What do YOU think is a reasonable price for a 64 page full-color hardcover adventure?
Rafael Chandler and Lamentations of the Flame Princess are teaming up to bring you No Salvation for Witches, a supernatural historical horror adventure for traditional tabletop role-playing games. It is an A5-size 64 page book (plus endpapers), in full color.
And you decide how much you want to pay for it.
We have an advance review! Read it here!
Things You Really Need to Know:
- This campaign ends on August 26th. All backers will receive a link to download the PDF version of the completed book on August 27th. The book will go to press on September 1st. If all goes well at the printer the book will ship in early/mid-October.
- We're going for a high-quality book here. Stitched binding, proper offset printing by a printer that's been in business since 1890. Every backer meeting the final campaign average contribution will get a version of the book with a bookmark ribbon sewn in.
- Your payment here will not include shipping charges - you pay those later. Once the book is printed you will need to 'order' the book through the LotFP webstore. You will receive a 100% discount coupon for the base price of the book so you pay only the shipping charges. For Economy Class shipping to anywhere in the world, we estimate that the cost will be right around 5€, but we cannot guarantee that postage costs will not rise (they tend to not give a lot of warning), nor do we know for sure the exact shipping weight of the book before it's printed.
- One book per backer. Multiple contributions from a single backer will not gain that backer multiple copies of the book.
- Rafael Chandler conceived of all the concepts in the book, did all the writing, and was the creative director. LotFP has paid for all the artwork and graphic design and other production bits (except printing) and is taking care of promotion, order fulfillment, warehousing, and all that fun stuff. Any profits will be split 50/50 between Chandler and LotFP. That said, the minimum contribution is 1€.
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No Salvation for Witches is a bit of a horrorshow. It is NSFW, after all. In the US it would be probably be considered Rated R. In Europe, it would probably get an 18+ rating.
- Check out a sample chapter from the book!
- If we hit the 10000€ mark, every backer meeting the final campaign average will get a bonus card with an additional encounter, including a new monster. (And another card if we hit 20000€!)
What's this "Pay What You Want" all about?
For the past couple years, publishers and musicians and creative types have been offering digital versions of books and albums and all sorts of things on a "Pay What You Want" basis, letting the customer set the price based on their means and generosity and interest in the project at hand.
In 2013, LotFP began trying out the model for physical books at convention appearances. Sales figures skyrocketed, usually earning less money per item sold but selling many more items in the process, and earning larger total profits as a result.
So LotFP is bringing the Pay What You Want model for physical product to the internet and crowdfunding. We are risking one of our major releases of 2014 for the sake of an experiment in trust.
Because the Pay What You Want model is one based entirely on trust.
And we trust you.
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About No Salvation for Witches
England, 1620.
To strike a blow against the Patriarchy, six women perform a dangerous rite in an abandoned priory. Through their art, they commune with Terpsichore, Greek muse and patroness of dancers.
Starving demons slither across the moors; monstrous nuns shriek in the infirmary; and within the Attic, a great unraveling awaits.
The fate of the world rests in the hands of the player characters. Will they bring about an egalitarian utopia? Will they skulk away in the night, pockets bulging with treasure? Will they bring about the destruction of all things?
Will they find the Tract of Teratology, a randomly-generated creature-summoning ritual with 3.6 trillion combinations?
After this adventure, nothing will be the same.
The adventure is intended to be used with the Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing game (you can download a free, no-art, PDF of the full rules here), but is readily compatible with many other traditional role-playing games.
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About the Team Behind No Salvation for Witches
- Rafael Chandler is a veteran American game designer who has published RPGs such as Pandemonio and ViewScream on his own. He has also released two traditional RPG supplements, Teratic Tome and Bad Myrmidon, as 'Pay What You Want' PDFs that you can download cost-free to evaluate his style. You can read more about his projects here.
- Lamentations of the Flame Princess is a traditional RPG publisher based out of Helsinki, Finland. You can read all about us here.
- Jason Rainville, who did the cover art and a lot of the interior art on the project, is a Canadian artist who has worked for Wizards of the Coast, Paizo Publishing, Rite Publishing, and more. Learn more about him at his homepage here.
- Ian MacLean, interior artist and cartographer on the project, is another Canadian artist who has worked for a number of tabletop gaming companies as well as giants like Sony and Google. Read about him here.
- Sarah Richardson is our layout and graphic designer, based out of the US. You can see some of her previous design work here.
- Otava Book Printing Ltd. is the Finland-based company we will use to print the finished books. In business since 1890, they print millions of books annually and have taken good care of LotFP's printing needs since 2011. They do amazing work. Read more about them here.
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FAQ
What if 5000 people all just pay the minimum 1€ to reach the campaign goal? Isn't the campaign screwed?
The campaign goal of 5000€ is how much LotFP was prepared to spend out of pocket to print the book anyway and then sell in the traditional manner. Granted, that would have paid for only 2000 copies, but books get cheaper to print as more of them are printed. The fact is, we can cover the difference if the campaign is beset by a horde of cheap bastards. But you're not a horde of cheap bastards, so there's no problem.
So what is the real price of the book? How much will copies not sold through this crowdfunding campaign be sold for?
Who knows? Should we use the usual formula based on expenses to come up with the final price? Do something radical like decide that the average price gained through this crowdfunding campaign becomes the wholesale price of the book (and therefore the retail price is twice that amount)? One thing's for sure - it's a cheat on the Pay What You Want model to suggest a price. You decide what such a book is worth to you.
3.6 trillion combinations? Seriously?
Seriously! 3,600,698,572,800 to be exact, if our arithmetic is right.
Can LotFP really handle producing a quality hardcover book and process a potentially large number of orders?
Take a look at these pics from a delivery of 4000 books a few years ago:
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We have produced a number of additional hardcover books since then. We're solid. But if you don't believe us, before the campaign started I asked in a public posting for people to give their opinions of LotFP's hardcovers without telling them why their opinions were being solicited. Their answers are here.