Worldbuilders 2013

It’s that time of year again, folks. Time to make the world a better place while winning fabulous prizes.

Worldbuilders-Logo_Web_Smaller

(Oooo, shiny new logo…)

Heifer International is my favorite charity. It helps people raise themselves up out of poverty and starvation. Heifer promotes education, sustainable agriculture, and local industry all over the world.

They don’t just keep kids from starving, they make it so families can take care of themselves. They give goats, sheep, and chickens to families so their children have milk to drink, warm clothes to wear, and eggs to eat.

goat 4

(Are you ready? I’m so ready. Let’s do it.)

We’ve changed things a bit from previous years.  We’re streamlining and making adjustments, which means we might have a glitch or two along the way. Think of this as Worldbuilders 2013 – Beta.  Tweaks will be made as needed….

You’ve got three different options for donating.

Option 1: The Lottery.

This is the option most of you will want. It’s quick and easy and tax deductible.

You just hop directly over to the page I’ve set up on Team Heifer, and donate.

When you donate on that page, two things happen.

1. You’ll move us closer to our stretch goals (the first few are shown below).

2. You’ll be entered in the lottery.

After the fundraiser is over, we’ll have a random drawing for all the swag that’s been donated. Thousands of books, comics, games, and other cool miscellany.

For every 10 bucks you donate on our Team Heifer page, your name will get entered into our drawing. If you donate thirty bucks, your name goes in three times. Donate enough for a goat, ($120) and your name goes in 12 times.

What’s in the lottery? A lot. We have a ton of stuff this year. So much that if I showed it to you all at once, its combined awesome would cook your brain like a toad thrown into the sun.

So for everyone’s safety, we’ll be posting up a new blog every couple of days.

As a new feature this year, you can see *all* the books that have been added to the Lottery so far on our snazzy new Lottery Library page.

Or you can see the individual blogs here:

Last year, we banded together to raise more than $400,000 for Heifer International. It was a stunning display of generosity and goodwill.

This year I’m hoping we can do even better.

To encourage people to donate, we have some stretch goals. Even better, these are going to be fun things that awesome people will do to support the fundraiser.  There will be music videos, live writing streams, and maybe even some co-written erotic fiction…

I’ll go into more detail about some of these stretch goals as they get closer.  I’ve blogged a bit about the one’s we’ve passed over here

Here’s a cool new graphic we have to display stretch goals as we approach and hit them, and the list of the ones coming up.

Unlocked stretch goals:

$25,000 Peter V. Brett shaves Myke Cole’s head!
$50,000 Paul & Storm re-tool the lyrics for “Write Like the Wind” to fit another slow-writing fantasy author you may have heard of
$75,000 Jim Hines does a very special, and probably very disturbing, Poser cover parodyparody.
$100,000 Brandon Sanderson will live-stream writing a story, so you can see him work his magic.
$125,000 The Doubleclicks perform the classic piece, Meownlight Sonata, on cat keyboards.
$150,000 Mary Robinette Kowal will write and read her Name of the Wind erotica fan fiction, entitled “The Wind Comes”.
$175,000 Vi Hart will write and perform music based on lyrics written by Pat Rothfuss, entitled “Knackerman.”
$200,000 Team Unicorn will pie each other in the face.
$225,000 Patrick Rothfuss will reveal his first piece of fan fiction he ever wrote: lyrics to Terry Pratchett’s “A Wizard’s Staff Has a Knob on the End” [Coming soon!] $250,000 Peter Orullian will perform a heavy metal version of Joss Whedon’s “Ballad of Serenity” theme with lyrics retooled for Worldbuilders.
$275,000 Trey Ratcliff, internationally renowned photographer, will take an “ill-advised” bathroom selfie.
$300,000 Scott Lynch & Elizabeth Bear will give a drunken review of the second Hobbit film.
$325,000 John Scalzi will perform “But Not Tonight” on either ukulele or tenor guitar.
$350,000 Hank Green will seduce a particularly nice-looking tree.
$375,000 Patrick Rothfuss will team up with Mary Robinette Kowal to read the NOTW erotica she wrote. [Coming soon!] $400,000 Sandeep Parikh will drink Capri Sun while doing a handstand with other members of The Guild. [Coming soon!] $425,000 Bradley P. Beaulieu will read an excerpt from The Hobbit while enjoying the Wisconsin weather. [Coming soon!] $433,420 Molly Lewis will perform The Greatest Adventure on various silly instruments.
$475,000 Pat Rothfuss and Amber Benson will write urban fantasy erotica together. [Coming soon!] $500,000 Neil Gaiman will read you Green Eggs and Ham.
$525,000 Pat will be drawn into a Munchkin Card and a strip of Dork Tower by John Kovalic.
$575,000 Brian Brushwood will teach Pat how to breathe fire. [Coming soon!] $600,000 Nate Taylor will draw a new map of the Four Corners. [Coming soon!] $625,000 Pat Rothfuss will livestream a viewing of the first Hobbit movie. [Coming soon!]

