Love a good sports story with a side of romance? How about slow burn? mlm? Idiots to lovers? Then do we have a novel for you! Hockey Bois by A. L. Heard will soon be available through Duck Prints Press in a brand-new revised edition!
Pre-orders open December 1st, 2023 and will run until December 10th!
All campaign backers will also receive a coupon for 25% off any one purchase from the Duck Prints Press store!
About the Book | About the Author | Campaign Progress | What We’re Offering | How the Pre-Order Campaign Works | Purchase Options | Stretch Goals | Campaign Updates | Budget | Production Timeline | About Duck Prints Press
About the Book
Nick Porter has always loved hockey. Ever since he can remember, it’s been his favorite thing in the world. It’s too bad he never learned to play, he’d tell himself, but it was too late to do it now. Adults don’t just magically learn to skate and join a hockey team. That’d be ridiculous.
Except maybe they do? On a whim, he decides to sign up for an adult beginner’s class. He learns to skate, joins a team, and meets a really hot teammate… and it’s pretty much a disaster from there on out.
Almost three years after the debut of Hockey Bois, A. L. Heard returns with a new edition of this much-loved book! The text has been revised and streamlined, the interior appearance re-done, and we’ll be offering an e-book edition, trade paperback, AND hard cover! If your preferred flavor of m/m story is slow burn, mutual pining, and romance-with-plot, you won’t want to miss this, and the hockey hunks are just a lovely, delicious, not-to-be-missed bonus!
About the Author
Ashley, pen name A. L. Heard, fandom name jhoom, is a 35-year-old teacher, writer, and mother of two little boys. She’s been writing fanworks since she discovered fanfiction.net back in her middle school days; the platform has changed and the writing’s improved, but Ashley still spends her free time writing about characters she adores in worlds she’d like to explore. In between writing projects, she works as a language teacher in the Pittsburgh area, plays hockey, and plays trains with her sons.
Links: Archive of Our Own | Tumblr | Twitter | Bluesky | Instagram
Campaign Progress
We’re aiming to earn $2,800 from this pre-order campaign. If we do not hit this amount during the pre-order period (ending December 10th, 2023), we won’t be able to afford to produce everything we’ve promised and will have to cancel the campaign, refund existing pre-orders, and re-launch with a smaller print run (and probably without a hard cover). Want to see our progress toward making our goal? You’ve come to the right place!
Current Amount Pledged: $1,281
Percent Funded: 45.8%
Backers: 30
Last updated: 12/4/2023 at 1:15 p.m. EST.
What We’re Offering
- Hockey Bois e-book (ePub and PDF formats)
- Hockey Bois trade paperback book (6 in. x 9 in./15.25 cm x 23 cm). (Printed by BookLogix.) Every print book purchased through this pre-order campaign will come with a campaign-exclusive bookplate bearing A. L. Heard’s signature.
- Hockey Bois hard cover book (6 in. x 9 in./15.25 cm x 23 cm). (Printed by BookLogix.) Every print book purchased through this pre-order campaign will come with a campaign-exclusive bookplate bearing A. L. Heard’s signature.
- Hockey Bois stickers. Author A. L. Heard has produced multiple stickers in the past, and we’ll be offering all of them as part of the campaign! ** Campaign backers who buy a bundle will get three randomly selected stickers from those available. ** We guarantee you won’t get any doubles! If you want to pick specific stickers, you can do so by purchasing the sticker-specific listings. (Printed by Stickermule.) The stickers are:
- Hockey Bois two-sided bookmark (2 in. x 6 in./5 cm x 15.25 cm). This awesome matte bookmark, featuring the artwork of Nikki O’Shea, has Brady on one side and Nick on the other, each in their hockey gear and game-ready. (Printed by Canva.)
- Hockey Bois magnets (2 in. x 2 in./5 cm x 5 cm). Matching magnets featuring the chibi skating Nick and Brady images created by Diminuel (Manufactured by Vograce.)
- Patreon extra. An acrylic standee, 3 in./7.5 cm tall, of the chibi Nick-n-Brady holding hands art. (Manufactured by Vograce.) Want the Patreon extra? Support this campaign and become a $10/month or $25/month backer on the Duck Prints Press Patreon and it’s yours!
How the Pre-Order Campaign Works
It’s simple: order what you want through our webstore and pay for it! All the links are below. If we haven’t hit the $2,800 minimum by December 10th, we’ll refund your money. (See below for our projected timeline, and, depending how much we exceed our funding goal by, backers may get More Stuff—see our stretch goals.)
