The Faust Kickstarter is Becoming History…

And here is what you might want to know next if you follow Faust, backed the Kickstarter, or wonder what all the noise was about…

Kickstarter

This week we receive the small remaining inventory of Kickstarter Limited Signed Omnibus books from our shipping team and will personally rush eight copies to the final eight backers who gave us their address long after the backer survey. Yes, if you gave us your address, we are determined to give you your book!

(There are also a couple backers whose book may have been lost by USPS but we’re awaiting written confirmation from USPS. So we of course await that before sending out second copies to these backers.)

And this will end a year long Kickstarter campaign — we thank our patient and dedicated backers for believing it was worth supporting.

Everyone said it would be a lot of work, everyone warned that fulfillment would be more expensive than we expected and the chaos involved in trying to satisfy all backers would be huge hassle. And they were right. But together, we all made this book happen.  

And what will happen with the few remaining copies of this once in a lifetime limited edition signed by both creators? 

Well, we got you.

Comic Shop Edition

Originally, the Direct Market Omnibus, with that amazing antique grimoire cover by Jason Moore, was going to be the first of just two (not three) editions of this book. Our signed limited Kickstarter was added at the last minute, though ultimately not without careful planning. Thank you to retailers and readers for pre-ordering this first collected complete Faust Omnibus available in stores, completing a progression that goes all the way back to 1987.

If you pre-ordered, I hope you got your copy. I know that orders for this direct market hardcover came in just slightly higher — I think it was about 80 books — than our print run. (With printing, labor, paper and shipping costs all at record highs, we knew we print both editions together to get as many books printed as we could afford.)

When there are more orders for a special event title than copies to sell, the distributors allocate copies. In other words, if there are two percent fewer books available than stores that say they will buy, distributors ship two percent fewer books to each store. (Or, maybe they take care of their biggest accounts and let the smaller stores endure all the pain. Small retailers have a hard life sometimes. Keep supporting them!)

And of course, you’re no fool, you know where this is going. NO WAY did we plan to sell out this special hardcover and once again let Faust go out of print, where we languished from 2013 to 2023!

No, we were slowly working a plan to make Faust: Love of the Damned permanently available in comic shops, and even mainstream bookstores, as long as Faustians demanded!

So What’s Next?

If you missed every chance to get this book, sorry, this part’s for you. You have two ways to own a collected LOTD:

ONE: Once every backer has received his or her book, Tim Vigil and David Quinn will sell the remaining Kickstarter overprint (produced providently because we knew that copies would be lost or damaged during delivery) at the usual places we offer signed books, on Tim’s Patreon (subscription, but worth it) and on David’s Blog’s Signed Book Page (follow for free), as well as at public appearances. (And if you don’t see us on the guest list at your local convention, speak to that convention!) You read this here first… please don’t tell us we didn’t warn you!

Full transparency: to be fair to Kickstarter backers who took a chance on us, we have agreed to sell these remaining copies for US $250 plus shipping. Yes, that’s a premium compared to the Kickstarter, but we hope you agree it is a market value price, nowhere near the exorbitant cost some of the online flippers ask.

So watch those pages and if this is the Faust book you must have, go for it. It will be just as if you had made your pledge on Black Friday 2022 and got the Kickstarter! And there is another way. 

TWO: Watch Tim’s Patreon and David’s Blog for news of FUTURE PRINTINGS, as early as the Faust Omnibus Trade Paperback, in all stores March 2024. Hey, if you do not absolutely need the Kickstarter hardcover, this will be the way to go — a permanent library edition that fits on the self with your library. 

An Extra Note of Thanks

We’re grateful to all our backers, and your support and appreciation has been profound.

We are also grateful to a couple of you who pointed out that the print quality on future editions must be improved. We had the same note: after Tim, David and our designer Phil approved a digital proof for offset printing production, we all noticed that the printed copies seemed darker on paper than the digital proof. (Kind of made us miss the pre-offset days of approving actual paper proofs back in the 90s.)

Most of you loved your books, and thanks, but we thought we could do better. So we’re working closely with our printer to find a way to make each printing as sharp and clear as it can be. We heard you, whether you loved it and are proud to own it, or you wanted just a little bit higher level of printing, or both!