Kickstarter and lots of drawings of wang in this post (Patreon)

Here are my distracted, unorganized thoughts on it.
(Here IS the Kickstarter, if you wanna go check it out: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/erikamoen/oh-joy-sex-toy-volume-2) 

Both with our previous one and this current one we had many friends tell us that we weren’t offering enough rewards and not enough super expensive ones, that we could earn so much more if we did that. 

And yes, it’s totally true! If we offered stickers and prints and commissions and, you know, a bunch of other really neat, unique items, we totally could pull in more money. Part of that is tempting! 

But here’s how Matt and I look at Kickstarter:
It’s not where we go to make a profit. We want to make enough money to cover funding The Thing and if there’s anything left over, that’s fantastic, but not required. 

Every additional reward you add, it costs you time and money and further complicates the fulfillment process. It looks so simple on the website, it’s just *one* extra detail. But it’s one extra detail multiplied by however many people select it, and every detail we’re investing our time and money into is actively diverting that same time and money away from making The Thing that we wanted to make originally and it’s no longer a detail but its own thing. I mean, everyone expects Kickstarters to run behind schedule at this point, right? From personal observation, this is almost always because producing all those extra details winds up taking more time and being more complicated than the creator expected, and then bam, you’re behind schedule. 

Originally the only physical reward we were going to offer was just Volume 2, but I persuaded Matt to add in a “Vol. 1 AND Vol. 2” set, even though he argued against it. His argument is that this is a solely a pre-order to produce Vol. 2, and that by including Vol. 1 we’re turning our campaign into an online store where there are multiple products available for purchase, and when we sell Vol. 1 this way we’re actually taking a loss on each copy because of the fees associated with Kickstarter. And he’s right! Each Vol. 1 we sell this way IS losing us money compared to when people buy directly through our store. But I felt it was important, that people would want the convenience of buying both with one click, that we wouldn’t have sold those Vol. 1s to these people anyway without this option. So he reluctantly agreed. 

But then people, quite reasonably, asked why they couldn’t also get the Vol. 1 PDF as well. The Vol. 2 PDF is included in book orders for free, but if we simply added the Vol. 1 PDF to the existing rewards, we’d be giving away a $10 product for free. Plus, people always have strange troubles downloading just one book, adding in a second one will double the amount of confused emails we get. And, again, because of Kickstarter’s fees, we’re losing money on each Vol.1 we sell through them. But not offering it looks weird from the point of view from the backers, because it’s just one little file, isn’t it? So Matt’s gone and added it as well. It’s so needlessly complicated: people won’t be able to download their Vol. 1 file until the campaign completes in 22 days, but if they just bought it directly through our store then they’d be able to read it right this minute. But! But. It’s more convenient this way, they can get it all with just one click. 

And with drawings and signatures, I’ve only agreed to do a limited number because I KNOW I can get that many done on time. I’m a super slow artist! Ah, and last year we offered “custom” drawings, which were mini commissions, but getting people to tell me what they wanted drawn in a timely manner was a bit difficult. So this year I’m only offering “unique” drawings, where I choose the subject. (SPOILERS: It’s all people fucking.) All the unique drawings and Be a Masturbateer slots got snapped up in the first couple days, so after careful consideration we just added a few more today. Only 10 more drawings and 5 more Masturbateers, because I don’t want to get in over my head, you know? I want everyone to get their shit in a reasonable amount of time. 

The only thing that really bugs me is how confusing all our tier rewards appear right now. It’s not easy to read through them. On the upside, right now we’re just about 2k away from 40k, which is the number we need to print BOTH Vol. 2 AND re-print Vol. 1. Haha, and we still have 22 days left to get there too. We were convinced it would take us the full month to creep towards 30k, so this is fantastic. I haven’t even written to anyone asking for promotion favors yet, but I guess I should do that this week. 

Good lord, did you read through all that? Sorry, I know that’s gotta be boring minutia, but it’s the stuff Matt and I talk about every day. 

The bottom line is this: We just want enough money to make our book and we want that book to make it into people’s hands by November. I think it’s do-able. 

ON A COMPLETELY UNRELATED NOTE:
I’ve just discovered porn performer Colby Keller and usually I’m super not into beards but whoah mama, yes please, I want to go to there. (OH CRAP, Just realized I drew Alex’s tattoo on the wrong side. EFF)