Richard Perkins' farm shuts down for winter as his regenerative agriculture book Kickstarter hits 600% funded with 2,200+ copies pledged and nearly €270,000 raised. He's printing in Poland to cut costs, shipping hardcovers in early November, and handling fulfillment for 2,500 books through an automated workflow.
Questions this video answers
>600% funded
Over 2,200 copies (mentions up to ~2,700 in SEK value; later references ~2,500–2,700 range)
2.7 million crowns (~€270,000); he mentions it could reach ~€300,000
€75
PDF immediately to backers; hard copy likely early November if on schedule (may arrive before Christmas or by early January); book sold on website March–April
Chapters
What's up, YouTube? It's just one week now. One week until our farm totally shuts down for the winter and we just have the hens running and the cows and sheep and things take a slower pace. And it's also just one week that you've got left to support the Kickstarter campaign. That's in the links below. If you haven't purchased a copy and you're thinking of it, now's the time to do it. The campaign has been incredible. It's run to over 600% funded at this point. It's achieved the project we love on the Kickstarter front page. If you type in Regenerative Agriculture, you'll find it there. And, yeah, it's exceeded all my expectations. I thought the book would be funded, but I needed a little bit more funding than I put the campaign total for, because there's no book in the space that's ever achieved such funding. So I felt like having the extra capital to invest in the first print run. I thought I would just set it a little lower and I thought it would achieve that. But I never in my wildest dreams, expected to sell over 2,200 copies. I think it is now, and it's up at 2.7 million crowns, which is about €270,000, which is incredible. And if you look at the trajectory on the analytics behind it, looks like it could even get up to €300,000, and that's incredible. If it does reach €300,000, I'm going to make sure I book a trip to Poland to the printers to try and make a video promoting the printer we use. And also just seeing the process. I'm fascinated by how the books are actually constructed and I think it'd be a really interesting video to see. Now I use a printer in Poland, partly because printers in Sweden are so very expensive. Just to get an edit copy like this just printed out on normal copy paper, it's costing me €80, €90 a time. And it's not even on proper book paper with the proper cover. I'm making it myself. It's just loose printed sheets and so I can't afford to do that to send books out to you at the price I am. I'm already subsidizing first class shipping to make sure books get to you much quicker than our previous book, Making Small Farms Work, which we had some issues with in some countries getting them out to you. The Swedish postal service is really, really expensive, and yet it's not up to par in my mind now. I use the Polish printer because it was recommended to me by a friend of ours who's published many books in Poland through them and they're an ethical printer. They use good paper sources and low toxicity inks as far as that goes in this industry. And I think I'll make a video in the future about the process of making a book because it started, I was just looking at notes from three years ago of the first sort of layout ideas for the book and it's evolved hugely in that time obviously. But it's been a long process and I've had to sort of had a choppy time working on it in times when I couldn't. But last winter I really made a good progress on it and then it's been getting refined all summer in my spare time whilst running a farm and running internship programs, etc. But yes, I like to use that source and I'd like to make a video talking about the process of what's gone on, some of the behind the scenes things of what goes into making a book because it's an epic ordeal and also thinking about the economy because I know a lot of you value our channel very much for that. And there's, you know, very clear reasons why I wanted to be self published economically because I don't feel like publishers really give an adequate deal to the authors, especially if an author has created the book, not just a bunch of texts and supplied a bunch of photos and a whole design team is employed to create and edit the book. But I've done all that work myself or I've employed people to do it. And it's a really sweet book. You know, we've got beautiful infographics throughout the book and really nice finished tables. There's over a thousand color photographs that I've taken through drones and things and it's. Yeah, it's been an incredible process to make. Here's a nice image of the farm before we moved in and then the updated vision on Google Earth as it is now. It's pretty cool. But yeah, I've been adding so many touches to get this book polished and it feels really ready. I've purchased so many copies because every time I do a bit of editing I want to then see it on paper because it looks so different on paper than it does on a screen. You know, just even looking at a table, it just looks so different on the actual paper. But I'm really excited by the finish of it and I gonna get the manuscript back in a few days. I'll have a few days with it to update any errors and I'm hoping to get this to the printer in 10 days time. So basically, if you support the Kickstarter campaign right now, you'll get a PDF copy. If you support the PDF option, probably early November if you support the hard copy book. As long as I get them back in schedule, I will get them out to you before Christmas. You may even get them before Christmas. I can't promise that. It really depends on the print run and getting them to us. If not, it'll be early January, but the book will not be for sale on our website until March or April time. I'm having an extended holiday and rest period which I think I've thoroughly earned. And the book will only be on sale as a PDF and hardcover book on our website. It won't be for sale in bookshops or Amazon or any of those kind of places. It's direct from me, the farmer and educated, to you. Now I know a lot of you have followed our channel and gained a lot from the information we put out of the years. So if you valued from that free information that then please consider supporting us because it's a really great way to support us whilst directly getting something very beneficial. I think books are incredibly undervalued. I mean, this book is €75 and it's got tens of thousands of euros of data in it. So I think it's a bloody good deal, to be honest. And I'm super proud of it. So I'm excited to get them out to you very soon. And I'll be making a bunch more videos now as the farm calms down a bit and I have a bit more time. I'll be making some reflective, sort of monologue, introspective videos from the office. But I'll also be traveling to Croatia and Germany in November and I'm also going sailing. So I'll be doing some video updates of things along the way. So thanks very much folks. I'm stoked about the way the campaign has gone. If you've supported us. Thank you so much. It doesn't go unnoticed. We are extremely grateful and I'm looking forward to getting the books out to you. I found a way to semi automate the process of getting books to you. I think it'll be two and a half thousand books to post by the end of this. And so one of the problems running it through the print labeling system for the Swedish post is the format that you get people's information from. So if you've backed the campaign. I'll be sending out a survey where you supply your postal address and name, etc. But that comes to me in an Excel spreadsheet, so I need to then code that into XML format and automate it into my printing service so that I can basically not have to sit there and copy and paste every single line of different people's names and addresses. So I've been doing a lot of research on the back end of that stuff and it looks like that's doable. I've got the print and postage supplies ready and so I'll be getting this out to you just as soon as I can. So if you want the book before March so you can benefit from looking through that over this winter and implementing some of that next year, then jump into the campaign right now. It's in the links below. You can also find links to our t shirts, all different colors and sizes there if you want to support the farm in that way. And we will see you in a video soon. Bye for now.
