So. Book 3 is finished. That means it’s time for a Kickstarter, right?
But… I expect at least half of the people backing that to be new readers. That’s how it went for book 2. If the growth of my readership is anything like it was before, I can expect to need to send out about 200 copies of books 1 and 2 along with the roughly 400 copies I’ll be selling of book 3.
I have 600 copies of book 1; I have 80 copies of book 2. Yes. Eighty. I did a second printing of book 1 that I’ve been selling through, and I’ll have to do a second printing of book 2 as well.
This will involve either committing a lot of my own money to reprint book 2, having a scarily large goal in the neighborhood of $12k (book 1 made $6k of a $2.4k goal, book 2 made $9k of a $6k goal, which makes it maybe not so scary?), or… you know, now that I look at those numbers again maybe it’s not so scary. I’d be down to about 400 book 1 after the theoretical ~200 people buying the whole set, and could do a new run of 400 book 2 (same as the first edition) which’d leave me with about 280 book 2, and a similar number of 3. Or a smaller number, I don’t know what the drop off on sales of book 2 to 3 are versus 1 to 2.
Anyway. Numbers aside, I have been considering just skipping book 3 and going straight to the omnibus. Sell book 1/2 at cost at cons until I’m out of 1, then just keep the omnibus in print. It’s tempting. But the big question is what would the people who’ve supported me by buying books 1 and 2 think? They’re my core fans. Would it drive them crazy to have books 1/2 on the shelf followed by the omnibus of all three?
(I am also considering maybe doing two versions of the omnibus: one that’s the same aspect ratio as the existing books, with one page per spread, and one oversized deluxe edition that’s got three pages per spread, possibly at a larger size overall, possibly hardcover. I need to get some quotes.)
If you’re one of those people, please let me know what you think about the idea of skipping 3 and going straight to the omnibus. Thanks a lot!
EDIT: Approved a lot of comments that the spam filter was holding while I was away from the net. If this is your first time commenting here, it’ll probably hold it until I approve it, sorry! Thanks a ton to everyone who’s weighed in on this.
I should also note that I’m only going to skip to the omnibus if I can bring it in for about $20-40 per book. I know that sounds kind of crazy, but at the size of print runs I do, setup can be a significant chunk of the per-book cost!