One of Several Reasons to Back Race to Adventure
Posted on June 26, 2012 at 12:00 pm by with
A Quick Peek Behind the “Red” Curtain With Kickstarter
Posted on June 19, 2012 at 6:11 pm by with
At Evil Hat, with our kickstarter campaigns, we believe in sharing the cost. We’re not coming to our backers asking them to carry 100% of the costs on a project, pure and simple.
With that in mind, the Dinocalypse kickstarter was conceived as someting that’d be in the red at pretty much every stretch goal, with each book needing to generate a few thousand bucks in sales outside of the kickstarter as each got funded. And that’s fine; we want our kickstarted products to take on a life beyond the kickstarter, or it’s not much of a starter after all.
And if we fail to make that additional green to get us into the black — well, that’s on us, and it should be on us. Because we’re a commercial company, dagnabbit.
So that same thing’s been true as we come to our Race to Adventure! kickstarter. We said as much on the project page that even if we hit $40,000, we’re still in the red. How much in the red? Well, about $20,000. Mind you, that’s $20,000 we have and are willing to spend in addition to the funds raised, so no harm no foul there. But I’ve gotten some questions about this on Twitter made with concerned faces and intentions to see Evil Hat prosper, so I figure I owe you some more detail.
Now, first off, let’s check an assumption at the door. If, at $40k, we’re $20k in the red, that means that if we raised $60k, the project would be fully in the black, right?
Nope.
The reality is that as each new pledge comes in, new costs come along for the ride, too — shipping, for example, as well as the costs of producing the game. Same can be said of each stretch goal, since that triggers the need to produce additional materials. So while at $60k we’d be less in the red, we’d still be in the red. With each pledge that comes in, some goes towards “the red”, and some simply goes towards the cost.
Very generalized, based on our past experiences, we’ve structured things such that about 25% of any pledge is going towards shipping costs & other incidentals. We also know that as much as 10% goes to amazon and kickstarter combined. Together, that’s a third. So we could say that for every 3 bucks pledged, we’ll net about 2 bucks to apply to the actual costs of the product and the spiffs.
I’m gonna use multiples of $3,000 here because that makes the 2/3rds math easy. In essence: $36,000 = $24,000 actual; $51,000 = $34,000 actual; $72,000 = $48,000 actual; $99,000 = $66,000 actual. Dig?
The trick to making this all work out is to make sure that with each stretch goal, it’s only adding a little more cost for us; that way, as the funding busts through stretch goals (fingers crossed!) it’s moving faster than the growth of “the red”, allowing us to reduce it.
To use those numbers again: at $24,000 actual, we’re about $20,000 in the red (and again — that’s as planned, designed, etc; all good!); at $34,000 actual, we’d be about $12,000 in the red; at $48,000 actual, we’d be about $4,000 in the red; and at $66,000 actual, we’d be only about $1,000 in the red.
So when someone asks me “You say you’re still in the red at $40,000; at what point are you not in the red?” and I say “$100,000!” — it’d be easy to walk away and think “holy crap, if this project only makes $40,000, Evil Hat will be $60,000 in debt for this project!” But that’s really far from the truth ($40,000 far, in fact).
The math is a moving target. We took the time to chart it. We know its trajectory. And it’ll be a smooth ride all the way.
As a footnote, here: if the project doesn’t fund? We still produce the game — but without spending money on all those extras, without the burden to ship out a bunch of copies, etc. So our “failed to fund” scenario potentially has us less in the red than our “just barely funded” scenario, assuming the game sells (we’d also do a smaller print run in such a case, another way to keep costs down). This failure scenario is also by design.
In all, this is the kind of number crunching, dig-in-the-details financial work that’s best done well in advance when planning a kickstarter. I worked up these figures back in April, two full months before we launched, as one of our first steps in designing the Race to Adventure kickstarter.
When it comes down to it, I’ll say it again: Kickstarter is a business. We’re treating it like one. And most businesses have a period of taking a loss, of living in the red, before they can succeed.
It’s all good, and with even modest success, we’ll be doing just fine. Sure, we’ll definitely need your help — whether as a backer or eventual purchaser — to see that success with Race to Adventure and honestly any other product we make.
But Evil Hat is not in any kind of trouble here, in any of the possible outcomes. By design.
While we are taking on more risk in 2012 than we have in prior years, as with everything Evil Hat’s done, we’re making sure all those risks are calculated ones.
We’re just as interested in making sure Evil Hat sticks around as you are. 
A Quick Peek Behind the “Red” Curtain With Kickstarter
Posted on June 19, 2012 at 6:11 pm by with
At Evil Hat, with our kickstarter campaigns, we believe in sharing the cost. We’re not coming to our backers asking them to carry 100% of the costs on a project, pure and simple.
