Lesbians in Space: The Anthology (Where No Man Has Gone Before)

Hi Folks!

We just passed our first stretch goal at $6,000 in only 4 days! We love to pay our authors, and this goal means we get to pay them more! Now our four Hugo-Award winning and bestselling authors, as well as all the authors we select from submitted stories, will get an extra $0.01 per word in payment!

I also wanted to mention my amazing Collab Partner again, Aimee Cozza, and her project for The Warm Machine, about two gay robots running off together. It's an amazing concept, and I'll certainly be getting a copy!

Since both campaigns are funded, that means anyone who backs any physical reward will also get 6 out of the 56 card deck of oracle cards! The names for the 6 cards we're contributing are: Unknown, Freedom, Decommission, Love, Space, and Journey!

Now, if you're only backing at a digital level, but have pledged to both campaigns and want these cards (and who wouldn't?) there's an easy fix. Any physical addon will make sure you get your cards! Both campaigns have stickers, art, and charms for anywhere from $1 to $5, so it's easy to ensure you get these cool looking cards. I'm going to be backing a bunch of campaigns over the next week or so to make sure I get my full set!
(did I mention you can also get a custom box to keep them in courtesy of Claudia Blood's Reimagined campaign?)



Thank you all again for making this amazing project a reality. I have a feeling I'll be back before too long to talk about our next stretch goal for illustrations...

Until next time...

William Tracy

Hi Folks!

This morning we are closing in on our first stretch goal! We are just below $5500 out of $6,000, where our headliners and all the submitted stories we choose will get an extra $0.01 per word in payment! Thank you so much to all our new backers!

If you want to see a bunch of Booktopia authors live, check in today in about four hours at:
11AM PST / 2PM EST / 7PM GMT!
The links are below, and it should be streaming live on the campaign page as well. 
Our Lesbians in Space editor, J.S. Fields, will also try to make an appearance! Come say hi!

Streaming at:
YouTube: https://go.lauravab.com/booktopia
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/laura_vab 

Come listen to the authors, ask questions, and have fun!

William Tracy

Thank you folks! We are fully funded as of this morning!



This is certainly the fastest I've had a crowdfunding campaign fund in the seven I've run, so thank you for that! I'm sure having such an amazing lineup of authors doesn't hurt!

The Booktopia authors are tentatively talking about another livestream event tomorrow (Sunday) around 2pm EST, so keep that time open! I'll send out more details once we finalize things.

In the meantime, I wanted to go over my favorite things from this campaign since we still have 19 days of funding left: the stretch goals!

Our first one is at $6,000, and as always, I want to make sure my authors are paid what they're worth. So for this goal, our headliners and all the submitted stories we choose will get an extra $0.01 per word in payment!

Once we hit that, we have a fun stretch goal for you all. At $7,000, The Lesbians in Space anthology will get 5 illustrations for select stories! Yours could be one of these... We will also be including the two illustrations from our card set.

At $8,000, We'll pay all our writers another $0.01 per word!

Then we have a couple stretch goals I'm really excited for. At $10,000, everyone who's getting a hardback version of lesbians in Space will get an extra fancy version! I'm currently pricing out different options, and if we hit this goal, I'll have a poll to see what everyone wants. In the running are:
-a cloth bookmark
-head and tail bands
-colored end papers
-spredges
-dustjacket
-other?
I'm super excited for this one, but it will definitely increase my production costs, which is why this one is up there a bit.

Finally, at $11,500, we're going to do something we haven't been able to before. We're going to pay ourselves!  I've been running Space Wizard since 2021 as a small press, and I've been using crowdfunding as a great way to pay for costs, but that's all they do! They are often break-even or even a little negative for us, but that's still a lot better than having to fund all the covers and author payments out of my own pocket. You all are helping this press succeed!  This time, we're building in a goal specifically to paying the owners of Space Wizard for our work, which means we have some breathing room to pay bills and set up our next amazing campaign!

Let's see how far we can go!

Until next time...

William Tracy

HI all,

Woo! We are already more than 75% funded after the first day! In fact, all of Booktopia is doing very well, with nearly half the projects funded! Now, I know you're probably getting tons of updates from all the BookTopia projects you've backed, so I'll try to keep this short...

I received the final artwork yesterday for two of the three cards you'll get for free from my campaign with any physical pledge (You'll also get three from my Cross Collab Partner's project--see below)!
Here are all three together:

I love these designs! They will come to you as tarot-sized playing cards. I'm also planning to include the two new ones as illustrations in the full book. If you get the hardcover version and we hit the "Fancy Hardback" stretch goal, the illustrations will come to you in full color!

Now, if you haven't backed a bunch of projects, may I suggest my Cross Collab Partner, Aimee Cozza's The Warm Machine, about two robots falling in love and running off together:



You should also give some love to a great kid's book about diversity with some incredible artwork, Violet's Pretty Purple Playground. Gold Dust Publishing is putting this story out, and they are another LGBTQ+ press and good friends of mine, so go check it out!



Alright, I said I would keep this short, so that's all for now. I'll be back when we hit the our goal!

-William Tracy

Hello everyone! Launch day is fast approaching, and we're going to have a launch party with a bunch of the other Booktopia participants at 12:00 PM EST on Thursday the 5th! So come watch us launch this Booktopia shindig live from 12:00 to 1:00pm! If you're following the project, you should get a notification about an hour before it goes live!

Then afterward, come back the campaign! We have a lot of cool stuff planned, and you can get some amazing rewards, including, of course, the anthology itself, with stories from:
Travis Baldree
Mary Robinette Kowal
Seanan McGuire
Emma Newman

And we'll be opening up to submissions at the same time, until December 31, 2024, so get your keyboards warmed up to write about Lesbians in Space!

See you tomorrow!