What is a Stretch Goal?

Every Kickstarter has a goal. An amount of funding is achieved, and the project is created. Simple, elegant, beautiful. It worked for the Oak King Holly King audiobook, and I’m very hopeful it will do the same for Mr Warren’s Profession.

A stretch goal is an extra bonus goal that kicks in after the original funding goal is reached. When a stretch goal is reached, it allows us to create even more things than the original Kickstarter!

For the Mr Warren’s Profession audiobook Kickstarter, we have two stretch goals. Both are centered around the sequel novella Throw His Heart Over, an equestrian continuation of Aubrey and Lindsey’s romance.

If the campaign reaches $6k, we’ll have the funds to reformat Throw His Heart over (complete with cover redesign) to print through IngramSpark, which will unlock signed and annotated copies as backer rewards.

If the campaign reaches $7.5k, we’ll have enough to record the Throw His Heart Over audiobook in tandem with the Mr Warren’s Profession audiobook, and unlock the sequel audiobook as a backer reward.

But why?

Throw His Heart Over – redesign

At present, Throw His Heart Over is printed through Amazon with a cover designed by yours truly.

This means it is not available to libraries or brick-and-mortar bookshops. They stock from a different printer, IngramSpark. This is the printer I use for almost all my other books to maximize accessibility and quality.

Amazon creates paperbacks by crunching the ebook into print format, with mixed results. IngramSpark, on the other hand, not only offers wider availability of the resulting book but also requires a file especially formatted for print. This results in a more thoughtfully-presented and more consistently high-quality paperback. Honestly it will be a relief to know that Throw His Heart Over will now match Mr Warren’s Profession inside and out.

In short, reformatting will result in library availability, indie bookshop availability, and an increased print quality.

Now we come to the cover typography.

As you might have noticed, I am not a graphic designer.

The cover painting for Throw His Heart Over will remain the same. What will change is the style of the title and other text on the outside of the book.

This may not sound like a very big change. However, please consider the following examples.

Kelley York of Sleepy Fox Studio is the graphic designer behind all my other book covers. Her skills allow the cover artist’s paintings to shine to full effect—including the wonderful work Jan Falk of Thistlearts Studio did for the Mr Warren’s Profession cover painting.

With the redesign, Throw His Heart Over will look just as gorgeous as all other books, including Mr Warren’s Profession. Plus with the redesign Books one and two of Aubrey & Lindsey will (finally!) match each other and look nice on a shelf side-by-side. All the more important when ensuring that the signed and annotated editions are looking their best, suitable for collectors and pride-of-place in personal libraries.

So there’s our first stretch goal—the Throw His Heart Over paperback redesign, which will unlock signed and annotated paperbacks as additional backer rewards.

Our second stretch goal is…

Throw His Heart Over – audiobook

Simply put, this will allow Gary to record Mr Warren’s Profession and its sequel Throw His Heart Over back-to-back in one fell swoop. Very convenient for him, and very fortunate for us, because it gives us two audiobooks for one Kickstarter.

None of this will be possible without the power of stretch goals.

Consider backing or sharing the Mr Warren’s Profession audiobook Kickstarter today!

And as always, thank you for reading.