Bull Spec: Year 3 Kickstarter -- progress update!

With two weeks left to go, the Bull Spec Year 3 Kickstarter has met its "drop dead or not" goal of $1000! Thank you all SO MUCH for spreading the word and contributing to this effort.

But, really, we need to keep going. One of the scary things about the Kickstarter was trying to pick a number that we thought was achievable -- because if you don't make it, everything goes to $0 and the whole thing is canceled -- but also substantial enough to make it look like actually doing a third year is possible.

As I wrote in the Kickstarter project description:

This Kickstarter project is to help fund the 60,000 words or so of original fiction, 20 or so illustrations, the reviews, the poetry, and the serialized graphic short story (and more!) which will comprise the four issues of the third year ofBULL SPEC which will run from about Spring/Summer 2012 through Winter/Spring 2013. At $0.05/word for fiction and poetry and $100-$200 per illustration, the year's content budget will come to about $5,000. The printing budget adds another $5,000, giving a total budget for the year of $10,000.

That's the base financial cost -- and of course, some of that will come to Bull Spec in the form of continuing subscriptions, issue sales in bookstores, etc. And of course, if we can ever get on top of getting advertising, that would be great, too! I want to go ahead and put some numbers out there so folks know where we're coming from. Subscriptions are at about 100 people, bringing about $2,000 into the "good" side of the budget. Bookstore sales are about 100 per issue, bringing another $2,000 into that "good" side. That leaves us about $6,000 short. Advertising (thank you, advertisers!) brought in about $1,000 last year, bringing things up to just about $5,000, leaving $5,000 to come from ... well, thin air, mostly. (Here I must thank my in-laws, Valerie and Mike Montgomery, for paying some printing bills outright. And again my wife Kendra, for her unbelievable patience in allowing me to really do this the best way that I can.)

So we need to keep going. Two more weeks. Let's do this! If I had to pick a number, I want to grow to 200 subscribers and fill that "75 x $75" patron page as much as possible. Thank you so much for your support and for spreading the word!