Upcoming stretch goals include:

$675,000 Pat Rothfuss and Brett will reissue the College Survival Guide.
$700,000 Pat Rothfuss and Amber Benson will record themselves reading their erotic urban fantasy fiction.

More stretch goals will be added all the time, we’ll be listing them here and on the Worldbuilders website under news.

Note: Worldbuilders ends February 4, 2014 at 11:59 pm PST. To be eligible for the lottery, you must have made your donation on the Team Heifer Page before then.

Option 2: The Sure Thing.

For those of you who aren’t that interested in the lottery, we have some stuff you can just buy from our online store.

Our store, lovingly named The Tinker’s Packs, has t-shirtsposters, and other coolness available for purchase.

We also have foreign editions of many titles, donated and signed by the authors. These are hard to find if you live in the US.

All proceeds go to Worldbuilders, of course.

Additionally, this year we’ve published two calendars. One of them is Heifer International themed, telling the stories of people who have been affected by Heifer’s work.

2014 WB-HI Calendar - Cover

We’ve also got a fantasy-themed calendar, with fabulous authors such as Christopher Paolini, Cassandra Claire, Tad Williams, and many others.

Back Cover

(Click to embiggen)

There are more pictures from both calendars in The Tinker’s Packs.

We’ll be adding new items to the store throughout the fundraiser, so keep an eye on the blog. If you’re worried you might miss some of the coolness, you can follow the Tinker’s Packs on Twitter and Facebook. We’ll post updates there whenever something new happens.

Option 3: Auctions.

Sometimes we get donations that are really cool…. but they’re only cool for for a select group of people. Some people would squee with delight at winning a portal gun, but other people, (sad, unhappy people) have never played portal, and just don’t care.

The same thing is true with action figures, games, musical instruments, manuscripts, or other collectables.

So we put those things up for auction.

We have professionals willing to read and critique your manuscripts. We have signed art and rare books. We have the chance to win cameo appearances in comics and get your name into upcoming books.

We auction these things off as well.

This year all of our auctions will be launching on Thursday evening, running for ten days, then ending the following Sunday.

There might be a few late additions here and there, but we’ll be working hard to stick to this schedule so everyone will have plenty of time to see what’s up for sale.

All our current auctions are visible over on the Worldbuilders eBay page.

A Few Changes This Year

For one thing, we have a whole new Website. We’ve got a bunch of cool new things there.

Worldbuilders also has a Facebook page and a Twitter account for those of you who are into that sort of thing.

But one of the coolest things we have is the ability to look at *all* the books that are currently in the worldbuilders lottery library.

A Plea For Sanity

Lastly, I’d like to ask everyone to please read the instructions/directions carefully before they donate.

I know you’re excited. I’m excited too. We’re going to raise some money, make the world a better place, and end up with big warm fuzzy feelings.

But the more emails we all get about missing addresses, wrong sizes, or forgotten personalization requests, the less time we’re spending on the fundraiser, getting things up, and getting things out. You don’t want that, do you?

I’m sure you don’t. And I’m sure that you’ll read the instructions carefully.

If your question isn’t answered here, you could check out our handy FAQ.

If you have a question about The Tinker’s Packs, you can e-mail the folks there at [email protected].

If you’d like to donate something to Worldbuilders, or help us spread the word, you can drop us a line at [email protected].

All right folks. Are you ready? I’m so ready.

Let’s do this thing.

pat

P.S. Just in case you missed it, here’s one more link to our Team Heifer donation page.

This entry was posted in Worldbuilders 2013. By Pat23 Responses

23 Comments

  1. SporkTastic
    Posted December 3, 2013 at 7:15 PM | Permalink

    Hey, what was that link to the donation page? (I kid! Had to be done.)

    Looking forward to a fantastic year of raising money for families in need and *also* getting neat thing from the awesome that is Rothfuss & Co. Thanks, Pat! And, thanks helping type people!

  2. Joshua_Guess
    Posted December 3, 2013 at 10:27 PM | Permalink

    At some point this year I talked to one of your assistants about some promo stuff for this but we lost touch in the madness that is Worldbuilders. I wish there were an easy way for authors to sign up to help out! I wanted to offer an auction to write a personalized short story. Still, glad to spread the word, as always.

    • Joshua_Guess
      Posted December 3, 2013 at 10:34 PM | Permalink

      aaaaaaaaand I’m a dumbass. Just saw the sponsor page. Nothing to see here, move along.

  3. Jonathan
    Posted December 3, 2013 at 10:30 PM | Permalink

    Worldbuilders is here! Hooray!
    I read through all the instructions, and while I don’t usually go for the auctions, I thought I should point out a contradiction between this and the linked “Lottery Library” page.