With that in mind, the Dinocalypse kickstarter was conceived as someting that’d be in the red at pretty much every stretch goal, with each book needing to generate a few thousand bucks in sales outside of the kickstarter as each got funded. And that’s fine; we want our kickstarted products to take on a life beyond the kickstarter, or it’s not much of a starter after all.
And if we fail to make that additional green to get us into the black — well, that’s on us, and it should be on us. Because we’re a commercial company, dagnabbit.
So that same thing’s been true as we come to our Race to Adventure! kickstarter. We said as much on the project page that even if we hit $40,000, we’re still in the red. How much in the red? Well, about $20,000. Mind you, that’s $20,000 we have and are willing to spend in addition to the funds raised, so no harm no foul there. But I’ve gotten some questions about this on Twitter made with concerned faces and intentions to see Evil Hat prosper, so I figure I owe you some more detail.
Now, first off, let’s check an assumption at the door. If, at $40k, we’re $20k in the red, that means that if we raised $60k, the project would be fully in the black, right?
Nope.
The reality is that as each new pledge comes in, new costs come along for the ride, too — shipping, for example, as well as the costs of producing the game. Same can be said of each stretch goal, since that triggers the need to produce additional materials. So while at $60k we’d be less in the red, we’d still be in the red. With each pledge that comes in, some goes towards “the red”, and some simply goes towards the cost.
Very generalized, based on our past experiences, we’ve structured things such that about 25% of any pledge is going towards shipping costs & other incidentals. We also know that as much as 10% goes to amazon and kickstarter combined. Together, that’s a third. So we could say that for every 3 bucks pledged, we’ll net about 2 bucks to apply to the actual costs of the product and the spiffs.
I’m gonna use multiples of $3,000 here because that makes the 2/3rds math easy. In essence: $36,000 = $24,000 actual; $51,000 = $34,000 actual; $72,000 = $48,000 actual; $99,000 = $66,000 actual. Dig?
The trick to making this all work out is to make sure that with each stretch goal, it’s only adding a little more cost for us; that way, as the funding busts through stretch goals (fingers crossed!) it’s moving faster than the growth of “the red”, allowing us to reduce it.
To use those numbers again: at $24,000 actual, we’re about $20,000 in the red (and again — that’s as planned, designed, etc; all good!); at $34,000 actual, we’d be about $12,000 in the red; at $48,000 actual, we’d be about $4,000 in the red; and at $66,000 actual, we’d be only about $1,000 in the red.
So when someone asks me “You say you’re still in the red at $40,000; at what point are you not in the red?” and I say “$100,000!” — it’d be easy to walk away and think “holy crap, if this project only makes $40,000, Evil Hat will be $60,000 in debt for this project!” But that’s really far from the truth ($40,000 far, in fact).
The math is a moving target. We took the time to chart it. We know its trajectory. And it’ll be a smooth ride all the way.
As a footnote, here: if the project doesn’t fund? We still produce the game — but without spending money on all those extras, without the burden to ship out a bunch of copies, etc. So our “failed to fund” scenario potentially has us less in the red than our “just barely funded” scenario, assuming the game sells (we’d also do a smaller print run in such a case, another way to keep costs down). This failure scenario is also by design.
In all, this is the kind of number crunching, dig-in-the-details financial work that’s best done well in advance when planning a kickstarter. I worked up these figures back in April, two full months before we launched, as one of our first steps in designing the Race to Adventure kickstarter.
When it comes down to it, I’ll say it again: Kickstarter is a business. We’re treating it like one. And most businesses have a period of taking a loss, of living in the red, before they can succeed.
It’s all good, and with even modest success, we’ll be doing just fine. Sure, we’ll definitely need your help — whether as a backer or eventual purchaser — to see that success with Race to Adventure and honestly any other product we make.
But Evil Hat is not in any kind of trouble here, in any of the possible outcomes. By design.
While we are taking on more risk in 2012 than we have in prior years, as with everything Evil Hat’s done, we’re making sure all those risks are calculated ones.
We’re just as interested in making sure Evil Hat sticks around as you are.
The Race to Adventure Kickstarter Has Launched!
Posted on June 19, 2012 at 10:43 am by with
I’m gonna let the videos speak for themselves on this one. You can find the Kickstarter page behind this click!
Dinocalypse Now: General Preorder & Ebook
Posted on May 2, 2012 at 12:46 pm by with
Chuck Wendig’s Dinocalypse Now is now up for general preorder!
You can order the ebook bundle now, too, if you want to stay all digital (or are, y’know, international and not wanting to pay shipping costs in excess of its cover price).
