Weekly Update #71: Cerebus Archive Number Three

Cerebus Archive Number Three

Signed Limited Edition Prints From 'Church & State I'
Kickstarter Ends Saturday 21st March 2015

DAVE SIM:
Hi, everyone!

Okay, the clock is counting down to the start of our latest CEREBUS ARCHIVE Kickstarter -- CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER THREE, the ten earliest CHURCH & STATE pages in the Cerebus Archive.  Funkmaster John's got everything ready, Dave Fisher delivered the fully edited video (thank you, David!) and we're still tweaking a few things, but...with pre-approval from Jamie at Kickstarter...it looks as if we'll be going LIVE at around 1500 hours!  Roughly one hour from now!

After I'm done posting this, the Funkmaster is going to post a "Visual Discussion" regarding the CEREBUS posters (which I get asked about A LOT).  So that will actually serve as a lead-in since it will go above this one in the pecking order.  It really involves expanding what John is already doing -- it's not that complicated on my end: autographs and head sketches -- so it's not going to be a matter of just making them another $9 Bonus Item, I'm afraid.  Please give us your input on these if you get a chance.  We might not be doing them with THIS Kickstarter,  but maybe the NEXT Kickstarter.

As you can see, this week is pretty much ALL Kickstarter Updates!

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1.  Canadian dollar -- after plummeting earlier in the month -- seems to have levelled off at 80 cents U.S.  Good CAN3 news for our U.S. pledge partners!

2.  Funkmaster John's GRAPHIC EDGE PRINT SOLUTIONS will be sponsoring a "Sermon On The Chimney" bookmark I hope to have drawn next week -- one free to each pledge partner as well as producing a CEREBUS wall-cling for selected participants.

3.  All of the Kickstarter expenses are posted by John to the Kickstarter site. We both encourage ALL of the pledge partners to audit us.  Anything doesn't add up or anywhere you see that we could be generating savings, let us know.  It's YOUR money, after all!

4.  Upgrades to shipping are now an on-going policy.  If you pledge a large amount of money (in the most recent case over SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS! Seriously!!) and you've checked SEA shipping to an International destination, we will automatically upgrade you to AIR shipping. At our expense.

5.  We have confirmation that MELMOTH, JAKA'S STORY, LATTER DAYS and THE LAST DAY have all arrived at the Star System warehouse in Mississippi and are now available for retailer order.

6.  Still waiting on final numbers for the HIGH SOCIETY SIGNED AND NUMBERED GOLD LOGO 30TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION but we're still projecting a "March or early April" delivery. 

Progress IS being made on THE STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND, the scanning of the CHURCH & STATE I artwork, prepping for the big move of all the CEREBUS inventory from Leamington to Kitchener.

1.  I got 21 cents on the dollar when I cashed my STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND cheque at the CIBC today.  A couple of weeks back it was up around 24 cents on the dollar.  It does mean I can't really recommend either pledging early or pledging late on this (I think Kickstarter bills you at the time of pledging but I could be wrong about that) because it depends on which way the dollar goes and when.  But, it's definitely looking like a minimum 20% off sale for our USA! USA! pledge partners.  John and I will try to keep you posted if there are any sudden and unusual fluctuations.

If the Canadian dollar hits another "air pocket" and drops a few hundred feet overnight, we'll probably recommend that all of our USA! USA! pledge partners cancel their previous pledge and re-pledge at the more favourable rate. 

2.  I haven't mentioned the wall-cling previous to this.  It's a relatively new technology which Funkmaster John has adopted for GRAPHIC EDGE PRINT SOLUTIONS.  Basically it's a textured poster material that comes on a backing paper on which you can print in colour or black and white.  The "new" aspect of it is that you can stick it to the wall and it will hold just as if it was super-glued there.  But you can peel it off just as easily as you can peel a light adhesive label.  And then stick it to the wall again.  And peel it off again.  THEORETICALLY -- the company that makes the stuff promises -- dozens, if not hundreds of times, with no loss of adhesiveness.

I ended up sending a "Cerebus Berserker" sample wall cling to a couple of people for their comments.

It does seem to be a non-comic fan kind of thing.  As soon as you take it off the backing material, it's no longer in mint, right?  But, that's the thing.  TECHNICALLY it IS, if you can place it and replace it with no loss of its inherent adhesive nature.  True, you couldn't get it back onto the original backing paper, but I'm pretty sure an oversized sheet of wax paper would serve the same purpose.

