 |
| Cerebus Berserker Cerebus Archive Number One Make Your Kickstarter Pledge Now! |
My name is Menachem Luchins, owner and manager of Escape Pod Comics in Huntington, NY. I’m reaching out to you today on behalf of Dave Sim, the creator of Cerebus and the upcoming Strange Death of Alex Raymond. Odds are, if you’re getting this e-mail, that you know who Sim is and Cerebus’s part in comic history. As a retailer, you are probably also aware that the first two volumes of the Cerebus phonebooks are out of print.
Sim’s most recent Kickstarter is aimed to solve that problem: all the profits from it will go towards getting the printing issues he’s been having with the digital restoration of those books settled once and for all. The Kickstarter itself is for a wonderful folio of Cerebus Art, each print with a broadsheet style page of commentary by Sim about the creation of the piece featured. The plan is to do a series of these Kickstarters over time, each focusing on a different period in the Cerebus work. This first one is from the earliest period and has 10 prints in it. More details on the Kickstarter page, here.
Now, the retailer level that was added today is for FIVE copies of this limited edition, signed & numbered, version of the folio- retailer copies will also have a “sub-signing” on theirs with their store name (eg: #256 of 500, Night Flight Comics #1 of 5)- at a discount of 35%. I have spoken with Dave and he has informed me that he has no problem with retailers selling the prints individually as well, so your price point for selling is fairly adjustable as well.
Now, concerning the issues about backing Kickstarters that many of us face, I’d like to make a few points.
Fulfillment. We all fear backing Kickstarters because of the horror stories (and sometimes personal experience) of not getting the rewards on time, things being changed, etc etc. Now, I can’t make any promises but… this is Dave Sim we are talking about. On the last kickstarter he was involved with, Sim sent duplicate rewards to many backers JUST IN CASE they had missed something. Beyond that, there is nothing in this kickstarter that doesn’t EXIST, in some form, already. No waiting for the writer to find an artist or the artist to draw the page or the special limited edition cover artist to finish his job.
Fulfillment. We all fear backing Kickstarters because of the horror stories (and sometimes personal experience) of not getting the rewards on time, things being changed, etc etc. Now, I can’t make any promises but… this is Dave Sim we are talking about. On the last kickstarter he was involved with, Sim sent duplicate rewards to many backers JUST IN CASE they had missed something. Beyond that, there is nothing in this kickstarter that doesn’t EXIST, in some form, already. No waiting for the writer to find an artist or the artist to draw the page or the special limited edition cover artist to finish his job.
Diamond. Nothing burns me up like seeing an item I backed on Kickstarter in Diamond only a few months (or weeks!) after I received the book, especially as the traditionally distributed version is usually cheaper and packed in a way that’s easier to sell. Sim WILL be offering this folio through Diamond, eventually. By the time the UNSIGNED and UNNUMBERED version is featured in Previews, though, the Kickstarter for folios 2 and 3 (High Society and Church & State, respectively) will have already passed. Beside for that, the Diamond version of the folio will be MORE EXPENSIVE (retail price) than the Kickstarter one [$89 CAD as opposed to $79 CAD] and, most likely, will be offered at the same 35% discount. This means that when a customer sees the item in Previews, you can tell them that you have it AND THE SECOND FOLIO already, signed and numbered, with the third on the way.
Obligation. One of the things I dislike is when a Kickstarter I backed sends me an email, a year later, asking me to back some NEW Kickstarter completely unrelated to this one. The only Kickstarters you are going to hear about from Dave Sim, as far as I know, are going to be about Cerebus and, as he has parcelled out the Archive Folios in sets of ten, Dave has over 100 years worth of Folios to sell (at 3 a year) so you REALLY don’t need to worry that he’s going to start spamming your email box to back his friends projects or for a brand new story he wants to do with Image Comics.
Lastly: If, in the event we really make an impact on this thing, 200 COPIES of the book are reserved by retailers the discount will drop to 40% for all of us. If we somehow, in the next 8 days before the project ends, get 400 COPIES ordered, it will drop to 45%! I know this seems unlikely to many of you, but I need you to know that I am sending this email to A LOT more retailers than you see listed here. All it takes is a large order from a few of the BIG BOYS like Newbury, Midtown, Jet-Pack and/or Mile High or all of us forwarding this on to our other retailer friends and getting some real word-of-mouth going and it COULD happen.
Right, so… I’ve said my piece. Once again, here is a link to the Kickstarter.
And here is a link to today’s announcment about the retailer level.
If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Thanking you for your time,
Menachem Luchins
Escape Pod Comics
EscapePodComics [at] gmail [dot] com
No comments:
Post a Comment