Thorneycroft to SA80: British Bullpup Firearms, group buy

[bradaz11]

Right (hope this isn't seen as being cheeky as I haven't been able to post the last lot as yet).

I've been asked if there were plans to do another group buy for this book, from the same company as Ian McCollum's Chassepot to FAMAS: French Military Rifles, 1866–2016, Headstamp publishing. This is a group set up by Ian McCollum.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/he ... escription

Thorneycroft to SA80: British Bullpup Firearms, 1901–2020 is the new book. They are saying they can still do 6 books to a box, so with Shipping being $50, if we wanted 6 signature edition books, it would work out to around £100 a book before import duties and postage this side of the pond. If everyone only wanted the standard kickstarter edition, it would be about £80 a book, before tax and postage here. One thing odd about this is they decided to swap colours for some reason - books will be red.

bear in mind, the other group buy we started in may, and they were delivered this month, so 11 months for completion, and even that isn't complete for us, as I've still got all the books atm. It is not a quick process, so even though they think it will go quicker than last time, it may not. you need to remember this when committing, as once you pay, theres nothing I can do to cancel your 'order', you would need to find someone to take your place and sort monies out between yourselves.

so, all that being said - who is interested?

It looks like there is also going to be some sort of reward for those who backed the previous campaign, and I would hope that whatever that is, would be done x6 if I order another 6 books, but I do not know. There is also an as yet unlocked stretch goal of a repro print of the original EM-2 manual which would cost an additional $15 per copy for those that want it, but it is optional. I would suggest if it unlocks, as a group, (if there is indeed a group...) order one and then just copy it for oursleves?

anyway, who is in?
I would need payment by BACs or paypal f&f really, as I need the money before ordering this time round. I can't afford to wait for cheques or trying to get into a bank. I hope you all understand this.

[honda chris]

I'm interested sir

[strangesam]

I've already ordered one...

[ovenpaa]

Yes, interested with the stretch goal of the manual. Are they doing signed copies again?

[Alpha1]

Yes, interested with the stretch goal of the manual. Are they doing signed copies again?

Tempted. Not sure what you mean by the stretch goal of the manual.

[bradaz11]

yes, still doing signed copies, thats what the £100 version is. I'm fine with people wanting to join in and all want copies of the manual - as long as we can do that, it's just it'll push costs up, that's all.

Alpha - it is kickstarter, not a shop. so it is a fundraiser basically, you pledge money so the person can do what they want, and then as a reward, you get certain things. in this case, you pay about £100 to help get a bunch of books made, and in return, they give you a book. It's basically so the person who wrote the book, doesn't have to front the money to get it made, to then sell it. think of it as presales? anyway, as more and more people invest in the venture, then they can do more with the capital. so like guilding the books, very expensive to do one or 2, but when its in the thousands, a lot simpler and cost effective to do, so only once they have secured enough funding to cover that, do they promise to do it.
in this case it is publish a seperate manual. so once they have x amount of money invested, they can then offer to include an extra book, as those set up costs are covered. but they are also asking for an extra buy purchase price on it, so not everyone will necessarily have one, but the set up cost is subsidised.

[Alpha1]

Thanks for the reply but I am still not sure I understand. Its late I will read it again in the morning.

[bradaz11]

these are the goals. so you set one goal first, which is the amount you need to do the project in the first place. you set this, then if you get enough backers to reach that, the project is funded, IE it goes ahaead. if you do not reach that first funding goal, all money is returned to the individual backers and the person making the project has to start over or retry with anohter project.
once it is funded, you can then say, ok, with X amount of money, we can afford to do this... that is what the goals are. usually a stretch goal could be an alternate colour of item, or extra features. like one I participated in was an electronic module for RC lego trains, and the base unit was infra red controlled by an official lego controller, stretch goal 1 gave it Bluetooth connectivity, then a further goal was wifi, these extra modules all cost more money, so as they got more money into the project, that allows them to buy extra units in bulk, to be cost effective, and so do more to the unit. in effect, more funding, better product.

here are their stretch goals.

[bradaz11]

so an early one is better quality paper. at $30k. so for every $100 ish invested, they are rewarding people with a book, that means once people invest enough for 300 books, they can then make all the books with a better paper. because the publisher will say that it will cost x amount to do a run of books with their stock paper, say using 10 of reels of their stock paper they have on hand. but when you get above a certain number of reels of paper used, they will need to buy in paper for your order of books anyway, then you can pick a specific paper to use, and they then order it specifically for your run.

everything costs money to do, but as you start to do more of the same process, it becomes cheaper

a bit like making guns. It is very expensive to design and make a one off gun. but when you want to make 10 of them, yeah it costs more as there are more, but individually, they are starting to come down in price as its easier to make one part of the gun 10 times at once,and repeat for all of the gun, than 10 guns, individually, one after the other. then when you want 100 guns, you can actually start to make jigs for doing certain processes, making it even easier to make that particular bit 100 times. then when you want 5 million of them, you can actually make entire machines that sole purpose is to make that one bit, perfectly and flawlessly everytime day after day. thats the kinda idea of stretch goals...

[Andy]

I'd like in on this please. I'd just go for the standard book.