2015.08.21 A Great Lead on the REAL Story Behind the KoDT 20 Years of Covers Book

I should be careful what I ask for......I have a plethora of tips and screenshots to research and post about this weekend, some of which is, for a lack of a better term....HUGE!!!!

Before I delve into the holy-crap-this-is-big tip I just got I need to share another pretty big tip...just not as big.

Like most things this is a round-about bit of information courtesy of our guest of the hour, Mr. Ken Whitman. Seriously, I couldn't make some of these things up if I tried....

Evidently those KoDT 20 Years of Covers Books were a bigger cluster-%$@# than originally anticipated. I speculated that those books were being printed in-house because the math didn't seem to work out based on Ken Whitman's statements on Kickstarter. Originally I figured maybe, just maybe the books were coming in a little high at a $63 cost to Ken Whitman, still a respectable profit margin of 37%. When he commented that "25 hardcovers that cost d20e almost 1000" it was clear that my numbers were way the hell off because that means the books cost less than $40 to make.....giving Ken Whitman an obscene 60% margin.

A little re-figuring was that maybe he was making them in-house. I know that I read somewhere something along the lines of "I couldn't afford to make them higher quality as that cost too much." If you have a link to that message, please forward it to me so I can put it up here. I realize that the books, which were only supposed to be a limited-time deal, were a fund-raiser, so that 60% margin was to help fund KoDT:LAS....

....and boy was I wrong.

Ken Whitman is obviously his own worst enemy because he stupidly enclosed a shipping invoice from where he got the books printed, which was from Ingram. Evidently this was left in the back (?) cover of one of the books and simply repackaged from the Ingram box to the UPS box. I realize the picture isn't the best and I've blocked out some order information that might point back to the tipster who sent this to me.

There are two...two big implications here. 1st is that the money spent by backers on these books probably wasn't spent on the books themselves. Ken Whitman didn't print off the "250 Hardcovers" as promised, but instead sent small orders to the printer instead. This explains why so many people didn't get the books they orders, much less get them the numerous times Ken Whitman promised they were being shipped. The second bit of info is that Ken Whitman simple printed shitty versions of the books to pocket the money. Come on.....an 83% margin? Obviously if Ken Whitman had spent the guesstimated $63, or even the reported $40 he could have put out a better product.

Thanks to my anonymous tipster for sending this gem. If you have anything worth sharing, please send it to: