Quoted from jwilson:

The industry wasn't a hundredth of the size it is now back then.

Quoted from xTheBlackKnightx:

I stand corrected based on the Expo announcement, but there is a puzzle to be solved.
I will still wait for Amazon, here is why.
It still makes absolutely no sense that Stern, a multi-million dollar pinball company, needs to partner with anyone using KickStarter to make a book.
KickStarter is not a needed service for a real book publisher or author. Santiago Ciuffo did not need KickStarter for his book and this is recent, not 20 years ago.
What this tells me is this is another market testing initiative to see if there is interest.
Just a sampling of over a hundred pinball, jukebox, and arcade books I have collected over the decades from all over the world, in dozens of languages. No KickStarts required.

Quoted from JoeDP:

Anyway, those are my thoughts. Interested to hear yours.

Quoted from Air_Pinball:

Your not donating, you're pre-ordering.
Amazing that no matter how many times you hit certain people over the head with the fact, the keep on spewing the charity/donation crap about Kickstarter.

Quoted from ZenTron:

What is fairly priced? Its $55 for a copy of the Pro book off the kickstarter.

Quoted from Air_Pinball:

If you think that's even remotely where the bulk of the money raised is.......I have some swamp land in Florida to sell you.

Quoted from spfxted:

I'll do it for $25K

Quoted from Billy16:

we sure were kept up to date before this funded fully...

Quoted from ImNotNorm:

Maybe Trudeau can start/finish the book from his prison cell.....

Quoted from Pinballlew:

How good are these books? Worth ordering?

Quoted from puck:

Thanks to whoever asked. We owe you a beer.

Quoted from hool10:

Is there anybody who can contact Zach Sharpe about this book?

Quoted from hool10:

Ok I got into contact with Joe Rubinstein last night. He told me that we are not conned, that there will be an update in the next few days, and that there was a couple of rewrites that were likely understandably out of their control. Paperflock is making good progress and getting the book done soon. Would have really liked to know about these delays or anything though rather than dead silence. Also Joe shipped out his completed cosplay Kickstarter to backers recently. So there is that.

Quoted from hool10:

Completely agree with these statements. Anybody who has waited for something media wise and especially video games knows this all too well. I'm still waiting for Half-Life 3, a video game that will likely never come out in my lifetime. In fact I'll give a quick story that is similar to how this KS has played out.
Half-Life 2 was announced back in '03 and the company had a big event on Ellis Island in fact. An entire issue of then popular PC Gamer Magazine really showed off the game and the E3 Expo. They showed demo's and really advertised it and said it was coming out later that year. Later a kid from Germany hacked the company and stole the game and leaked it onto the internet. The kid was caught by the FBI but the damage was done. It showed that the game was nowhere near complete and the game barely ran. The game ended up being released a year later and just like the first became a landmark in the gaming industry.
Moral of the story is you shouldn't lie to your fanbase or investors. Even worse is to leave them hanging and not even respond back making you think you have been conned. If you are going to delay it, delay it and that is completely understandable. Nobody wants to play a half baked game or coffee table book with lots of pretty pictures and not much else.

It's literally a leap of faith and trust you must give to a project as you are investors. Think of a Kickstarter pledge as buying stock in a new company on the stock market. You look at trends on the company you are buying stock in but say if it's Disney you just know you are going to make money on. What I really liked about the Pinball Magazine book Kickstarter was that it was basically done, the author is already known in the pinball industry, and no funds would have been taken unless it was successful. When it wasn't, no money was taken. I think the worst ones are the ones that take money even if the Kickstarter doesn't become successful as you are hoping they make the product but under limited funding. Your not even sure if it's possible to get whatever you backed or it's a product that is different than what you expected. GoFundMe we won't even go there.

Quoted from JoeDP:

No, we signed on a graphic designer as soon as the project funding was successful.
This graphic designer has become largely unavailable.
So as I said in the post "The other complication is we had to find a new graphic designer".
No money was lost on the switch between designers.
And we are now in a good place to finish the book in a very strong way.

Quoted from Wolfmarsh:

Can someone summarize?

Quoted from WJxxxx:

I'm not no one

Quoted from j_m_:

on this week in pinball, it was announced that todd tuckey is releasing not 1, but 10 pinball books, each 200+ pages.
https://www.pinballbuzz.com/product-category/regular-pinball-adventures/
anyone want to bet how many of this 10 book series make it to market before the stern kickstarter does? the first volume is due out in sep, the 2nd in dec

Quoted from j_m_:

step away from the kool-aid punchbowl backyardace
unless joe is planning on attending expo with thousands of dollars to refund backers, I think that he might be wise to avoid the show

Quoted from ImNotNorm:

Makes JoeDP and his ilk look like rank amateurs.

