Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Our 2020 Kickstarter


Nightscape Press needs your help. We launched a brand new Kickstarter yesterday. After our 2018 Kickstarter for Ashes and Entropy, the success of both that campaign and our Charitable Chapbooks line as well as the incredibly positive reaction to Ashes and Entropy gave us a boost of confidence that led us to believe we could manage to launch these projects without the help of Kickstarter. This was a huge miscalculation on our part and one we've been struggling with trying to correct on our own for far too long.

Here is where you come in. We have all the content to create two amazing projects with full color artwork by brilliant artists like Harry O. Morris, Luke Spooner, Don Noble, and Aeron Alfrey, and fantastic stories by an astonishing array of talented horror and weird fiction authors.

    • The Secret Gateways hardcover boxset will be a boxed set of three hardcovers including two modern classics of unsettling weird fiction: The Secret of Ventriloquism by Jon Padgett and Gateways to Abomination by Matthew M. Bartlett; and a third slim volume titled The Latham-Fielding Liaison consisting of four weird mind-bending tales written by both authors in collaboration with each other.
    • Nox Pareidolia is my fifth anthology and a Bram Stoker Award Finalist, a This is Horror Award Finalist, and an Indie Horror Award Finalist. The book was published in eBook and black and white trade paperback editions last year and includes stories by Laird Barron, S.P. Miskowski, Brian Evenson, Kristi DeMeester, Michael Wehunt, Gwendolyn Kiste, Zin E. Rocklyn, Christopher Ropes, Doungjai Gam, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, Carrie Laben, Kurt Fawver, David Peak, Don Webb and Duane Pesice, Paul Jessup, K.H. Vaughan, and more. The plan is to publish a deluxe color trade paperback edition in the same stunning quality as our 2018 color trade paperback editions of Ashes and Entropy.

We currently have a portion of the funds needed to produce these two projects but we still need more than we can reasonably raise on our own in a reasonable amount of time. So, we're doing this Kickstarter to fill our budget gap for these two projects and we believe we have a lot of great things to offer to help make that a reality. Yesterday the campaign kicked off with a bang and we made it all the way to 44% of our goal in the first 24 hours!

Interior illustration from The Secret of Ventriloquism by Harry O. Morris


Perks

In our last Kickstarter we had a lot of different physical chapbooks as perks and this caused us a lot of headaches and ended up costing us way more than we expected it to for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that the printer we were working with at that time and that we had based our costs upon was Createspace and Amazon dissolved Createspace literally in the middle of our campaign. So, this time we're trying to focus more on the actual items we need to raise money for and keep the physical extras to a minimum.

But that doesn't mean we're not offering some amazing perks. We've got everything from eBooks of The Latham-Fielding Liaison and Nox Pareidolia to signed rarities that WILL NEVER BE AVAILABLE AGAIN like a one-of-a-kind brand new hand-sewn WXXT chapbook from Matthew M. Bartlett called Peak Deviations. And the bundles! There are bundles for everyone no matter whether you're a fan of eBook bundles at an incredible value or a super-collector looking for a bundle of rare spectacular books and other items to give a loving new home to. And then, for me, I think one of the greatest portions of what we have on offer are our non-physical rewards. Fantastic private Zoom entertainment like a Jon Padgett ventriloquist show with his non-human dummy, Reggie McRascal!



Publishing Schedule

If this campaign is successful, the release schedule will go as follows for all perks:

The following items are already on hand and as soon as funding transfers to us we will get them out to their corresponding backers (approximately late August):

  • Nox Pareidolia (eBook edition)
  • Nox Pareidolia (black and white trade paperback edition)
  • The Latham-Fielding Liaison (paperback ARC)
  • Ashes and Entropy (color trade paperback)
  • Ashes and Entropy (signed color trade paperback)
  • All signed unbound proofs (The Broker of Nightmares, If It Bleeds, Ashes and Entropy)
  • Charitable Chapbooks (The Broker of Nightmares, If It Bleeds, and The Invention of Ghosts)
  • A&E Chapbooks (Dr. 999 & Yellow House)
  • Cadabra LPs (Call Me Corey and Origami Dreams)
  • Blood Standard (hardcover, signed and personalized)
  • Gateways to Abomination (signed and scribbled-in proof copy)

September 2020:

  • Secret Gateways (hardcover boxset)
  • Nox Pareidolia (color trade paperback edition)

December 2020:

  • The Latham-Fielding Liaison eBook edition
  • The Latham-Fielding Liaison black and white trade paperback edition
  • The Latham-Fielding Liaison limited color trade paperback edition
  • Nightscape Press 30-Book eBook Bundle
  • Bartlett/Padgett Zoom Q&A
  • Jon Padgett Editorial Services

January 2021:

  • Jon Padgett Zoom Ventriloquist Show

March 2021:

  • Sons of Ben (signed limited chapbook)
  • Peak Deviations (hand-sewn one of a kind chapbook)


And of course, we do have some stretch goals waiting in the wings in the event that we reach our goal with enough time left over to reach them. Some electronic add ons for everyone as well as some really cool surprise additions to the Secret Gateways boxset, the Nox Pareidolia color trade paperback, and all editions of The Latham-Fielding Liaison! So, please. You can help us make these amazing books and help us make them even better. While this campaign is not for a new project, there is the possibility of a new project via the final stretch goal, should we get that far. More on that later.

Risks and challenges

The biggest challenge to this project is funding. We have a two-year track history of working with the printer we'll be using for Nox Pareidolia (their quality is amazing, as anybody who owns a color copy of Ashes and Entropy or any of our Charitable Chapbook titles can tell you) and while the printer we'll be working with for Secret Gateways is new to us, their quality is superb as well and they are an industry leader with an exemplary record.

For two years now we have been publishing our Charitable Chapbooks line and given that 1/3 of the proceeds of each of those titles goes to charity and another third goes to the author, the budget for those is very very tight. As such, we are not a profiting company. The two projects this Kickstarter is for were conceived at least partially to help bring in income toward the cost of running a small press with a focus on giving to charity and paying authors a fair rate. And, as mentioned above, unfortunately that plan blew up in our faces due to my own poor decision to avoid using Kickstarter for the amazing tool that it is.

I won't lie, our Kickstarter for Ashes and Entropy was one of the most stressful experiences my family has ever gone through. You put a lot of yourself out there, it requires an incredible amount of your time, energy, and mental health, and there is no break, no half time. There's the goal and you and it can put you in a constant heightened sense of alert from the moment you launch until the moment you hit the finish line. Even after you've hit your goal.

But, we learned a lot from the last Kickstarter and we are more mentally prepared to face this challenge this time. And we have a better handle on how to organize and run one of these things. But we also have a lot more to lose this time around. The biggest risk for us right now is the likelihood that, should we not meet this goal, the debt we've incurred in these projects will mean that we very well might have to close up shop as a publisher for good once we've refunded all previous pre-orders. But with your help, that won't have to happen and we can continue to make fantastic books of horror, weird fiction, fantasy, and science fiction while contributing to some of the most worthy and important charities working today and paying authors good money.