V20 Companion project posted too on Extrala

Extrala made a mention on that project too:

extrala.blogspot.com/2012/02/vtm-20th-anniversary-edition-companion.html

And on White Wolf Blog

On February 15, 2012 Justin Achilli posted.

V20 Prestige Print Run

If you haven’t heard yet, we’ve got news regarding the V20 Companion. In particular, we’re using Kickstarter to help finance a prestige print run of the book. Response to the limited Grande Masquerade edition of V20 was so positive, and we heard so many times that players wanted to be able to find other limited-edition copies of the V20 material, we figured, well, there’s got to be a way to make this happen.


This is how Vampire books were printed in the Dark Ages of the 20th century.
In the distribution model of games publishing, the publisher creates the book, the printer prints it, the distributor buys it from the publisher, the retailers buy it from the distributors, and the players buy the book from their retailer. That creates a lot of overhead and it eats a lot of time, with books hanging around in warehouses or riding on multiple trucks before they even make it to the the place where the player can see them. That doesn’t really work for us like it used to.

With Kickstarter, we don’t have to gamble on estimated print runs, and we don’t have to wet as many beaks along the way. When the funding window closes, we order exactly as many books as have been paid for, we send them to the printer right away, and we don’t even have to receive them before they’re mailed out to you. This shaves as much as three months off the print-to-player time.

Even better, by doing our publishing in the same open way we do our development, we have immediate indications of what the players want, how they want to receive the titles, and what sorts of value-added propositions we can use to say thanks. For example, the V20 Companion Kickstarter offers players a chance to commemorate their contributions (or their characters’), to participate in creating the artwork for a later title, or to talk directly on the line with us about their game or their desires for future material.

On the development end, this is a real benefit. There’s no more guesswork on my part — I don’t have to bang out a 12-month schedule and cross my fingers that you like the books I maybe kinda-sorta thought and hoped you would. You give your feedback directly, both on future title proposals and what’s immediately in development. We integrate it directly, and then it’s both printed and delivered to you on a schedule that’s made plain from the outset.

Now, we’re new to this. This is our first Kickstarter project, and we’re going to be learning at every step. What we also want to do is be as transparent as possible with you. That desire informed the open dev process, it shaped the art direction and layout process, and now it’s here in the publication process. You see our costs and have a direct understanding of the benefits we can offer at which contribution levels, so there are no surprises along the way. (Well, no surprises in the process. I still hope to throw a few curve balls into the setting material that makes for great chronicles, of course.) In particular, we want your feedback. Do you want more books in the prestige format? What other perks can we offer to enrich your participation? Where can we let you know more, and what more do you want to know? We’re going to be learning how to maximize this new publishing model together.

If you can’t get in on the Kickstarter version, don’t worry — the book will still be available via POD and PDF, through our regular partner, DriveThruRPG. What we do hope, though, is that you’ll join us on this, our first of hopefully many Kickstarter ventures that bring you new World of Darkness material, and a few other creative endeavors we want to explore. So here’s to your health, and the success of or ongoing relationship together!

Sorry by the mess. That was to be a replie to the previous post. But I ended in a new one.

Why not offer these through regular distributor channels?

In pretty sure that FLGSs all over the world would like to sell V20 and the Companion too...