Patrick Rothfuss's Blog, page 17

It’s been a great couple of days of fundraising here, and with less than a week left, we have a little bit of business to attend to.

First of all, yesterday, someone asked what their odds of winning a prize in the lottery were.What a fantastic question! we thought to ourselves.Surely it’ll take us ages to do such a difficult calculation, so alas, we won’t be able to answer it.

At least, that’s what we’ve said in years past. We’ve proven that we really shouldn’t be th...

Over the weekend, while I was in the middle of a livestream, this year’s fundraiser quietly ticked past $886,000.

That might seem like an oddly specific number to be excited about, but as everyone who happened to be watching me at that particular moment knows, $886,000 is the amount of money we raised in last year’s fundraiser. It’s a big deal for team Worldbuilders that we’ve managed to beat last year’s total.

As I write this, we’re at $910,000. We have a week to go, and it looks like we’re...

Heifer International is full of, and run by, a lot of truly wonderful people dedicated to fighting poverty. They work tirelessly day and night to make the world a better place. You might not guess it by looking at them, but the folks at Heifer are also a big bunch of nerds.

They promised us a stretch goal this year, but kept it kind of secret what they were actually going to do for us. All we knew was that they’d be sending us a video as soon as they were done. What they sent us was this:

Ye...

Things are going really well over here at Worldbuilders. There are 11 days left, which means we’ve well and truly crossed the halfway point, and have started the mad snowball that is the final third of the fundraiser.

Headquarters is a whirlwind of activity. Every day more books, games, and coolness come in from authors, publishers, and other sponsors, auctions are assembled by our team, and orders are packaged and shipped out from our online store. Best of all, donations keep rolling in on t...

Wow, everyone.

Yesterday was the best fundraising day we’ve ever had.Ever. Last year, our best day raised about $93,000. Yesterday, we raised more than $200,000. Then our $100,000 of matching was added on the livestream late last night, and we watched our overall fundraiser total cross $800,000. (It’s currently at $832,000.)

This means we put more than $300,000 towards Heifer’s offer of matching funds. As a result, more than $600,000 will be going to help projects in Haiti.

That’s just from y...

As I write this blog, Worldbuilders has raised nearly $516,000.

That was going to be my big announcement today, that we broke half a million dollars.

But it turns out I actually have a much bigger piece of news to share.

Today, Heifer International is running a special event in conjunction with Giving Tuesday. For one day, all donations made to Heifer will be matched and put toward their work in Haiti.

There’s two reasons that this is a big deal for me.

The first reason has to do with my mom....

Today I’d like to tell you a story about a book. Some of you might not have met it before. But to many of us here at Worldbuilders, it is an old, familiar friend….

It’s a book that has been with the fundraiser since the beginning….

2008: A Gift from Gaiman.

In 2008 I’d only been published for a year when, on a whim, I decided totry raising money for Heifer Internationalon my blog. Things quickly spiraled out of control as other authors pitched in, helping spread the word and donating books f...

Let’s be honest with each other. You don’t want to go outside today. It’s madness out there. It’s like The Purge and World War Z got together and had an ugly baby. It’s like the apocalypse if zombies wanted cheap blue-ray players instead of brains.

So don’t do it. You’re better than that. You don’t want to get crushed to death in a Walmart trying to save 14 dollars on a blender. It’s not worth it.

Let me offer you a better option. An option that will allow you to stay in your house and eat le...

Hey folks! It’s the Worldbuilders Team again, bringing you another blog full of books for the lottery.

There’s been some serious friendly competition going on in the fundraiser this year.

The Individual and Team pages are having a bit of fun going back and forth (though Amanda’s particularly excited about how well Team Nerdfighter is doing).

There are teams from all sorts of different fandoms and communities, banding together to raise money for Worldbuilders, and that’s pretty cool.

And the...

Hey everyone! Today’s blog comes to you courtesy ofThe Worldbuilders Team.There’s a lot of cool stuff to share with you, and we’re really excited about it.

Honestly we’re kind of excited in general. Worldbuilders is doing amazingly well this year, and everything we raise is making a big difference.There is so much that Heifer does for the communities they work in. For example…

Over the last 3 years, the average income per person inHebei province in Chinahas increased from 900 yuan to 10,900 y...