Some RPG publishers are talking about a thorny issue again – supporting international backers on Kickstarter projects. It’s an expensive challenge and some are asking whether it makes any sense to accept international backers at all.
The catalyst for the latest round of discussions is artist Bambi Wendt’s $70,700 “A Field Guide to: Dragons, Wyrms, and Serpents of the World”.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/994119819/a-field-guide-to-dragons-wyrms-and-serpents-of-the
In an update to backers, Bambi apologise for the radio silence and then goes on to explain the challenges.
I was fretting and overwhelmed by this HUGE amount of money I had to somehow come up with, as well as the logistics of something as “foreign” as international shipping, when I started to vent to a pair of friends of mine who own a candle company:( https://www.frostbeardstudio.com ) and they turned me on to the company that does their shipping. In the space of a couple of weeks, they’ve gotten our shipping costs down from the estimated $25 to $18.68 which is a HUGE break when you’re dealing with 500+ packages. We’re meeting Monday to discuss the transfer, sign the contract, and logistics. I never, ever, should have attempted to ship out these books without professional help, and I never will again.
Bambi promises that absolutely nothing will keep these dragons from their homes.
Some good news has come out of her challenges. She’s created a Society6 store where the rest of us can buy prints. Those purchases will help fund Bambi’s shipping challenge.
Some will say that Bambi should have done more research and better understood both the logistical challenge and the cost of international shipping. However, the fact remains that shipping from the US to elsewhere in the world seems to be a reoccurring bugbear on RPG, art and cosplay Kickstarters. It seems frightfully hard to calculate the costs.