We’ll be shipping this one mid-June or so if it all works out (we have to print the books & deliver them to the Kickstarter backers who made this all possible first).
I’ll edit this post with links to other sales locales as they become available, so stay tuned if you prefer using DriveThruFiction, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble!
- DriveThruFiction: Available!
- Amazon: Available!
- Barnes & Noble: Available!
Dinocalypse Now: General Preorder & Ebook
Posted on May 2, 2012 at 12:46 pm by with
Chuck Wendig’s Dinocalypse Now is now up for general preorder!
You can order the ebook bundle now, too, if you want to stay all digital (or are, y’know, international and not wanting to pay shipping costs in excess of its cover price).
We’ll be shipping this one mid-June or so if it all works out (we have to print the books & deliver them to the Kickstarter backers who made this all possible first).
I’ll edit this post with links to other sales locales as they become available, so stay tuned if you prefer using DriveThruFiction, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble!
- DriveThruFiction: Available!
- Amazon: Pending approval
- Barnes & Noble: Pending approval
Dinocalypse Now: Chapter Six
Posted on April 17, 2012 at 8:00 am by with
In this sixth and final installment of our Dinocalypse Now preview, we learn a little bit more about what has transpired. Want to learn even more? Back the Dinocalypse Trilogy kickstarter before it concludes — soon! — and you will!
Prefer your samples in PDF form? Download this one, here, to get all chapters so far.
Chapter Six
Outside New York City
The dinosaur roared, and the Conqueror Ape roared with it.
The dinosaur in question: a Giganotosaurus, its head lifted high, its wretched scream ululating from its rippling throat.
The Conqueror Ape in question: Gorilla Khan, warlord ape and all-around megalomaniac.
Gorilla Khan wore his best outfit today. This day of true conquest, this day the world was made finally to kneel and see its weakness splayed out before all eyes. Armor made of bones and teeth and painted red-and-gold—red for blood, gold for the color of kings—adorned his broad primate’s chest. And upon his head, a helmet made from the skull of a long-dead saber-toothed cat, the colorful plumage of the similarly long-dead archaeopteryx thrust up from a ring mounted in the top of the hand-made helmet.
Both creatures, the cat and the bird, were ones Gorilla Khan hunted and killed himself.
One should wear his conquests, he said. You do not conceal your gifts.
That was why he sat astride this massive reptilian carnivore. Bit in the beast’s mouth, braided leather reins gathered up in one of Khan’s crushing fists.
Let the world see him upon this most glorious of creatures. A creature that died out millions of years ago. Before mankind and the trappings of so-called “civilization.” Before time itself. Before the meteors came and changed everything.
Ahead of them: the Brooklyn Bridge. Beyond it, the rising spires of Manhattan.
In the sky above, the setting sun highlit the circling pterodactyls and the first wave of airships: just a fraction of Gorilla Khan’s invasion fleet.
“Status report,” he barked.
One of his lackeys, a simpering white-furred lowland gorilla, bounded up to the beast and clambered up the side. He hung to Khan’s left, offering a placating smile of primate fangs.
“Most excellent, Mighty Khan, most excellent.”
“I abhor your generalities. I demand specifics, Attaché Gonga. Not your mewling glad-handed bulletins.” To confirm his disgust, Gorilla Khan threatened Gonga with the back of his hand—a hand that did not fall but stayed poised to strike.
“Yes! Yes. Of course.” Gonga had this nervous laugh, a kind of wheezing, growling heh, heh, heh. It held little mirth, and whenever he made the sound, a sudden stink of fear rose. A smell that intoxicated the Conqueror Ape. “The invasion is going… ahh, swimmingly. The humans have begun to dispatch, ahhh, soldiers and police, but they are no match for our own warriors and agents, nor can they, ahhh, hold their own against our technology.”
Technology. Yes. Khan longed to test their weapons on unwilling subjects. Hanging to the side of his Giganotosaurus was what looked to be a long wooden spear with a tip made from a gleaming multi-faceted ruby, a ruby as big as a human child’s fist. But of course it was so much more than just a spear…
Well. Playtime would come.
Gonga continued: “The Centurions have been subdued. All the chapter houses have been taken; many burned to the ground. Those eager do-gooding spirits of the Century Club have been… ahh, sidelined and taken away by our, ahhh, new allies. The minds of the heroes are no longer with their, ahh, umm, bodies.”
Their new allies, indeed. The saurian agents. Willing and able to serve with no interest in leading. A powerful force.
“Anything else?” Khan asked his inferior.
“There is, ahhh, one more thing,” Gonga said, his voice lowering and once more offering that nervous huffing laugh. “We have hit a… a snag.”
