Coming Up to the End!
over 3 years ago – Tue, Oct 27, 2020 at 07:02:36 PM

Hi, Backers! Ben here, Isaac's literary agent. As I've helped Isaac navigate this Kickstarter campaign, I've been awed and inspired by all of you—your support, encouragement, and kindness have made this one of the most memorable months in my eight years working in publishing. Thank you all, from the bottom of my heart, for helping to make this campaign a reality. As you know from the campaign story, Isaac and I have been working together on this project for over three years now. It means so much to me that it'll be out in the world, in your hands, and that you'll be able to enjoy it with your children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and friends. 

Thank you as well to everyone who has helped by sharing the campaign through word of mouth and on social media. We're very close to hitting our two stretch goals! We only need about two hundred more video views and twenty five more backers. Let's make this happen over the next three days, and then go enjoy a monster-filled Halloween! (Hopefully, the monsters will all be wearing their underpants.)

-- Ben

Week 3 Update: Deleted Scene and Fan Art
over 3 years ago – Thu, Oct 22, 2020 at 12:02:10 PM

Good morning! Here’s a quick update on the Monsters Don’t Wear Underpants Kickstarter campaign.

Stretch Goals

First off, you all continue to amaze me! We’re nearly there with our stretch goals. We need around 50 backers to reach 600 (and embossed gold medallions stickers), and to reach the goal of a 4-page PDF coloring book, we only need around 600 more video plays. So please continue to share the video and the campaign around. There’s only 9 days left to go!

Fan Art

I’m excited to share a few pieces of fan art done by amazing artist friends of mine. Each one of them surprised me with their versions of Little Blue, and seriously, I was so grateful I might’ve teared up a little. I love their renditions! (Their other work is fantastic as well. Each one of them is worth following for the amazing art they create.)

• Nabetse Zitro
• Art Zealot
• Kevin Keele

Interview

The fantastic Kurt Manwaring over at FromTheDesk.org interviewed me regarding the campaign and the book. There’s some fun stuff over there if you want to learn more about the book and how it came to be. It also includes some of the reasoning why I deleted this werewolf page from the book, even though I still can’t get over the look on Little Blue’s face!

I was also on Brandon's livestream last Thursday discussing the book a little bit, among other things.

Original Art

I've contacted everyone from the Inktober 2020 tier and all of the pieces are now reserved. Now I'm about two thirds of the way through the Inktober 2019 tier, so if you pledged for this tier but haven't heard from me yet, you soon will. Please keep an eye on your direct messages so I can keep moving through the list.

Thank You

As always, thank you for your support. The book wouldn’t have made it this far without you. We're getting into the homestretch here, so please consider spreading the word. Thank you!

Week 2 Update: New Stretch Goal
over 3 years ago – Fri, Oct 16, 2020 at 03:40:26 PM

Hello wonderful campaign backers! First off, I want to say thank you again! Yesterday we reached $20,000 raised for the first printing of Monsters Don't Wear Underpants and have almost 500 backers. We're only about 100 backers shy of reaching our first stretch goal, which will get us embossed gold medallion stickers for each book printed through the Kickstarter.

NEW STRETCH GOAL ADDED

Additionally, I'd like to add one more stretch goal. You might notice that we're not focusing so much on how much money is raised beyond the funding goal. I am watching funds closely because I'd like to be able to order a few extra books on the off-chance I can get them into a few local bookstores, but I'm also very interested in getting the story out into the world where it can live its own life, make people laugh, and learn to make its own decisions on whether to wear underpants or not (hopefully the former). So, for a second stretch goal I'd like to focus on how many times the video has been viewed.

Right now the video has 3,622 plays. If we reach 10,000 plays, I'll send each backer a 4-page printable PDF coloring book of some of the first pages of the book at the end of the campaign. Since the number of plays isn't available right on the page, we're adding this graph at the top of the campaign. I'll update it daily so we can watch how the number grows.

We could get to those plays by having people watch the video over and over--or by sitting your kids down in front of it and asking them to hit play continually--but I'd rather encourage all of you who have backed the campaign to share the page and the video with your friends, family, and whoever else you think might be interested in this weird little book. It's easy, just tell them to go to monsterunderpants.com and watch the video. That URL takes them straight to the Kickstarter page.

Interviews!

I've been approached by several outlets to provide interviews, which include some behind-the-scenes looks behind the book. So far, here are some of the places you can learn more:

• The amazing artist Howard Lyon interviewed me over on the Muddy Colors website, which is a fantastic resource for artists. We've included a few process shots there that might be of interest.
• The Sandersonian Institute for Cosmere Studies had me on their show, where we talked about the Cosmere, the Kickstarter, and Siri accidentally tried to call my mom in the middle of recording.
• Tonight Wednesday October 14 at 9pm EDT/7pm MDT I'll be on The Dusty Wheel Show with my friend Matt Hatch. We'll be discussing the Wheel of Time mostly along with some of my work for Brandon and the Cosmere, but we'll also talk a bit about Monsters Don't Wear Underpants, too. About 30 minutes into the show, they open the phone lines. I would love to answer some of your questions!

Bloopers

In case you missed it, my coworker Adam decided to create a blooper reel of the outtakes from filming the intro to the campaign video and post it to Brandon's YouTube channel. I'm incredibly embarrassed by this video, which is why I'm sharing it around, so I can remember never to post something like this ever again.

Original Art

Here's an update as to where things are at for the original art. I've contacted everyone from the Inktober 2020 tier and all of the pieces are now reserved. (If you believe I should've contacted you and I haven't, please let me know.) I've moved on to contacting those who pledged for the Inktober 2019 tier and am just at the beginning of the list, so if you haven't heard from me, I'll contact you soon. Please keep an eye on your direct messages.

Thank You

I'm still floored by the support you all have given my weird little book, and I'm incredibly grateful for it. I want to pass it forward a little and highlight two other campaigns who are in the home stretch or could use a few more people taking a close look at their fun products.

Chea Ros is creating Spooky Shark Pins that are well designed and quite fun! I hope you'll check out their campaign, which only has 48 hours left to go.

Maria Martin creates beautiful illustrations and has a fun children's book about courage and self affirmation called Can a Fish Climb a Tree.

I think both of these campaigns are worth checking out.

Thank you for your support. Because of you we're going to be able to make Monsters Don't Wear Underpants into a real, printed book.

We've funded! + a Stretch Goal
over 3 years ago – Thu, Oct 08, 2020 at 12:28:37 PM

Wow! We did it! We funded in under 24 hours! Thanks to all of you who pledged for books and original artwork or just plain pledged because you believe in the project. It's truly amazing and humbling to see a group of people come together to support something like this. Thank you for your trust in me and in this weird little story. Now Monsters Don't Wear Underpants has the means it needs to become an actual, printed book. This is exciting! Thank you again for getting us all one step closer to making this a reality.

I'm already working with a printer who has made books like this before, and I think they're going to do a fantastic job. The art files are almost finished, so as soon as the campaign ends, I'll get this moving through the printing pipeline.

What's Next?

I've come up with a stretch goal that I think is kind of fun, and which will only be available through the Kickstarter campaign. If we get to 600 backers, I'll include a gold sticker for you to add to each of your copies of the book.

So please consider sharing the campaign with others if you feel like it might make someone laugh or help brighten their day.

And again, thank you. It means a lot to me that you would support the book and help make its physical existence a reality.