We’re about a month and a half away from the start of this year’s Worldbuilders, and I have to say, things are going pretty well so far.
Actually, we’re doing way better than that. Things are going amazingly well.
I wish I could take credit for it. But the truth is, it’s the newly assembled Worldbuilders team who deserves the praise.
You see, last year’s fundraiser was our biggest yet. We raised over 450,000 dollars for Heifer International.
The downside was that it swallowed three months of my life.
And I’m not saying it wasn’t worth it. Because it was. $450,000 is a lot of goats. It’s a lot of well-fed kids and a lot of families that are happier and healthier than they were before.
But it made me realize that I needed *way* more help to run things effectively. We’ve come a long way since 2008 when Sarah and I ran this whole thing out of our living room.
As a result, this year I’ve got a bunch of lovely, capable, and above all *organized* people helping out. They say things to me like, “You know, maybe you should start asking authors for donations before the fundraiser actually starts…”
Its because of them that things are moving along smoothly and according to schedule. Hell, they’re the only reason there is a schedule.
So, with no further ado, a few updates:
A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog explaining my mortal enemy Anton Strout’s generous offer to donate $1 to worldbuilders for every copy of his upcoming book that people pre-order. I also mentioned that his publisher, Penguin, generously offered to match that donation up to the first 1500 books.
However, after I posted the blog, I realized that while I had gone into some detail about how much I wished to destroy Anton, I hadn’t done a good job of explaining how generous he was actually being with his offer.
(I will admit, this was not my best threat ever.)
You see, authors make their money by earning a royalty off each book they sell. For paperback books, that royalty tends to be between 6% and 8% of the cover price.
Alchemystic has a cover price of 7.99. Let’s call it eight bucks even just to keep the math easy.
This means every copy of Anton’s book that’s pre-ordered, will earn him between 48 and 64 cents.
That means for every copy of his book that’s pre-ordered, Anton is potentially giving away twice as much money as he’s making on the sale.
Now I’m not asking that you rush out and pre-order his book in an attempt to bankrupt this man. My nemesis. My sworn enemy.
No. That would be petty.
What I’m asking you to do is this:
1. Realize that if you order Alchemystic before Sunday the 23rd, it will count as a pre-order.
2. Consider that if you pre-order the book, two dollars will be donated to Worldbuilders, and, by extension, Heifer International.
3. Look at this adorable picture of a little girl hugging a goat.
4. Do whatever comes naturally.
- The 2013 Literary Pin-Up Calendar.
So far the calendar pre-order has been going very well.
For example, these are the pre-orders we received just on the first day.
As we promised, calendars will go out in the same order that they came in. So these will be the very first calendars we ship out when they come back from the printer.
If you’re interested in seeing one of the recently revealed pin-ups, you can head over to the pre-order page on the Tinker’s Packs and check it out there. (Hint: It’s Peter S. Beagle’s.)
You can read the blog Lee Moyer wrote about it over here.
Rest assured that we’ll be posting more images as they become available.
We have recently created a Facebook page for our online store, The Tinker’s Packs.
And another page for Worldbuilders itself.
If you want to keep a close eye on the fundraiser and the store, following those pages might be a good idea. You’re less likely to miss updates that way. And some of the items we’ll be offering on the store, or putting up for auction in the fundraiser are going to be limited in number.
For example, last year someone donated 30 Jayne hats to the fundraiser and they sold out in less than a day. The same thing happened with the ceramic steins someone made for us.
If you tune in to the Facebook pages, odds are you’ll have a better chance of catching these sorts of things before they sell out.
That’s all for now, folks. More soon….
pat
[Edit: Added 1:00 PM]
- Contact E-mails for Worldbuilders.
If you’d like to make a donation, you can drop us a line at donations (squiggly-at-thinger) worldbuilders.org
If you have a general question about the fundraiser, you can contact us at: Questions (squiggly-at-thinger) worldbuilders.org.