Khan roared. Bared fangs first to Gonga, then to the sky.
“Explain, Attaché Gonga.”
“Some of the Centurions, a rare few—”
“Some of them what.”
“A rare few remain, ahhh, unaccounted for, though we are sure that—”
Gorilla Khan backhanded the albino ape hard enough to knock the attaché off the side of his mount. The fool hit the ground and scrambled to once more gain his footing.
“Who?” Khan asked.
“I’m sorry?”
“I said, who! Who has escaped our grasp?”
“Ahhh.” Gonga stood, dusting himself off. “Amelia Stone. Mack Silver. Benjamin Hu. Jet Black. Sally Slick. Ahhh. Reports are coming in of others. Just a few! Just a few.”
Khan let go of the reins, and leapt off his mount.
He landed atop Gonga, once more knocking the pink-eyed simian to the ground. He grabbed tufts of white fur and pulled the weakling’s face close to his own.
“What of my son?” Khan said, voice low.
“Ah. Ahhh. Yes. We have agents inbound as we speak.”
“He’s still there? Still at Oxford?”
Gonga nodded, obsequious smile firmly in place.
“Good.” Gorilla Khan snorted. “I hate this place, Gonga. I hate the people. Their pink-cheeked optimism, their ugly utilitarian architecture, their disgust and misunderstanding of the natural world. But most of all I hate what they did to my boy. They… civilized him. Made him weak. I will change that. I will change him back. Awaken in him what has been awakened in me. For he is Son-of-Khan, and I am Khan.”
The Conqueror Ape let his attaché fall back to the ground.
“Now, Gonga. We march.” Gorilla Khan clambered back up into the custom-made saddle riding the ridges of the monster’s back. He grabbed the reins and pulled them tight.
The beast reared back.
Once more the Giganotosaurus and the Conqueror Ape roared in unison.
Dinocalypse Now: Chapter Five
Posted on April 10, 2012 at 8:00 am by with
It’s chapter five of Dinocalypse Now! Will our heroes escape a New York City overrun by psychic saurians? Will Mack and Jet ever see eye to eye? Will you back the Dinocalypse Trilogy at Kickstarter, today? Tune in and find out!
Prefer your samples in PDF form? Download this one, here, to get all chapters so far.
Chapter Five
New York City
It was bad enough being in the crowd above. It was bad enough having to set foot on the streets of the city and feel anchored to the earth in unspectacular fashion. It was bad enough to have to climb down into the city’s secret bowels through a series of doorways and boltholes.
All of that paled in comparison to being chased through those aforementioned bowels by a shrieking albino hell-a-saur bent on ripping them to shreds.
Mack was not happy.
As his footfalls echoed through the tunnel, he couldn’t help but think of flying over some tropical isle, gazing down at waterfalls and crashing surf—in his mind’s eye he imagined the soft leather of Lucy’s controls in his hand, all her buttons and gauges splayed out before him. It’s why he named his plane with a woman’s name—beyond it being the convention, of course; it was nice to have a woman in his hands who did everything he asked. Predictable as the tickity-tock of a Swiss clock.
Unlike, say, Sally Slick.
The three of them were running together, the beast snapping at their heels—when suddenly she and the light she carried were gone, snuffed out in the darkness. As Mack and Jet barely managed to squeeze into a side tunnel, they found themselves without their third.
No Sally.
And, stranger still, no monster.
“Sally,” Jet said, breathless. Then he called out: “Sally!”
“Shhh!” Mack said, clamping a hand over Jet’s fool mouth. He hissed: “You want to draw that thing’s attention?”
Jet wriggled free. “It’s probably chasing her, you dolt.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I’m sure they each just went their separate ways.”
Mack felt sure the kid was rolling his eyes. He couldn’t see him in the dark, but a gesture like that, you could hear in a person’s words. “Don’t you roll your eyes at me.”
“I don’t know what she sees in you.”
“Wait. What? Sally sees something in me?”
“No. What? Nothing!”
“No, hold on one second, you just said—”
Their conversation was quickly cut short.
Just behind the two of them, the beast roared. With it came the scent of rotten food in its maw, the belching breath of blood and meat and fur. Its tongue slapping against teeth.
Mack did the only thing Mack knew to do in a situation like this:
He winced and cocked a fist.
A fist he never had to throw.
There came a sound of groaning metal, and a shadow moving to the right of the beast—suddenly, a great gout of white steam bloomed in the air, blasting the creature’s head.
The beast screamed—a horrible sound that cut clean to Mack’s marrow. But then it reared its head and wriggled swiftly backward, twisting its body in such a way so that it managed to turn itself around and flee.
As it did, Mack saw something.
