hail to the victors: the book

We need to make space in the warehouse for the HTTV books and new t-shirts, so we're cleaning out some of the older shirts and stuff before they go stale. Flows, twosies, brunettes, Lloyd Brady, Tremendous, Ermahgerd, Winningest, even a Worst State Ever, are knocked down to $5.00. Also if you want last year's HTTV, we're gonna try to clear those out too.

Click on each for a link to the item. If the link goes dead, we sold out.

Two dolla:

Five dolla:

(!!!)

Five dolla:

Ten dolla for American Apparel version of it. For onesie, Five dolla:

Five dolla:

Five dolla:

Fiiiiiive dolla:

Five dolla.

Gentlemen who missed the Kickstarter or wanted to order multiple copies but couldn't because Kickstarter doesn't let you do that, here are the answers to your issues. You can preorder HTTV on the MGoStore:

Click either one to go directly to the store page. (The basketball/hockey cover is extremely tentative, FWIW.)

wow

The HTTV 2013 Kickstarter closes at 4 PM, so if you want in, click away. We have reached the stretch goal and will put down a basketball/hockey magazine in pretty printed material, so if you're just interested in piles of mags there is no rush. The Kickstarter is a slight discount on mag+shipping normally, though.

If you:

• want this year's shirt or the photobomb shirt,
• want it signed, or
• want your name in it

The Kickstarter is your only avenue.

International Folk

We added a couple of options for you at the bottom end of the scale, and if you get a package $50 or above we will eat the extra shipping costs.

Multiple Copies Folk

Unfortunately, Kickstarter doesn't have a convenient way to order multiple copies of the same package. We will have a preorder page on UGP shortly that will better fulfill your needs.

It's back, it's being Kickstarted, and we're totally doing a second book this year: a basketball/hockey combo mag that will launch in September. Note: this is what's called a "stretch goal" if we make 50k—which we did last year—the basketball/hockey book will be paper. Otherwise, eBook.

Here's the spiel:

Hail To The Victors is a yearly magazine from MGoBlog that previews football. It's like Athlon or whatever, except instead of two pages by an intern who doesn't know who Dennis Norfleet is you get 128 pages from the kind of internet obsessives that start their own websites just so someone might read what they have to say.

As an independent publication, we can do things like have a beautiful cover with Denard Robinson or Taylor Lewan on it unencumbered by "TEN WAYS TO MAKE YOUR PUNTER BEHAVE," or have heartfelt personal memoirs that made our previous publisher break out in hives. This is indie, which means it can be weird, which means it can be good in ways other previews can't.

Each edition comes with:

FULL TEAM PREVIEW. Written by Brian Cook of MGoBlog; goes down the roster in excruciating, unbowdlerized detail. Yeah, Athlon, put "unbowdlerized" in your magazine.

OPPONENT PREVIEWS. Each scheduled opponent is previewed; you can know how much fear and hope to have.

TWISTED BLUE STEEL. Michigan's players and coaches profiled. We say goodbye to Denard.

TECHNICAL DOSSIER. Nitty-gritty details on Michigan's schemes, recruiting, and prospects. Stats and diagram heavy. This year's focus: what is an Al Borges offense going to look like?

OLD BLUE. 20 or so pages about Michigan's history. This year's section features Ron Kramer stories. Unedited Ron Kramer stories.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE SHIRT

This year's Kickstarter exclusive shirt plays off the awesome "Sports" GIF Ace put together of Facepalm Guy and Rapture guy.

Not quite final. We're tweaking it to look better.

Many thanks to both Facepalm Guy and Rapture Guy for being cool about this.

You can also get last year's Photobomb shirt:

If neither of those strike your fancy we'll have a half-dozen popular MGoShirts available.

WHY IS THE GOAL 30K INSTEAD OF 20K?

We anticipated we'd sell a significant amount of books post-launch last year, which was not really the case. 30K is basically what it costs--it's actually still a little short--and we'd like to not lose our shirts. If this year's like last year we won't have a problem.

NEW BONUS NEW NEW NEW BONUS BONUS

Basketball! Hockey! We're launching a second book covering basketball and hockey. We project it will be 2/3rds to 3/4ths basketball given the level of interest in the two sports -- oh and that whole Final Four thing. We are committed to doing the book either way. But here's one of those Stretch Goal things: if we don't hit 50k, it'll be an eBook. If we do hit 50k, it'll be a real magazine and everything.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Risks and challenges

Last year we had issues collating and shipping effectively; this year we plan to address those by using a custom solution at UGP's storefront instead of the many-points-of-failure system we used before.

One thing we learned: we can't accommodate unique requests (ie, I want ten books sent to these addresses) effectively. Hopefully you find something to your interests in the offerings; to better fulfill the promises we're making here we have to hold it to just the listed options.

I apologize for posting this so late. I meant to do it earlier, but my 2 year old daughter decided to do a swan dive off of the couch and break her arm. First haircut and first broken bone in the same day, not bad.  

Big thanks to Heiko for manning one of my cameras and taking the majority of the photos below. Enjoy!

IGOR!

Brian had to sign his name well over 400 times yesterday. This photo was approximately number 50. He was very excited!

Tacopants was in the house..He shot this photo.

Turns out the Internet has a rich selection of cats in party hats

The Pre-Sale for our (now-independent) preview book is over; if you have still not bought the thing, you are now out of excuses because you can buy the thing. If you have already bought the thing, you may commence your mailbox vigil. If you're in Ann Arbor or environs, you can also just walk into Moe's and buy a copy.

EDIT: Now available at all three UGP locations:

• 1114 South University
• 329 S. Main Street
• 711 N. University (Moe's)

I'll put up a list of other outlets where available, when available, but one I know for sure is…

Official MGoEvent the First:

In celebration of now having the thing, THIS SATURDAY (Saturday! Saturday!) from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m., you are welcome to come join us for the all-official Hail to the Victors 2012 Launch Party. Meet Brian and the MGoStaff, talk Michigan football, and show your spouse that your internet friends are really real and stuff. Answer the poll above if you plan on coming so I can get an idea of attendance.

FAQ? FAQ!

What? MGoBlog's Launch Party of Hail to the Victors 2012

Where? Underground Printing, 1114 South University, Ann Arbor, MI

Map? Map!

When? Saturday, June 30, 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. –ish.

Parking? Street parking. Warning: 320-pound defensive tackles who think they're Dukes of Hazzard have recently been sighted in the area, so bring the car with the hood you don't like.

What should I wear? You look great in that MGoShirt. If you're "White Boy" from "My White Boy" you must wear the Wolverine slippers.

I already have an event that day at 3 at Middle Earth: Of course you do. #myreaders

So can I come by afterwards? Yeah, it's open-house-y.

Can I help/bring cookies? Contact Seth at misopogon, at symbol, att dot net. If it's about cookies, contact any time. Doesn't even have to be related to the party, or the blog, or Michigan if it's cookies.

When do I get my book? Kickstarter and pre-sale orders have been processed. If you have a t-shirt coming it might take a bit longer since those had to get printed and it's a different shipping mechanism.

Say 'punch and pie' or nobody will come! Punch and pie.

We'll have copies and t-shirts available there for pickup if you bought on the Kickstarter. There will also be some sort of Q&A session with Brian, Ace, Heiko, myself, Upchurch, and some of the other contributors (jamiemac should be there; Dooley, Kryk, Ross, and Chris Brown are various levels of maybe).