The Appearance of Reality Vs. Reality
I received this email last week from a Kickstarter project I backed earlier this year, KLINE. LAYERED SKETCHBOOKS & JOURNALS:
We want to acknowledge here that we are experiencing discrepancies from the manufacturer between the prototypes and final products that are currently being delivered to Kickstarter backers. We are aware of many of the issues and are actively seeking to correct them. We have a large inventory to sort and send relative to the small KLINE team, and we are doing our best to send out only good books to you, our excited backers. These hours reviewing books has led to some delays in shipping, and also has seen some defective books elude our oversight and get into the post. If this happens to you, please let us know and we will work to quickly get you a KLINE that is deserving of the aged sedimentary stone name.
This goes to show there’s more to a successful Kickstarter project than the money you raise and the quality of your pitch video. In the end you have to ship a real product to real people. It may sound like I’m trivializing money, but getting it is the easy part.
Putting that money where your mouth is and creating and then shipping your creation the way it was envisioned takes skill and hard work.
Projects you see on Kickstarter are often (but not always) the appearance of reality, not reality. The goal of the project creator is to get the real thing to come as close as possible to the ideal they presented.
When I funded my Kickstarter project last year, it was straightforward with few variables: screen printed posters and decals. Paper and ink.
Even working with just those two materials can be hard as shit.