At the back of the creature’s head, Mack caught sight of a tiny glowing spot—soft, diffuse, an eerie icy blue something pulsing against the creature’s leathery flesh. And then Mack could no longer see it, for the beast was fast escaping. He tucked that information away, not sure what it was that clung to the creature…
Or what it meant.
Flame erupted—the light from a hand-held torch illuminating Sally’s face. In her hand she held a wrench, and dangling beside her was the pipe breathing great gouts of steam.
“Boys,” she said over the steam-hiss.
In this light, Mack suddenly found her—
—with her brow slick from the steam and almost glowing, really—
No, no, couldn’t be. This wasn’t—
No.
He liked women like Lucy. Soft, comfortable, putty in his hands.
Jet laughed. “Nice moves, Sally.”
“Don’t I know it.” She gave Mack’s shoulder a little punch and the touch sent a thrill grappling up his arms. A thrill that quickly got the kibosh. “What’s wrong, Silver? You look like you saw a ghost.”
“I almost just lost my arm in a dinosaur’s mouth. Pardon me for being rattled.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t try to punch angry dinosaurs,” Jet said.
Sally waved them both ahead. “Hush up and come on. That monster is gone now, but it won’t be for long. That blast of steam wasn’t much more than a whack of a rolled-up newspaper on the nose for a monster like that.”
Mack found himself seeing Sally in a new light as he wrestled with new feelings and…
Well. Mack would’ve rather been wrestling with the monster, instead.
* * *
The door rattled on its hinges against Sally’s boot. Rust whispered from old hinges, hinges made that way from their proximity to the water. A second kick, and a third, and finally the door swung open.
The gray light of a day moving from afternoon into evening hit them like a blinding tide, but it wasn’t long before their eyes adjusted…
And they saw just how much trouble they were really in.
The door opened out of a small marine shed and overlooked the Hudson River. The sinking sun was caught in pools of liquid light, plainly and perfectly highlighting Mack’s heavily-modified Boeing-314 clipper—a “boat plane” that needed no runway as long as it had a good stretch of water. One problem, though:
The boat was guarded by the enemy. A dozen saurian agents—once again projecting their smiling human faces—clustered together like an arrangement of humanoid bowling pins by the end of the floating dock, blocking anybody hoping to get close to Lucy.
They didn’t move. They didn’t even stare at one another.
They just… stood there.
Stock still. Staring forward. Fake reptile smile.
“They got Lucy,” Mack growled.
Jet sighed. “We’re going to need to find another way.”
“They got Lucy.”
“We heard you—”
“Nobody stands in the way of me and my plane.”
Mack started taking off his boots.
“You think that water’s cold?” he asked.
“Frigid,” Sally said.
“Good. I could use a little wake-me-up. I hope you two can swim.”
And with that, Mack ducked low and bolted toward the water.
Kickstarter: The Spike
Posted on April 4, 2012 at 9:50 am by with
Whaaaa?
If you’re lucky, your kickstarter campaign will have a day like our most recent Tuesday.
This is the sort of day that “isn’t supposed to happen” in the normal life-cycle of a main sequence kickstarter. Many kickstarters start out with a big opening-day spike that can play out over about three days, then they level off for most of the campaign, then they see a big spike on the final three days.
While we’ve had a good track record so far of upward movement on our graph, the kind of spike we had on April 3rd — at the start of the third week — is more of a rarity, unless something comes along that really points a lot of traffic your way (celebrity shout-outs, for example, or strong coverage on a popular media site). All in all, it was the second strongest day in our campaign, full stop, even including the first three days.
| Date | Backers | Backer Gain | Pledges | Pledge Gain |
| Tuesday, March 20, 2012 | 159 | 159 | $6,442.00 | $6,442.00 |
| Wednesday, March 21, 2012 | 221 | 62 | $9,130.00 | $2,688.00 |
| Thursday, March 22, 2012 | 297 | 76 | $11,674.00 | $2,544.00 |
| Friday, March 23, 2012 | 344 | 47 | $13,009.00 | $1,335.00 |
| Saturday, March 24, 2012 | 373 | 29 | $13,955.00 | $946.00 |
| Sunday, March 25, 2012 | 402 | 29 | $14,632.00 | $677.00 |
| Monday, March 26, 2012 | 427 | 25 | $15,315.00 | $683.00 |
| Tuesday, March 27, 2012 | 472 | 45 | $16,335.00 | $1,020.00 |
| Wednesday, March 28, 2012 | 492 | 20 | $17,120.00 | $785.00 |
| Thursday, March 29, 2012 | 518 | 26 | $18,085.00 | $965.00 |
| Friday, March 30, 2012 | 533 | 15 | $18,640.00 | $555.00 |
| Saturday, March 31, 2012 | 556 | 23 | $19,453.00 | $813.00 |
| Sunday, April 01, 2012 | 575 | 19 | $19,828.00 | $375.00 |
| Monday, April 02, 2012 | 629 | 54 | $21,007.00 | $1,179.00 |
| Tuesday, April 03, 2012 | 706 | 77 | $24,120.00 | $3,113.00 |
So what happened here?