Purchase Options
Pre-Order Packages: For your purchasing convenience, we’re offering four bundles! All prices are in USD. Add packages to your cart and enter your shipping address to calculate shipping. REMINDER: Bundles come with three random stickers of the five offered. If you purchase a bundle, you will not be able to pick which three stickers you receive.
trade paperback book + e-book + merch = $40 USD + shipping
(includes three randomly selected stickers of the five different designs available)
hard cover book + e-book + merch = $60 USD + shipping
(includes three randomly selected stickers of the five different designs available)
Pre-Order Individual Items: All the Hockey Bois rewards are offered as single-item purchases. You can buy the ones you want, mix-and-match, get multiples, and otherwise customize your backing to your preferences! This is also the only way to guarantee which stickers you get – the stickers in bundles are randomly selected. All prices are in USD. Add items to your cart and enter your shipping address to calculate shipping.
Stretch Goals
If we raise $3,500: All backers who purchased a pre-order package (e-book + merch, trade paperback book + e-book, hard cover book + e-book, trade paperback book + e-book + merch, or hard cover book + e-book + march) will receive all of the Hockey Bois alternate universe stories published by Duck Prints Press. (Brady Jensen vs. Haunted Houses; Brambles, Pollen, and Other Natural Disasters; and Snowbound and Love Sick)
If we raise $5,000: A. L. Heard will write a campaign-exclusive Hockey Bois short story, and this will be sent to all campaign backers whose orders included the Hockey Bois book as an e-book, trade paperback, or hard cover!
Want to see us reach our stretch goals? You can help! Reblog, share, retoot, reskeet, or otherwise signal boost the posts below to help us spread the word about this campaign!
Campaign Updates
- Pre-Orders for Hockey Bois are Live! (12/1/2023)
- Hockey Bois Tropes, Pre-Orders Open Tomorrow! (11/30/2023)
- Interview with the Author A. L. Heard (11/29/2023)
- Get to Know the Hockey Bois (11/28/2023)
- Coming Soon: Hockey Bois Pre-Orders (11/27/2023)
Budget
Projected production costs, in USD, are based on estimated sales, and therefore production of 25 trade paperback books, 25 hard cover books, and associated merchandise.
Payment to the Author: $250
Book Production Costs: $1,338
Merchandise Production: $234
Shipping Materials: $153
Estimated Shipping to Buyers: $664
Processing Fees and Taxes: $147
TOTAL: $2,786
Production Timeline
The Hockey Bois manuscript is nearly completed at the time of this campaign launch, so it’ll be ready to print by the time this campaign ends on December 10th. Much of the merch is also already made. Thus, we don’t expect fulfillment to take very long, though it will be slowed because of manufacturing downtime over the holiday season. This timeline represents our best-case scenario for satisfying the pre-orders.
- Mid-December: all funds clear our bank account
- Mid-December: we finalize the manuscript for printing
- Mid-December: we order the print books and the magnets, which are the only merchandise that hasn’t already been made
- Late December: we review the proof copies of the book and make any necessary changes.
- Late January: all books and merchandise received.
- February: we fulfill your order!
If there are production delays, if we receive substandard items that need to be re-manufactured, or if other issues arise, fulfillment could take longer. Our worst-case scenario has fulfillment by June, 2024. We will communicate about our progress in fulfilling this campaign on the Duck Prints Press WordPress blog under the Hockey Bois tag.
About Duck Prints Press (and Why You Should Trust Us to Fulfill Your Pre-Order!)
Duck Prints Press LLC is an independent publisher based in New York, USA. We work with people who create fanworks—especially fanfiction authors and fanart artists—to publish their original work. We are particularly dedicated to publishing stories featuring characters from across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. You can read more about us here. This is the eighth crowdfunding campaign that our owner, Claire Houck, has run; all have been successful, and all but the two most recent have been completely fulfilled (for the novels Many Drops Make a Stream and To Drive the Hundred Miles, both of which are likely to be completed before the end of this campaign). If you’d like more information about our track record, you can read about it on the About Duck Prints Press page. We also encourage you to look at our past campaigns on Kickstarter and elsewhere.
We have an established track record of fulfilling our campaigns in a timely manner with the highest-quality print books and merchandise, and we’re thrilled to run this campaign through our own webpage for the first time!