog.
For those of you who might be new to the blog, Novelties is where we put up some cool pieces of geekery for sale that you might not be able to find in other places.
Things such as….
- Writhing Dark Playing Cards (Limited and Unlimited)
Interesting Fact: One of the very first non-Rothfuss items we ever sold in our store was a deck of Cthulhu cards by Artist Shane Tyree.
I liked the cards so much that later on, I worked with him on a few Pairs decks, as well as the Name of the Wind cards.
What we have here is his newest endeavor. A second Cthulhu-Themed deck…
(That bearded gentleman seems a little familiar.)
If you’d like to see more of the art or buy a deck, click over here.
- Slow Regard Foreign Language Editions:
Now that The Slow Regard of Silent Things has been out a while, we’ve got more and more foreign editions getting translated. When that happens, the publisher sends me a handful of author copies.
When they show up at my house, I dutifully put one one copy on my vanity shelf, set one aside for the library, and give the rest to Worldbuilders.
Right now we’ve got Spanish, Portuguese, German, Polish, Dutch, Brazilian, and Slovak translations of Slow Regard of Silent Things. We even have an audio book version of the German edition.
There’s been a more than a few other versions of my book too. For example, the Latvian edition of Wise Man’s Fear, showed up at my house recently:
Hubba hubba. pic.twitter.com/9Oohfx1nNZ
— Pat Rothfuss (@PatrickRothfuss) April 9, 2015
I’ve been translated into 35 languages so far, and almost all of those editions are up in the store.
Even better, a lot of other authors have donated their author copies, too. So if you’re looking to bone up on your Estonian, or if you have a friend who speaks Portuguese as her first language, you could check out our Foreign Editions section on The Tinker’s Packs.
As always, all of the proceeds will go to Worldbuilders.
- Limited Edition Le Nom du Vent poster
While I love all my foreign editions, and by extension all my foreign covers, I’ve always had a special place in my heart for the French covers, which feature the fabulous art of Marc Simonetti.
Proving that he’s an incredibly kind person, Marc has allowed Worldbuilders to print a limited run of posters using the artwork used to produce the cover….
(Click to Embiggen)
The posters are numbered 1 through 200 and signed by me. If you’d like to grab one, you can do so over here.
Edit: Amanda here! The posters went over awesomely and managed to sell out by 2 in the afternoon today. The people who are signed up for the once-a-month The Tinker’s Packs newsletter heard about these things a little earlier, so you should sign up right here.
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That’s all we’ve got for now, folks. Stay tuned for more blogs soon…
pat