Aside from the graph you see to the right, the Kickstarter dashboard does not provide a sort of day-to-day data breakdown, particularly of traffic sources. (I’m tempted to contact them & ask for it, but that might be best done after it’s all over.) You can see, tho, that starting the day before, we were already beginning to see an uptick. Just not one on the scale that occurred.
A few notions of what MIGHT have happened come to mind:
- PAX factor: I’m speaking on the Kickstarter panel at PAX East, and that got us on a nifty promo page on the Kickstarter site of the projects of various participants in the PAX East Kickstarter presence.
- We started showing up on the website’s front page in the fiction category.
- New sample chapter came out, on Tuesday.
- We did our weekly update, on Tuesday, announcing new stretch goals involving Harry Connolly and Stephen Blackmoore. (You can see from the above data that we tend to have an update-day bump.)
- We broke $20,000 on Monday, making C. E. Murphy’s novel a certainty, and improving the value proposition of our $10 tier.
- Folks (Including TV/Film writer John Rogers, of Leverage) backed us and tweeted about it.
- We busted the 600 backer mark (now past 700), so there’s some sheer critical mass of numbers potentially going on.
- Some folks got their paychecks at the end of the month, so they were able to make some financial commitments starting Monday.
- Mild increase of the supply of our higher-dollar-value upper tiers.
I’m sure there’s more, but that’s a lot of aggregate factors, and it’s entirely possible that our spike came from all of them rather than any particular one.
Luckily, a few days ago I took a snapshot of our usage data, so I can run a comparison to see where the “deltas” are. Here’s the usage data after our banner Tuesday:
| Referrer | Type | # of Pledges | % of Dollars | Dollars Pledged |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Direct traffic (no referrer information) | External | 158 | 22.37% | $5,429.50 |
| External | 96 | 20.51% | $4,979 | |
| Popular (Discover) | Kickstarter | 63 | 7.15% | $1,734 |
| Search | Kickstarter | 55 | 7.31% | $1,775.01 |
| superexplosive.com | External | 37 | 3.4% | $825 |
| External | 35 | 6.06% | $1,470 | |
| google.com | External | 28 | 2.36% | $572 |
| plus.url.google.com | External | 22 | 2.58% | $625 |
| Kickstarter user profiles | Kickstarter | 18 | 2.76% | $670 |
| Embedded widget | Kickstarter | 18 | 1.66% | $402 |
| A project’s backer confirmation page | Kickstarter | 15 | 2.25% | $545 |
| deadlyfredly.com | External | 13 | 2.48% | $603 |
| Friend backing email | Kickstarter | 12 | 1.48% | $360 |
| Fiction (Discover) | Kickstarter | 11 | 1.1% | $266 |
| Kickstarter homepage | Kickstarter | 11 | 0.8% | $195 |
| atomic-robo.com | External | 11 | 0.7% | $170 |
| mail.yahoo.com | External | 10 | 1.88% | $455 |
| jim-butcher.com | External | 9 | 1.59% | $385 |
| rpgkickstarters.tumblr.com | External | 7 | 0.58% | $140 |
| faterpg.com | External | 6 | 0.74% | $180 |
| forum.rpg.net | External | 5 | 0.43% | $105 |
| Activity feed | Kickstarter | 4 | 1.24% | $300 |
| evilhat.com | External | 4 | 0.27% | $65 |
| la-noir.blogspot.com | External | 4 | 0.16% | $40 |
| cemurphy.net | External | 3 | 0.21% | $50 |
So where were the gains? Here:
| Referrer | Type | Gain | % of Gain |
| Direct traffic (no referrer information) | External | +45 | 31.9% |
| External | +17 | 12.1% | |
| Search | Kickstarter | +16 | 11.3% |
| Popular (Discover) | Kickstarter | +14 | 9.9% |
| Kickstarter homepage | Kickstarter | +11 | 7.8% |
| External | +8 | 5.7% | |
| google.com | External | +6 | 4.3% |
| evilhat.com | External | +4 | 2.8% |
| la-noir.blogspot.com | External | +4 | 2.8% |
| Fiction (Discover) | Kickstarter | +3 | 2.1% |
| plus.url.google.com | External | +2 | 1.4% |
| Kickstarter user profiles | Kickstarter | +2 | 1.4% |
| Embedded widget | Kickstarter | +2 | 1.4% |
| A project’s backer confirmation page | Kickstarter | +2 | 1.4% |
| rpgkickstarters.tumblr.com | External | +2 | 1.4% |
| superexplosive.com | External | +1 | 0.7% |
| deadlyfredly.com | External | +1 | 0.7% |
| atomic-robo.com | External | +1 | 0.7% |
| Friend backing email | Kickstarter | +0 | 0.0% |
| mail.yahoo.com | External | +0 | 0.0% |
| jim-butcher.com | External | +0 | 0.0% |
| faterpg.com | External | +0 | 0.0% |
| forum.rpg.net | External | +0 | 0.0% |
| Activity feed | Kickstarter | +0 | 0.0% |
| cemurphy.net | External | +0 | 0.0% |
Nearly a full third of our source data remains mysterious, due to no referrer information coming along to the party. Another third (at least) of our traffic came from the sum total of all the various ways Kickstarter has provided to drive people to our project. The remainder is a spread of all the various other ways we’ve reached out, both directly and through our talented pool of authors.
