Kickstart Hail To The Victors

Hi. You may be aware that for the past four years I've edited a Michigan preview magazine called Hail To The Victors (usually, anyway). It's 120-some pages of photos, previews, analysis, and history that we've been proud of.

Unfortunately, if we're going to make it to year five we're going to need some help. Our publisher went under sometime around January. We have access virtually all of the things we need to continue—the writers, photos, publishing expertise—and plan on taking HTTV independent this summer. The main problem: the up-front costs are daunting.

This is where Kickstarter comes in. If you haven't heard of it, Kickstarter is a crowdfunding site that operates under two simple rules:

• anything on it must be a defined creative project
• you either make it and get all the money or don't and get none of it.

The latter is in place to prevent people from getting half of the money they need to execute a project and finding themselves with a bunch of expectations and not enough capital to meet them.

We have launched a Hail To The Victors kickstarter that can be found here. We are aiming for 20k, which is about 2/3rds of our projected costs and is the level we feel comfortable will not result in massive losses. We have 30 days to raise this money. It is here. Go here.

Alter ego asks questions below.

Is this a donation?

It's more of a preorder. The lowest level gets you a magazine shipped to you for 15 bucks, which is a little less than we project the thing will cost shipped in June. We are not looking for charity here except insofar as me signing something is not worth the extra 15 bucks we've placed on that.

But I just hit up Beveled Guilt on Tuesday!

If you have donated any amount of money since June 1st of last year and would like to turn that into magazines, email me:

• The email address/paypal username of the donation
• Your address
• How many magazines you would like to turn that into (max one per 15 dollars donated)

While this won't help us breach our 20k minimum, assuming we do hit it we will turn your donation from pure charity into purchase.

What do the higher levels get me?

Details are on the Kickstarter site. There are three main attractions past the pure preorder: various levels of autographing, a sponsor page in the finished product, and an exclusive Brian photobomb t-shirt. We are still working on a final product but this is the idea:

You have no idea the personal sacrifice this t-shirt represents. There's a sentence above in which I refer to myself in the third person, fergodsakes. (Also if you hate it you can just get another mgoshirt.)

Also for 10,000 dollars I will show up at a child's birthday party in a Terrelle Pryor jersey. That costs five figures easy. Please no one get this.

Okay, so I signed up for whatever level of support I wanted to. What now?

Since the thing doesn't fund unless it funds fully, this would be a situation in which it would behoove you to gently notify your friends that they can help make this thing exist.

UPDATE: what happens if the project does not fund?

Nobody is charged until the 30 days elapses; if by that point the kickstarter has not made it no one gets charged.