The Kickstarter for the Legends of the First Empire Kickstarter was a huge success, and exceeded all my expectations. 822 backers pledged $65,473 to help bring this project to life.

We also heard from another 120 people from Canada and overseas who wanted to participate, so we’ll be doing “mass shipments” to Canada and the UK and have our local fulfillment partners ship the products from there (which will save them significant amounts of money on postage, VAT, customs, and other import fee. We are now in the process of adding all thse people into PledgeBox (which we use to process orders), so keep your eyes out for your survey requests which will finalize your pledge.

And last but not least, if you missed the Kickstarter, it’s not too late. We have a “manual add” sign-up form that will allow you grab your copy of the slipcase (because we are ordering extras). Just tell us what you are looking for and we’ll get you added to the project.

Oh, and in addition to the slipcases, backers can also order:

• Copies of the hardcovers to complete their collections (two of which have gone out of print, but we have a stash of them.
• T-shirts
• Tote bags
• Posters of Marc Simonetti’s Age of Empyre cover illustration

To all those who participated, thank you so much for the support, and for those who didn’t, you still can if you wish!

I’m thrilled to see Brandon Sanderson embracing Kickstarter as a means for authors to sell directly to readers. It’s a platform I’ve been promoting for years, and I hope the attention his ground-breaking project is garnering will encourage other authors to go this route.

But today I’m here to remind people that we are getting down to the wire on our project to turn Legends of the First Empire hardcovers into a boxset.

A few things to note:

• We fully funded in the first 15 minutes.
• We have currently raised more than $56,000.
• We expected to create about 250 slipcases but it looks like we’ll be doing 1,000 thanks to the high demand (which will allow a few to be available outside of the Kickstarter)
• If you are missing any of the books from the series, you can add them to your order for $25 per. (A savings of $2 – $3 depending on title). And all the books will be signed and come with a custom-designed bookmark.
• We have cleared the first three stretch goals which are providing:
  • A foil stamp graphic will be added to the box.
  • Backers will get a sneak peak of the first chapter of my new series in August (a year before the book’s release).
  • Posters of Marc Simonetti’s artwork are available as an add-on.
• If we can raise another $3,793 we’ll hit our last stretch goal which will make t-shirts an add-on.
• Non-US people can sign-up for “manual adds” at this link. Your postage will vary depending on the country and whether we ship from the US or we have enough orders for overseas fulfillment. If your country and order combination is not on this spreadsheeet, Robin will add them as she processes after you fill out your form.

I hope you’ll check out the project, and if you like what you see, please consider backing it.