Ultimately, this doesn’t answer the question “where’d it come from?” so much as to say, “Yep, it is the aggregation of many smaller streams, and a sort of critical mass of several factors at once.”
I’ll take it!
Dinocalypse Now: Chapter Four
Posted on April 3, 2012 at 8:00 am by with
In this return installation of the Dinocalypse Now preview, we join our learned ape again, as he tries to unravel the knot of our current predicament! Join the fight, at the Dinocalypse Trilogy Kickstarter, today – we’ve already unlocked two more books beyond the trilogy, and are looking at more, all at a crazy-low price ($10) for all of the ebooks the campaign funds.
Prefer your samples in PDF form? Download this one, here, to get all chapters so far.
Chapter Four
Oxford University
Professor Khan threw open the bottom drawer of his deck, lifted the false bottom (with a finger hole cut out for one of his massive ape digits) and withdrew the Televisor Talk Box, a bulging bubble screen with a fat black dial underneath and a series of aluminum conduits forming a metal labyrinth (as if for a very tiny mouse) behind it.
Khan drew the box, extended the antenna, and spun the hand-crank.
The screen flared to life.
A blurry black-and-white image showed a library not unlike his own—but upon further inspection one would see this looked equal parts “war room.” The table in the back lined with a single map and a series of tiny flags gave it away, as did the many weapons—sabers and scimitars and blunderbusses—hanging on the visible walls.
The Century Club. Chapter house, London.
And it was empty.
It was never empty. Not once, not ever. Someone always manned the Televisor—necessary to monitor communications, to keep track of emergencies, to send messages between the chapter houses across the world, from Philadelphia to Mumbai to Paris and back again.
“Sir?” Edwin squeaked.
“What is it, boy?”
“What’s that I’m looking at, Professor?”
But Khan didn’t have time to explain. He turned the dial to one of the 12 tic-mark positions—the image warped like melting candle wax and was, for a moment, supplanted by a series of horizontal lines chasing each other.
Then a new image resolved:
The Philadelphia chapter house.
This one, different: less a library and more a Colonial workshop space, which was apt given that it once belonged to Benjamin Franklin. Franklin’s second secret illegitimate son, Barnard, served the Century Club as a hero known only as “The Key.”
What wasn’t different was that it, too, was empty.
Khan turned the dial again.
Shanghai, with its giant fish tank walls and foo dog statues: empty.
Paris, with its mirrors and the back window view of the Eiffel Tower: empty.
So too with Mumbai, Havana, Moscow, Sao Paolo.
And then he turned to Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles chapter house—austere with a Spanish mission vibe—was not empty, and for just a moment, Khan’s massive ape heart leapt light and free in his chest.
But then a hard knot formed in his throat.
“That’s the Projector,” Khan said. Mouth dry.
“Who, Professor?”
On screen, a small man with a massive helmet on his head, a helmet that to Khan looked a little like a kitchen colander with a series of wires sprouting from the top like worms or weeds, backed into the back corner of the room. Hand to the helmet. Projecting his psychic waves as he was wont to do.
Three other men advanced on him. Three eerily similar men—same build, same dark suit, same black glasses. Reaching. Smiling.
Their faces flickered. As if they were themselves projections—images inside images, a screen within a screen where the horizontal hold went kablooey. In the skipping stuttering facial flickers, Khan saw their heads replaced with monstrous reptilian ones—soulless eyes, gnashing knife-like teeth, the flesh forming ridges and scales.
“Projector!” Khan barked into the device—and with that, the small man with the big helmet turned toward the screen.
