Welcome to Balance of Seven’s first-ever crowdfunding campaign! Balance of Seven LLC is a small, independent press dedicated to providing a platform for new and underrepresented voices that may otherwise not be heard. This summer, our campaign is designed to ensure the publication of four incredible works of fiction: Axis, book two of the Siren Tragedies, by Sarah V. Hines; Beautiful Serpent, Restless Embers by D. Y. Freeman; Bookstories by Sarah Tollok; and Princess of the Pomegranate Moon by Emily Wynne. Each of these engrossing books was written by a powerful woman author with a talent for creating thought-provoking worlds with compelling characters and plots.

Your contributions to our Unleashing Magical Worlds campaign will help us produce a year’s worth of quality literature, by paying for cover art, editing, printing and production fees, and so much more. You will also be supporting diverse voices in fiction and further empowering our authors to continue using their imaginations to create magic.

The Unleashing Magical Worlds campaign supports four books: 

• Axis, coming October 27, 2023: Sequel to the previously published Hubris, this international urban fantasy brings ancient myth to modern day. Faced with the threat of her violent father, a millennia-old Siren must unravel her past and harness overwhelming powers—or risk becoming the very monster she hopes to take down.
• Bookstories, coming March 8, 2024: This cross-genre tale interweaves literary and speculative elements in a braided narrative about the interconnectedness of stories and life. A publishing house slush reader with an empathic gift for understanding people by reading their writing has met her match. A series of breathtaking but incomplete stories that reveal to her not a single detail about their author leads her on a decades-long search that questions the importance of a story’s ending.
• Beautiful Serpent, Restless Embers, coming April 5, 2024: A gothic, esoteric fantasy about a young woman who defies her fate. As she flees those who wish to control her, she must embrace the staggering power within that others have taught her to fear—or fall to the madness that haunts her.
• Princess of the Pomegranate Moon, coming November 17, 2023: A mystic sword-and-sorcery fantasy set in a dying Earth, where the present day has been all but forgotten. A young trans woman explores the legacy of her past and the ghosts of a half-remembered history that intersect it.

You can learn more about these novels through samples and stories available on our website: www.balanceofseven.com/unleashing-magical-worlds.

The Unleashing Magical Worlds campaign offers tiers across a wide range of donation levels. Any donation you make will mean the world to our authors!

Our original VIP tiers sold out in the first week, so we've put together four more for your perusal. The Dragons Within VIP Pack comes with a one-of-a-kind handbound omnibus of the entire Dragons Within anthology series. The Magical Trio VIP Pack comes with exclusive readings by three of our authors: a numerology reading by Lex Night, a Tarot reading by Leo Otherland, and a dream interpretation by D. Y. Freeman. The Inflicted VIP Pack comes with a stuffed red bull companion featured in an upcoming expansion of an Inflicted short story. And the Confluence VIP Pack features three patches designed by Dr. Nyri A. Bakkalian, along with several other exclusive pieces.

We expect these will go just as quickly as the first batch—the Dragons Within VIP Pack was actually claimed within the first few hours—so if one catches your interest, grab it while it’s still available!

So, what perks and add-ons can you get?

Perks

• Thank You Postcards: For US-based contributors, you'll receive a campaign-specific thank you postcard via USPS. For international contributors, you'll receive an electronic version of the thank you postcard via email.
• Digital E-Books: You’ll receive copies of all four books in this campaign in epub format, which can be read on any e-reader device, via itch.io.
• Stickers: You’ll receive three stickers, each with exclusive art by Theodore Niretac Tinker, Sarah V. Hines, and Lex Night, respectively.

• Paperback Copies with Signed Bookplates: Depending on the tier, you will receive either a paperback copy of one of the four books in this campaign (your choice, to be shipped once it is published) or paperback copies of all four books.
• Summer Recipe Deck: A colorful digital file of recipes for a sunshine-filled picnic based on all the books in this campaign, as well as a few older books from our catalog. Each recipe comes with a micro story or quote from its respective book.

Add-ons

In addition to the pledge tiers,  you can choose to add on individual copies of Balance of Seven books, including the books featured in this campaign and many of our  previous releases, as well as themed boxes filled with fun merch.

Among our add-ons, you will also find our brand-new Support Our Move to Vermont badge! We love and support our diverse community, and considering the state of politics around the US, we wanted to ensure we could continue making their voices heard. We’ve spent the past few months doing research and working with our legal team to see what we could do to make sure nothing can interfere with our LGBTQIA+ creatives fully expressing their beautiful souls. Through careful thought and consideration, we decided the best way to do this was to find ourselves a new home in Vermont. This add-on will specifically help us cover the legal fees that made this move possible. Celebrate with us by adding a badge to your pledge! 

Unique to our campaign is an exclusive collaboration between Balance of Seven and the Emberwynter Collection: a gorgeous handmade re-creation of the Lunare pendant worn by Laurel in Beautiful Serpent, Restless Embers.

The Lunar Incantation pendant available through our campaign is one of only two in existence; the other is owned by the author of Beautiful Serpent, Restless Embers herself. The pendant features a genuine moonstone suspended over a filigree-etched sterling-silver crescent moon.

For more of Emberwynter’s beautiful creations, visit https://www.emberwynter.com.

Whether or not you can contribute, we invite you to help us out by spreading the word. 

• Make some noise about our campaign! Use Indiegogo share tools to show people what we're doing, or talk about us on social media and link back to our campaign.
• Follow Balance of Seven and our authors on social media! We will all be posting about our campaign on socials, and liking, following, and sharing our posts is incredibly helpful.
• Tell your friends about us! Don't feel limited to online interaction; in-person word of mouth is an absolutely amazing way to increase our visibility.

Your support means the world to us!

Balance of Seven LLC is a small, independent press established in 2018, dedicated to keeping the magic in publishing. Diversity and allyship are at the very core of our makeup, and we’re devoted to promoting the voices of women, the LGBTQIA+ community, BIPOC people, neurodiverse individuals, and persons with disabilities. A member of the Independent Book Publishers Association, we aim to bring magic and excitement to our readers by providing a platform for new and underrepresented voices who would otherwise not be heard. Unlike traditional presses, we believe in giving our creatives a say in what happens to their work. Many of our books are award winners and #1 Amazon bestsellers, and we often take our books to events where our authors can interact with their readers. Visit our website at www.balanceofseven.com.

Among our most recognized books:

• The Mountains Under Her Feet by Catherine Vance had ads in both Publisher’s Weekly and Foreword Reviews.
• Rogues and Wild Fire was a #1 Amazon bestseller and winner of the 2019 Texas Authors Best Book Awards for Romance Collection. 
• Grey Dawn by Dr. Nyri A. Bakkalian was recognized by the Queer Armenian Library as the first book in history to be written by an Armenian American lesbian, in addition to being a #1 Amazon bestseller. 
• Shiny Bits in Between by Georgina Key won the Phoenix Award for Best New Voice. 
• The Pizza-Pyre by Charleigh Brennan was a finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards and won second place in The Bookfest Spring 2022 Book Awards. 

Events our books have been featured at:

• Frankfurt Book Fair
• American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference and Exhibition
• Comicpalooza
• Copperfield's Books Local and Indie Author Fair
• Vermont Sci-Fi and Fantasy Expo
• Louisiana Book Festival
• HavenCon

We’ve also had authors speak on panels at events on topics such as “Women in Fantasy,” “Mental Health and Gaming,” “Don't Skip Leg Day: Building Stronger Characters,” “Building Queerer Worlds,” “LGBTQYA: Representation in Young Adult Literature,” “Roll for Initiative: Tabletop Role-Playing and You,” and more.