Help Make The New Walden a Success
Happy Friday, friends!
As I write, The New Walden campaign is 15 for 15: just over 15% funded and 15% into the campaign duration. It’s a good start, but not fantastic.
We charged out of the gate with just under 150 books sold in the first week. For those of you who bought a copy or two, thank you, thank you! We cannot wait to get this book into your hands.
This week, the pace slowed to a crawl. To quote Van Morrison, “Mama told me there’ll be days like this.” We knew there would be peaks and valleys, so Jon and I gave ourselves a 90-day window to fund the book. But with crowdfunding, early success is a strong indicator of ultimate success. It can make the difference between sprinting and crawling across the finish line – or not getting funded at all.
To put it bluntly, our campaign needs a stout dose of publicity for The New Walden to go to press, cross the Atlantic and park itself on your doorstep. We need people to spread the word.
This is where you come in!
First, if you want this book but haven’t sprung for it yet, securing your copy sooner rather than later will boost confidence in other buyers. People will see the backer count rising, the progress bar filling up and think, “I’d better grab one before the clock runs out!”
Second, tell your friends, family, colleagues and social media followers about The New Walden. Forward this email to them. For social posts, simply copy, paste and send the message below.
I just backed The New Walden, an illustrated, hardcover edition of Thoreau’s classic book about simplicity and humankind’s place in the natural world. You can help make The New Walden a success by securing your own copy today at http://bit.ly/3vnbpzY #thenewwalden
I have no doubt we can find at least 841 more bibliophiles, art-lovers and nature-lovers who would treasure this book. A few highly-visible tweets or newsletter placements could do the job. With your help, we can make it happen!
Illustrating Walden
For the four full-color illustrations in The New Walden, I gathered images from open-source archives and combined them with my own analog and digital drawings to create collages that blur the line between the material and the imaginative. This library-punk approach makes sense for Walden: Thoreau was a bookish scavenger himself. Much of the materials he used to build his little cabin came from abandoned construction sites or vacant houses that were slowly falling into ruin.
In the original 1854 edition, the only image is an ink drawing of the cabin by Thoreau’s sister Sophia. For Living, the second “book” or section in our edition, a revamp of the original illustration seemed sensible, but elevated – a “castle in the air,” as Thoreau says later in the text – as if a giant had scooped up his humble little plot in the woods and set it afloat in the sky.
Here’s Sophia Thoreau’s original, followed by my redrawn cabin scene and the historical images I used to nail and duct-tape this collage into sky-worthy shape.
When we launched the campaign on May 6, my good friend Benji Haselhurst was halfway done with the twelve illustrations he’s contributing. Here are the finished drawings you won’t find on our preorder page.
The remaining images are underway and coming together beautifully. In the next issue of Wonderlust, I’ll show you the final batch!
Once again, if you know folks who would love to own this heirloom edition of Walden, please forward this email and help us spread the word on your social channels. If you’re on Twitter, feel free to tag me (I left for a year and just started a new account).
Till next time, be well, be kind, be yourself.
P.S. Premium subscribers of Wonderlust enjoy a $10 discount off the price of Walden. If you’re already a premium subscriber and haven’t received your discount code, simply reply to this email and we’ll hook you up.