“Khan!” the Projector struggled to say. “The Century Club…”
The trio of saurian malefactors advanced upon the Projector.
Hissing. Tongues licking the air.
“…is under attack!”
“Run!” Khan said. “Run!”
The Projector suddenly tensed his whole body, shrinking even smaller, elbows tucked to his side, knees bent, as if he were ready to spring forward like a tensed-up jackrabbit. But it was not a physical release he sought—
A psychic blast radiated out from his helmet, an opaque ripple that knocked the three men back and, soon as it struck the Televisor on that end—
It destroyed the signal.
A loud squelch of noise drove deep into Khan’s head like a pin puncturing his eardrum and then the visual was lost, replaced with static.
Edwin staggered back, holding his ears.
“Professor, what’s going on?”
Khan pinched the bridge of his simian nose.
The jungle drums—subtle, quiet, but there just the same—thumped in between his heartbeats. Boom ba ba boom ba ba boom ba ba boom.
He pinched hard enough so that they stopped short.
“The Century Club is under attack,” Khan said, repeating the Projector’s dire warning.
“The Century Club? Those people. The ones you—you sometimes help.” Again Edwin hovered. A bundle of nervous energy in a knee-length sleep-shirt.
“I’m just a Professor,” Khan said, rebuffing a statement that was never made.
“I don’t understand.”
“This isn’t me. This isn’t my place. I’m just—I work behind the scenes. Don’t you see that?” Khan stood up suddenly, the chair beneath him rocketing backwards. “I’m just an intellectual. A thinker. That’s my job, you understand: to think.”
Boom ba ba boom ba ba boom.
“Professor, you seem to be rambling—”
Khan paced, and Edwin trailed after like a frittering terrier.
“So think,” Khan exhorted himself, rapping his ape knuckles against his brow. “Think! What did we see? We saw men who were not men. Whose faces were masks—but no! Not masks. Not in the traditional sense. Projections.”
“They looked like lizards—”
“Lizards. Indeed. Reptilian. Saurian. And what was it we saw outside? Pterosaurs. Flying reptiles. Dinosaurs—ancient, extinct—”
“They didn’t look extinct.”
“No, they did not. But the connection is clear just the same—saurian agents and flying dinosaurs. And all the chapter houses, empty save one. Why the Projector?”
“He has a rather spiffy helmet?”
“No.” Khan snapped his fingers—crack. “But also: yes. It’s not the helmet, it’s what the helmet does—it amplifies. It projects. And what does it project?”
“His voice? Nightlights? Talking pictures?”
“His mind powers. His psychic mind powers. That’s why he was the last Centurion left. Because he was battling them on their own turf.”
“Psychic dinosaurs?”
“Psychosaurs,” Khan corrected, as if that had always been the term.
“Ohhh. That’s really quite clever!” Edwin smiled a smile of teeth so crooked it looked like a picket fence blown down in a bad wind. “You are a clever man.”
“Man.” Khan tasted that word. He felt the call of the jungle inside, but quickly tamped it down. “I am a man. Aren’t I, Edwin?”
“That’s what I said, Professor.”
“I am not a beast. It is not the body that makes us but rather the mind—is it not?”
“It… is?”
“It is.”
Khan took a deep breath. He knew his words sounded confident but he only wished what he felt inside radiated that same measure of authority.
No matter.
Khan moved back to the desk, pulled out another item from within the drawer’s secret space. This time: a tube. Opened and unrolled: a map. “We are being invaded, Edwin. First the Centurions are sidelined why? Because they’re the only ones who can stop this cataclysmic intrusion. Take out the guardians and the door becomes unguarded, does it not?”
Khan tapped the map. His finger thumped a location in the Pacific, crinkling against the time-worn blue of a cartographed ocean.
His finger reveaed a series of small islands. A chain of them. Midway between the California coast and Asia. Edwin leaned over and squinted at it through the thick lenses of his glasses.
“The… Hawaiian islands?”
“Indeed, indeed. Location of the Century Club’s most secret chapter house. A fallback position of last resort.”
“How do you know about it?”
Then came a twinkle in Khan’s eye, a gleam of lion’s pride. “Because I helped them choose the location and design it.”
Edwin blinked in apparent awe.
Professor Khan continued: “I’ve never been there, you know? But I think it’s time to change that. Edwin Jasher, do you care to accompany me on an adventure?”
“Me, sir?”
“You heard me, boy.”
Edwin’s face melted into a beacon of unrestrained joy. He said nothing: the look in his eyes was all the answer the erudite ape required.
Khan, meanwhile, felt his own flurry of joy, his own giddy rush—the call to adventure was sounded. But not with a horn, no.
Jungle drums. This call came from the thumping of jungle drums.
