Chooseco, the official publisher of Choose Your Own Adventure books, hopes to raise $130,000 on Kickstarter to finance a new cartoon app.

CEO R.A. Montgomery and publisher Shannon Gilligan launched the campaign for “Choose Toons,” a project that would adapt Choose Your Own Adventure books for 5 to 7 year old readers in a new format. Here’s more about the project:

Our first episode is based on the title Your Very Own Robot, where YOU put together a robot named Gus out of discarded parts from your parents’ robot lab. Gus gets you into a lot of trouble. This first episode has 20 story branches with11 possible endings, with more than 30 minutes total of animation … $130,000 will fully fund one 32-minute app in what we plan to eventually develop into a series of cartoons. This amount funds the animation, voice acting, and programming of the choice points within the app. The script is already complete. We developed the demo seen in our video ourselves and our Vermont-based team has experience writing scripts, working on film projects, and developing software.

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Editor Kristen Taylor hopes to raise $3,750 on Kickstarter to print the sixth issue of Saucy.

The “Movement” issue of this indie food magazine will feature photographs, stories, and poems about food and relationships. We’ve embedded a video about the project above–what do you think? Here’s more about the project:

“The ‘Movement’ issue was shot in July 2013 on location in Miami, one of the strangest and most beautiful places to think about food in the context of a city. Slick and dangerous, circuitous and sly, the pages of this issue explore the many ways to move through and around this transient hub of markets and money.”

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Editors Patricia Bray and Joshua Palmatier hope to raise $10,000 on Kickstarter to launch a new small press called Zombies Need Brains LLC.

Not only will the funds be used to launch this venture, they also intend to publish a short story collection entitled Clockwork Universe: Steampunk vs. Aliens Anthology. We’ve embedded a video about the project above–what do you think? Here’s more about the project:

Backers of this project will be creating a new force in the SF&F field, a publishing house that will fill a gap in the genre that we feel is growing by creating a market for original anthology projects open to outstanding authors, regardless of their publishing house affiliations. While some publishers still offer anthologies featuring their house writers, the market for open anthologies has been shrinking. With your help, we’d like Zombies Need Brains LLC to fill this gap.

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As you enjoy your summer reading this year, you should take some time to remember all the readers in prison around the country.

To find out more about sharing books with prisoners, we caught up with author and former inmate John Espinosa Nelson. Nelson is raising funds on Kickstarter for his prison memoir, Where Excuses Go to Die. He reminded us why these books matter in prison:

I once knew a voracious reader who’d struggled with his wife over a gun; it had gone off and he’d been given life for her murder. He never spoke of mitigating circumstances or of his trial. The guy looked like Jack Lemon with a mustache and was just as nice. He possessed photo albums stuffed with happy family pictures, and few of us believed he’d killed his wife on purpose. But who can say? We did know that he read an epic novel every five-day week   –Michener, Clavell, Clancy, Rand, King–   plus smaller titles on the weekends. Reading was his passion and his one “tell” that betrayed his fear of inward thought. He was witty, short, and only about 40, but he was tragic and lonely too. He would have read every book in that facility’s library had it not been for the paperback donations that arrived each month. I think those saved him. I know they helped saved me. I clerked for two civilian employee prison librarians.

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Have you ever dressed up like your favorite character? Cosplay in America author Ejen Chuang wants to create a new book profiling cosplayers and how they create their elaborate costumes.

Chuang hopes to raise $35,000 to cover the costs of traveling (for research purposes) and printing the finished book. We’ve embedded a video about the project above–what do you think? Here’s more about the project:

The process of cosplay doesn’t get covered often. This next book will be a collection of behind-the-scenes photographs as well as portraits. We may see cosplayers trek to the hardware store to find the right PVC pipe for a prop. We might watch the search for the proper fabric for a costume. Whether cosplayers are spray painting under the hot sun or hunched over a sewing machine at midnight, I want to document it.

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Have you ever wanted to independently publish a book? Amy Leigh Strickland, the CWO of Matter Deep Publishing, hopes to raise $8,000 on Kickstarter to create a manual entitled The Indie Guide to Indie Publishing.

The funds will be used to pay the nine contributing writers and hiring a book designer. We’ve embedded a video about the project above–what do you think? Here’s more about the project:

“The Indie Guide to Indie Publishing is a tool, a step-by-step guide to publishing your independent book. Each article is written by an experienced authority from the independent world, and the book includes an index and glossary to help aspiring authors and publishers along the way.”

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Travel writer and photographer Aimee Cebulski has landed a deal with Wiley to write Kickstarter for Dummies.

Cebulski received a personal education on Kickstarter when she launched a campaign of her own to self-publish her book, The Finding 40 Project. We caught up with Cebulski to pick her brain for tips on how to run a successful crowdfunding project.

Check out the highlights from our interview below…

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Do you have a favorite park in Paris? No matter where you live, there’s a whole travel book that will help you explore them.

Collaborators Gregory Ross and Julian Darius hope to raise $5,500 on Kickstarter to produce the 2014 edition of their travel book, Hidden Parks of Paris. We’ve embedded a video about the project above, complete with lots of cute kids. Here’s more about the project:

“The Parisians have a wonderful secret. The artists who paint in the Marais, the businessmen who catch the Metro to work, the college students who walk to class all share these hidden treasures. These venerable parks, these uncovered parks and gardens and squares of Paris are growing in number and size every year. A quarter of Paris is adorned in green, crowning it the greenest city in Europe.”

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A Kickstarter project pitched as a sequel to Where the Wild Things Are by the late Maurice Sendak has been pulled from the crowdfunding site. HarperCollins filed a DMCA notice with Kickstarter and this new message now stands on the site:

BACK TO THE WILD – Inspired by Where The Wild Things Are is the subject of an intellectual property dispute and is currently unavailable. No need to check the servers — the rest of Kickstarter is doing just fine. If you are interested in this project, please check back later. Thanks for your patience.

Sendak vowed never to write a sequel to his beloved book, but Geoffrey O. Todd and Rich Berner attempted to raise £25,000 for an illustrated poem inspired by the classic book. You can read more about the now closed project in our original post.

Want to teach the toddler in your life how to appreciate typography?

MIT design researcher Jesse Austin-Breneman hopes to raise $15,000 on Kickstarter to fund a first edition printing of his board book, Are You My Typeface?  We’ve embedded a video about the project above, complete with lots of cute kids. Here’s more about the project:

The story of a little lost “a” searching for its typeface. It meets many other typefaces before finally finding its home. This project started as a hand-made board book for my daughter and a couple of her friends. I love typography and wanted to share that experience with her … In the end, this project is basically about sharing my family’s love of typography in a way other families can use. That’s why I’ve focused on board books and posters that are fun, bright and full of classic fonts.

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