So we have yet to work out what the actual "distribution" is going to be on this: but it seems to me like a "win-win" for the pledge partners.  Either it's the FIRST EVER (i.e. of many) CEREBUS WALL CLING and rare for that reason or -- if we really can't get a substantial enough level of interest -- it's the ONLY CEREBUS WALL  CLING and rare for that reason.

Anyway, much appreciated that Funkmaster John is always on the lookout for the Next Big Thing in printing and is willing to try it out as a Kickstarter pledge item!

 The bookmark will be on the wall-cling material and the original artwork for the "Sermon on the Chimney" piece will be our "end of campaign" art auction this time around!

3.  I just wanted to repeat -- and emphasize -- that we're being as completely honest and up-front with the pledge partners as we can be:  posting all of the expenses for each Kickstarter campaign and always looking for cost savings (the latest was Funkmaster wondering aloud if there wasn't a cheaper place to get the gold seals used on the FIRST RELEASE BONUS PRINTS -- I checked the U-Line catalogue and found out that they were probably 50% less in U-Line quantities than they were from the office supply place we were using. Good call, Funkmaster!).  It's 2015 and every penny counts around here (as I'm sure it does around your own place).

4.  We're definitely trying to take a "Common Sense" approach to all of the various aspects of the Kickstarter campaigns.  Upgrading shipping is a good example.

The other one that we'll be trying for the first time with THIS Kickstarter is "referral rewards".

Basically, we've been hearing from CEREBUS fans who are just now finding out about CEREBUS ARCHIVE.

We don't know HOW common this is, but it seems not to be, let's say, completely exceptional.

So, in the hopes that we can get some links to those people who have been cut off from CEREBUS for a while now, we'll be offering a FREE Bonus Print, PERSONALIZED to ANY new Kickstarter Pledge Partner AND a FREE Bonus Print, PERSONALIZED to the person who served as a "link" -- even if you're not a Kickstarter Pledge Partner, yourself.  Likewise with the "Five-Copy Retailer Package" -- serve as a link to a new Retailer Pledge Partner and both you AND the retailer will get your choice of a FREE Bonus Print each, personalized to you. 

5.  Boy, that was a STEEP LEARNING CURVE shipping books for the first time directly to Diamond's Mississippi Star System warehouse instead of going through Lebonfon! The order came in in the middle of December and finally made it there in late January.  It's always the same story with self-publishing:  there are always problems that need fixing, but once they're fixed they tend to stay fixed.

Anyway, the good news is that MELMOTH, JAKA'S STORY, LATTER DAYS and THE LAST DAY are finally available to stores again for the first time in years.

Had to make the tough call to forge ahead with restorations on CHURCH & STATE I (which is SORT of "in print" with Diamond having 100 or so copies in inventory) rather than READS (which is completely out of print).  My gut instinct is that it's better to have the earliest volumes available in sequence so that retailers can get new readers "up to speed" on CEREBUS.

Which leads to point 6:

6.  I don't think I'm being particularly morbid or fatalistic in keeping my focus on "end of life" issues.  The fact is that there's a LOT that needs to be done before I die and I'm aware of how dramatically I'm slowly down in my late fifties.  It takes me about 70 to 80 hours a week to do what I used to do in 40 hours a week.

I really have no problem with working 70 to 80 hours a week, because I'm determined to get everything done.  If I end up having a few years AFTER everything's done where I DON'T have to work 70 to 80 hours a week, I'll consider that a bonus.

The fact that Kickstarter -- so far -- is able to supply reliable revenues to move all of these various projects to completion is a major plus.  I really don't worry obsessively about money, I just keep in my mind the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and the next thing.  I always knows what I'm doing next.  I'm able to do about ten pages of THE STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND in any seven-week period...

[and my focus has changed. Now that I know I'm not going to be bowling anyone over with my productivity, I get determined that "if this is the last page I ever do" that it's "wall-to-wall eye candy"]

...while keeping up with all of my Kickstarter obligations, scanning the original artwork for Sean's restorations, planning the preservation of the Archive itself, the disposition of the Off-White House Copies and the Uncirculated CEREBUS back issues.  Just since the last campaign ended, CEREBUS Volume One has been brought back into print, HIGH SOCIETY has been fully restored and prepped for being printed, CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER ONE has been made available  through Diamond, half the foundation on the Off-White House has been reinforced to 21st century building standards, we've got a clearer picture of what moving the entire inventory from Leamington to Kitchener is going to involve...

All thanks to fewer than 300 devoted CEREBUS fans.

Okay, roughly one hour to the launch of the next Kickstarter!

Here we go!