The Worldbuilders staff always get weirdly excited when the delivery driver pulls up and says with a horrified look, “You have 15 boxes today…” The team has been known to cheer at the backbreaking work of hauling thousands of books up or down sets of stairs. They’re not entirely right in the head, but it’s okay, because they’re my kind of crazy.
Recently, Del Rey and Grim Oak Press are two of the deliveries that made the team cheer. Both have been donating for a while, and we’re glad to have them, because they both are offering some really quality stuff this year.
So today we’ve got more than 100 new items going into the lottery where anyone can win them. For every $10 bucks you donate on our page, you get another chance to win.
We’ve also got 8 new rare, signed books going up for auction, too.
Let’s get rolling.
Coolness from Del Rey
- First Books in Cool Series: 10 copies of 10 different books
Del Rey did not hold back this year. Here we have a collection of beginnings. Excellent books that kick off their own series. (Which is really nice if you’re a read-from-the-start-no-matter-what person like I am.)
There’s more than a few of my personal favorites in there. And I know for a fact that my blurbs are on the backs of at least two of these.
The full list includes: The Abyss Beyond Dreams by Peter F Hamilton, Hounded by Kevin Hearne, The Warded Man by Peter V Brett, The Shadow Revolution by Clay Griffith and Susan Griffith, Fool’s Assassin by Robin Hobb, Emergence by John Birmingham, Red Rising by Pierce Brown, The Galaxy Game by Karen Lord, and The Hammer & the Blade and (plus its sequel, A Discourse in Steel) by Paul S Kemp. Half a King by Joe Abercrombie.
- The Iron Druid Chronicles. Signed by Kevin Hearne.
We’ve talked about the Iron Druid Chronicles a lot, but it bears repeating that these are great books. Del Rey sent Kevin two complete sets to sign, and he sent them on to us, so one is going into the lottery while the other one is going up for auction right here.
Lottery Items from Grim Oak Press
Shawn Speakman started Grim Oak Press a while back, and since then he’s collected a LOT of signed books from other authors. He runs preorders for them on his website, has the authors come sign books, and then ships them out. It’s a really great deal.
Its an even better deal for Worldbuidlers, because he’s held on to a bunch of them to donate this year, and we’re putting a lot of books into the lottery.
- Signed Anthologies: First edition copy of Unfettered signed by Shawn Speakman, Jacqueline Carey, Brandon Sanderson, me, and Neil Gaiman; ARC of Unbound signed by Todd Lockwood, Kat Richardson and Shawn Speakman; and Blackguards signed by Shawn Speakman.
These are some serious anthologies, with a lot of heavy hitters in them. People like Brandon Sanderson, Neil Gaiman, Django Wexler, Cat Rambo, and Kat Richardson, just to name a few. Unfettered in particular is pretty rare, because only 5,000 copies were printed. Unbound hasn’t even been released yet.
All three of these anthologies are in the lottery, in all of their signed glory.
- Signed Books: The Darkling Child signed by Terry Brooks, The Glittering World signed by Robert Levy, Messengers Legacy signed by Peter V Brett, Silver on the Road signed by Laura Anne Gilman, Zero World signed by Jason M Hough, Mystic signed by Jason Denzel, and The Dark Thorn signed by Shawn Speakman.
This is a good example of the wide variety of authors Shawn works with. He donated seven completely different books that do a pretty good job of spanning the Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre, so if you win one of these from the lottery, you’re bound to find something to like.
- First edition copies of The Slow Regard of Silent Things. Double signed by me and Nate Taylor. One in the lottery and one up for auction.
I’m sure most of you have heard about Slow Regard, but if you haven’t, it’s my newest novella, and includes really beautiful illustrations from my friend Nate Taylor.
Nate is much harder than me to get to sign things (I’ve been known to sign a lot of books that weren’t mine), so the fact that we have two copies bearing his lovely signature is pretty cool. One is going into the lottery, and the other is up for auction right over here.
Auctions from Grim Oak Press
We put a fair amount of Shawn’s stuff into the lottery, but he’s got a bunch of stuff that’s very rare, limited, or otherwise specialty, so we’ve put the rest of it up for action.
- Auctions: First edition copy of Firefight. Numbered edition of Legion: Skin Deep. Both signed by Brandon Sanderson.
These two auctions contain some of the books Brandon Sanderson has signed for Grim Oak. And look at this familiar blurb for the Reconers series (of which Firefight is #2):
“Another win for Sanderson . . . he’s simply a brilliant writer. Period.”—Patrick Rothfuss, author of the New York Times and USA Today bestseller The Name of the Wind
Both of these are really good books, but both of them are second in a series, so rather than give them to someone who won’t appreciate them properly, we’re auctioning them off to people who will love them. You can bid on the signed copy of Firefight right here, and the fancy, signed and numbered edition of Legion: Skin Deep right here.
- Auction: First edition copy of The Skull Throne. Signed by Peter V Brett.
Peter V. Brett is one of our beloved, long-time supporters. In the early years of Worldbuilders (the second year, actually), Amanda actually won a signed copy of his first book, The Warded Man, in the lottery. This was years before she worked here, and she told me it’s one of her prized possessions.
I like to think it’s because I read that exact copy and signed it too, but she neither confirms nor denies that guess.
This is the fourth book in the series, and you can grab it all for your own right over here.
- Auction: Game of Thrones comic books, issues 7, 8, and 9. Double signed by Daniel Abraham and George R. R. Martin.
These are some beautiful comic books.
The comics are scripted by Daniel Abraham, and George R.R. Martin advises the adaptation. These are all signed by both of them. Again, they’re not the beginning of the series, so we couldn’t put them into the lottery, but they’re definitely cool, and so we’ve put them up in an auction here.
- Auction: ARC of Unbound. Signed by Todd Lockwood and Shawn Speakman.
We have a rare ARC copy of Unbound, which isn’t hasn’t even hit the shelf yet.
This features another 22 stories by great authors, and it’s no ordinary, flimsy ARC – this ARC is a hardcover, one of only 250 printed, and has the in-progress cover artwork Todd Lockwood finishes up the final.
Plus, Todd Lockwood himself has doodled a dragon inside it. Which is pretty damn epic.
You can bid on it over here.
- Auction: Limited edition Unfettered. Signed by all authors.
(Click to embiggen, and see how everyone else has a cooler signature than me.)
Limited to 500 copies. Signed by 22 of the biggest names in modern speculative fiction. Special edition cover…. honestly, I don’t know what else you could ask for here.
Unless it’s a cool slipcase to keep the book safe. But wait, it’s got that too.
This is a truly marvelous donation, a real rarity. And if it doesn’t goes for less than 500 bucks, someone’s getting a hell of a bargain. But as I type this, it’s going for a lot less than that: bid on it here.
* * *
We’re creeping up on $125,000, which is when John Scalzi, Ann Leckie, Sabaa Tahir, and I read our own 1-Star Reviews, which is sure to be hilariously painful. And at $150,000 you get to have a Worldbuilders edition of Fox in Socks. Knowing my team, there’s probably going to be a lot of bleeped-out cussing in that video.
As a matter of fact, you should really take a glance at all of the upcoming stretch goals, because some really cool people are doing some amazing stuff this year….
Cool stuff on the horizon, guys. Big news. Exciting events. And don’t forget I’ll still be streaming on twitch every day at 4:00 CST.
Thanks for being awesome, everyone…