    According to the Lottery Library: “Our auctions start at 7pm CST (that’s 9pm eBay time) and run for 7 days, ending the following Sunday evening.”

    According to this blog: “This year all of our auctions will be launching on Thursday evening, running for ten days, then ending the following Sunday.”

    • Brett
      Posted December 4, 2013 at 9:40 AM | Permalink

      Thanks for the catch, Jonathan–the blog is correct. We decided at the zero hour to extend the auctions to 10 days to give them more visibility and allow folks more time to bid. The website will get updated today.

  4. Juan Recio
    Posted December 3, 2013 at 11:00 PM | Permalink

    Looks like this ends on my Birthday xD. Couldn’t think of a better way to start my 25th year of life, than helping others jump start theirs. Will be donating to the cause next pay period for sure! =D

    Will be sharing event with my family and friends in hope of spreading the word about this incredible fundraiser.

    I hope everyone exceeds these goals to help make this world a better place =)

  5. spoonyspork
    Posted December 3, 2013 at 11:10 PM | Permalink

    Imma try to donate a bit extra this year, in honor of my mom who passed away suddenly a couple months ago. She was a big fan, and had mentioned just a couple days before she was on yet another read through of your books. :)

    (I was considering asking if it would be useful to donate her first edition copy of ‘The Fantasy Worlds of Peter Beagle’ but when I opened it and that old book smell wafted out… I have to say I got a bit selfish. Another goat would be more useful and less hassle anyway)

  6. Celtland
    Posted December 4, 2013 at 1:04 AM | Permalink

    Baby cuatro was born just before Thanksgiving and we’re on my single income, but we’ll give what we can as we have the last couple of years. I like that donating to Worldbuilders/Heifer does so much with seemingly so little.

    • Posted December 7, 2013 at 12:24 AM | Permalink

      That’s one of the reasons it’s my favorite too….

  7. Daniel Goldberg
    Posted December 4, 2013 at 2:08 AM | Permalink

    A very special book from Neil Gaiman? Is this the phoenix of all arcs come back again!?

  8. Posted December 4, 2013 at 2:10 AM | Permalink

    Awesome!
    I’m particularly looking forward to the auctions. Also, I haven’t forgotten about the blog post I promised. In fact, I was waiting for this kickoff blog post of yours, so that I could link to it. Will let you know as soon as it’s up. Later,
    Kai

  9. Argent
    Posted December 4, 2013 at 10:32 AM | Permalink

    Looking at the stretch goals, I love how everyone is dicking around in theirs, and Brandon comes out all like “Come on, guys, seriously? Well, *I* will do something related to writing… -_-“

  10. Soren
    Posted December 4, 2013 at 1:10 PM | Permalink

    Wow. The idea of Write faster than the wind is a brilliant idea. *Even* his name is for your books.

  11. Wousje
    Posted December 4, 2013 at 1:19 PM | Permalink

    Ever seen this clip from Paul and Storm? very funny!
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5vw9RTVky4

  12. DJDubs
    Posted December 4, 2013 at 10:22 PM | Permalink

    Is Worldbringers set up on AmazonSmile? Cause I’m about to start my Christmas shopping….

  13. Rhia
    Posted December 6, 2013 at 9:19 AM | Permalink

    Worldbuilders is by far my favorite charity out there, and every year am waiting excitedly for it to start.
    Already donated money on Wednesday, but I’ll probably chip in some more in January.

    Thank you so much for organizing this every year and making the world a better place!

  14. SporkTastic
    Posted December 18, 2013 at 8:58 PM | Permalink

    Quick question – if I make multiple donations, will they be added together to figure out how many entries I have into the lottery or processed individually? (This will determine whether my donations end in a “5” or “0”.)

    • Amanda
      Posted December 19, 2013 at 11:13 AM | Permalink

      Yup!

      • SporkTastic
        Posted December 19, 2013 at 2:51 PM | Permalink

        “Yup, they’ll be added together,” or “yup, they’ll be processed individually”? I’m confused. (Though in my defense, I didn’t get much sleep last night.)

        • Amanda
          Posted December 19, 2013 at 3:22 PM | Permalink

          Haha, sorry – Yup, they’ll be added together.

          • SporkTastic
            Posted December 27, 2013 at 2:07 AM | Permalink

            Thanks much!

  15. blinder
    Posted January 30, 2014 at 10:44 PM | Permalink

    Wow, just now seeing your blog, your site, and learning about your writing. This is amazing. As a Heifer Int’l volunteer (my wife used to work for Heifer in Little Rock) and an avid read and writer, thank you so much for this…this amazing way to make the world a better place. I love sci-fi and fantasy and now your books are moving to the top of the list. What a great place and a wonderful way to give back to my most favorite of all the organizations out there in the world. Bravo and keep up the good work!

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