Daniel Solis

In the spirit of transparency, I wanted to share a basic overview of costs for the Writer's Dice kickstarter campaign. Many thanks to my wife Megan who's been keeping track of this info. Our costs consider the following: • Kickstarter's cut • Amazon Payments' cut • Final product dice • Prototype dice • Baggies • Address labels • Padded envelopes • Mailbox rental • Shipping A total cost of $4375 . That's rounded up slightly to consider the stragglers we still need to ship out. The amount does not consider things like any returned packages (extra postage), printer ink, mileage, and our time/labor. We haven't found out the costs of North Carolina sales tax just yet, which Kickstarter doesn't have a way of calculating. Also, the amount of postage for parcels went up a bit before we were able to send everything out, which raised the overall cost of shipping somewhat higher than we expected. We probably could have saved a tiny bit of money by not...

These are dice for writers, storytellers and gamers! In addition to the normal 1-6 pips, these dice are etched with six words packed with meaning: BUT, SO, AND, AS, OR, IF. Use them to plot your next novel! Roll them into your role-playing games! Gift them to your gaming buddies! » Sorry, the physical Writer's Dice are now sold out! » Download the App for iPhone/iPad , Android , or Windows Phone » Download the free Writer's Dice Guide [PDF]      

Many thanks to Chris Schreiber for offering this suggestion. For any backers who wanted to gift Writer's Dice for the holidays, here's a simple IOU stocking stuffer with a print-and-fold paper version of the dice. The card reads: "We wanted to deliver Writer's Dice before the holidays... BUT the Kickstarter was too successful... AND our workshop won't have enough materials in-stock until January... SO please enjoy these print-and-fold dice for now." Furthermore, look for a mobile app to come out soon. We're figuring out the logistics of how to get the app to all backers for free. » Writer's Dice - IOU Holiday Card

I'm happy to announce that Pop & Locke's Last Heist features art by illustrator James Stowe. James is an accomplished and prolific artist in a variety of projects. You might recognize his most recent work in the series of young children D&D character sheets that went viral earlier this year. Check 'em out here! Like many of you, I was charmed with his poppy, energetic character designs. I'm really looking forward to his new work for Pop & Locke's Last Heist, too. Thanks so much to everyone who backed the Writers' Dice Kickstarter. You made this campaign more successful than I ever anticipated and gave us the ability to tap such strong talent.

Thank you so much to everyone who contributed to this project! It was more successful than I could've imagined. Here are our final numbers: 475 backers raised $8435 in just 2 weeks, a total pre-order of ~1650 dice! So here's what will happen next: Kickstarter and Amazon Payments are going to charge your pledges from your credit cards over the next week. Most of you have already successfully done so, but a few might have some transaction errors that Amazon will try to resolve until Saturday, Nov 12. After the pledges are all resolved, we'll place an order for about 1750 dice. We're ordering plenty of extras just in case any get lost in the mail. Once ordered, those will take up to ten business days to produce, according to our vendor. (Usually they're much faster, but we've never ordered this many dice from them.) When we have the dice here, we'll bundle them up into your individual packages and ship them to you. Estimated delivery for domestic order...

As of Saturday night, we have 833 dice pre-ordered and we still have a week left in the campaign. Incredible. I just posted this little video above to show how the dice roll. Nothing fancy, just a product demo. :)

What an epic first weekend! We reached 100% funding in the first 14 hours. Over 200% funded in the first weekend. As of now, we'll produce at least 430 dice! The next highest quantity we estimated with our vendor was 1000, which would be awesome. Our pace is slowing down now, so I don't know if we'll get that many orders. Who knows? 430 in three days seemed unlikely, too. We'll see! Survey Question: Which games would you like to see in the PDF guide? I've got Happy Birthday, Robot! , Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple , and Adventures of Baron Munchausen .

The Kickstarter for Writer's Dice is now live! For a limited time only, you can pre-order your own set of Writer's Dice. If you order two dice or more, you'll get a PDF guide for using Writer's Dice in writing and gaming. The whole creation process for these dice is documented on this blog. See the initial idea for these dice here . The design for the prototype here . A photo gallery of the finished prototypes here . Budgeting for the campaign here . Making of the video here . Click the link on the right and pledge your support for Writer's Dice. Thanks!

So you've heard my usual advice for making a Kickstarter video . All that still applies. Here was my strategy for this video in particular. I was greatly inspired by Trey Parker and Matt Stone's lesson to NYU writing students in which they shared their technique for outlining a plot. In their lesson, they break out each beat so there's always a "therefore" or a "but" in between. That makes a naturally flowing sequence of events. It's a great lesson and one that fits seamlessly into the main appeal of Writer's Dice, to select the most meaningful words to connect each beat. Normally, I'd start off a Kickstarter video as if it were a short 30sec commercial for the project. This time, I decided to neatly present that writing lesson into a cute tutorial, something like Common Craft or One-Minute Science . Megan and I brainstormed all the ways we could present this lesson: Stop-motion props? Stock art with silly voices? A sketch with actors i...

In the spirit of transparency, here's the cost breakdown for the Writer's Dice. This is the kind of budgeting and planning you have to do before you launch any Kickstarter campaign. Production Estimate Quantity: 100 19mm, .4 oz, Opaque Square-edged Blank Dice, Red Custom etching on each face Each die costs $1.75, a total of $175. Shipping (according to USPS Price List Effective June 6, 2011) Domestic package shipping up to 3oz (~4 dice + padded envelope) costs $1.71 To Canada, it costs up to $2.24 To Mexico, it costs up to $2.86 Everywhere else, up to $3.46 Pricing Strategy I want to charge a flat rate of $5 per die, just like the Mathematician's Dice kickstarter. That means the single-die orders are going to be the most costly for us. We'll only have about $1.50 cushion for a single-die domestic order. We'll take At least a 17¢ hit on each single-die international order. So, we have a couple options here. First, we can just hope we'll have mo...

Well, that was fast! Gamestation comes through yet again with super-prompt turnaround I've come to expect. These dice are a little larger than your average dice, with a satisfying heft to their roll. I am very impressed with the detail they managed to pull out of the lettering. Those thin inner strokes are incredibly fine. See more pics on the Flickr stream . Now, I can begin prepping the Kickstarter campaign in earnest!