200% Funded

 Hey, folks! Been a few days, and I apologize for that. The end of the month is always pretty brutal for my day job.

Since the last time we "talked," the $5,000 stretch goal that I laid out is pretty far in the rear-view mirror. We're currently up over $6,000, which means we are 200% funded in the first 25% of the campaign. Wow! Again, I can't possibly thank all of you enough for your support. This means that a lot of the little things that I had planned to do out of pocket, will now be covered by the campaign, making the book less of an insane passion project.

It's still an insane passion project; just less of one.

The $5k Gold Exchange stretch goal reached, I can share that I'm currently tweaking and cleaning up the old Gold Exchange collection I had assembled in 2011 for a release in ebook form. Everyone who buys a copy of Best Movie Ever will get a Gold Exchange ebook. I am still not sure about the plausibility of doing a paperback run for it, but if there's enough people voicing interest I certainly would love to!

I'm waiting on a devliery of some more props that I can add to our perks. I know that most of the really cool, unique stuff sold out almost immediately, and I'm as shocked by that as you folks are! The next wave of t-shirts and some other cool perks that I'm going to add to the campaign will not be add-on exclusive anymore; I want everyone to be able to buy them, and while the first round made sense as add-on perks to save on shipping and convince people to give the book a try...well, right now we have almost 200 people who have bought the book and only a small fraction of you had a chance to buy t-shirts, headphones, etc. So I'm going to try and make that ratio a little better. I am, however, not listing anything until it arrives to me. The folks I have been getting them from are a little spacey about getting back to me promptly.

In the meantime, I've talked to some artists to commission some 11x17 posters, some of which will be avialable as custom dustjackets for people who bought the hardcover. More on that once I get some of the art back. Today, I'm adding a fun, new perk to the campaign: VHS lamps. This will be an actual VHS copy of Josie and the Pussycats, with an LED strip attached to the inside to make it into a low-emitting lamp or nightlight. As a former video store manager and physical media nerd, I've made a bunch of these over the years. They're fun, and relatively easy, but also a personal and unique gift. I've bought up a handful of VHS copies of Josie online, but I already own 3 at home (long story), so I'm posting just the three to start. The sample photo in the perk isn't Josie, but an already-completed lamp I have in my office, the TV series Deadly Class. In that case, the show didn't have a real VHS release, so I just used a generic tape -- but it made sense, because the show was set in the '80s. 

A handful of people have reached out about international shipping and...yeah, it's very expensive. I have had very bad luck trying to find better pricing than what I have here. Anybody who wants to reach out to me individually and provide me with an address, I can get a specific estimate that's unique to you, but the two times I have tried it, it hasn't been much of a savings, if any. If you don't want one of the perks that's unique to the campaign (props, blueprints, posters, etc.), it might be easier to wait until I have the books in-hand, at which point I will set up a pre-order on Amazon, and/or sell some on eBay, both of which have bulk-shipping discounts with the US Postal Service.

I have more to say, but I want to spend some time with my kids...and I suspect tomorrow I'll have some confirmation on stuff I could only tease tonight!

DuJour means friendship,

Russ