Quoted from PismoArcade:

It's not there. Did he have it taken down or does it take awhile for the post to show?
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paperflock/keeping-the-ball-alive-30-years-of-stern-pinball/comments

Quoted from Phat_Jay:

I hope joe is planning a vacation in Chicago in a few weeks.....

Quoted from MrBally:

Gary held the mic when I asked the question. He immediately referred the question to the guys at the table in front.

Quoted from Rondogg:

I wonder who paid for that banner?
[quoted image]

Quoted from j_m_:

did anyone stay for expo saturday evening, attend stern's seminar and ask about the status of the book? I'd be curious to know if they had anything to say (apologize, make excuses, shrug it off, etc...

Quoted from Backyardace:

Link didn’t work. It said I didn’t have access.

Quoted from KLR2014:

We are hoping to finish the layout this year!

Quoted from j_m_:

he was told by zach sharpe, the person that gave him the tour

Quoted from Pinballlew:

What are these pictures and where are you getting them?

Quoted from Travish:

It's about done alright....

Quoted from Spelunk71:

If we have to resort to public shaming, Stern’s TPF seminar in about a month could be a good opportunity.

Quoted from j_m_:

I like to think of it as a capstone level college course project that they've put off until the night before it was due.

Quoted from hool10:

Ok I have more questions than answers now but they are saying it will be a physical THING in my hands....by the end of this year.
1) There is "a dedicated fan volunteered their archive of thousands upon thousands of 35mm slides and negatives". Who the hell is this person that has this stuff? Also in previous updates it was stated that they were given access to Sterns cd archive. Did they use both archives? Or did they use only the cd archive and photograph games manually? They state "once we got going we learned the company had not documented their older games very well, and all those slides and negatives in the photo archive had been stored in a flooded basement and rendered unusable". Wonder what was on the slides and why some dedicated fan has confidential internal documents stored on slides. This is just like MAJOR to me.
2) On finding these games to photograph "Simply locating the machines was the first and very daunting challenge. Only 50 or fewer models were produced of some of these games, made decades ago and scattered to the wind!" Why didn't they reach out to Pinside or the community in general??? Why have they been so damn secretive on this project? I would imagine most collectors would want to be like "that is my Viper in the official 30 Years of Stern Pinball book". So instead they go to the PHOF where they put random crap in their games instead of a troll in "Roller Coaster Tycoon" and the game is full of coil dust, etc?
3) They state "An all-day, 10+ hour shoot might result in the proper documentation of 6-8 machines." Ok fair enough that makes sense! However this KS was funded nearly 3 years ago. I mean stuff happens but like holy crap! Que the vacation photos...
4) In the past they wanted to document 100 games but it looks like it's now 90. I think they researched how many games Stern made and finally settled on that number. Either way this makes me wonder how big this book will be. Is it like 90 pages at least of games?
5) Then he comes up with "As you probably know, most pinball books have maybe one or two photos of a machine, and most of those photos were not taken by book’s creator. And most books don’t begin to approach this many machines! Documenting this much pinball history is a first!" Like really dude? REALLLY? https://www.google.com/search?q=pinball+book&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS856US856&oq=pinball+book&aqs=chrome.0.0l3j69i60l3.1902j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
6) They do another slap in the face to backers by saying "In May you told us you would rather have the book be the best it can be, instead of just going to print the way it was." Oh you mean when you put a gun to backer heads for our valid complaints of how you mismanaged this whole KS then validating your "do it right or you get crap" poll? Ohh you thought a high quality project which was as I quote verbatim "We believed our job would largely entail scanning slides, cleaning up images in Photoshop, and uncovering long-lost company documents." So just scan, Photoshop, repeat. That isn't high quality because I can do that.
7) They say NFL, NBA, Sharkey's Shootout, Striker Xtreme, Lost in Space, Baywatch as the remaining games. I have never seen an NFL, only 1 NBA at Pinburgh, seen a few Lost in Space, a few Baywatch, a few Striker Xtreme and 1 Sharkey's Shootout. They then FINALLY ask the KS for help. Like why didn't they do this at least 2 years ago or when the KS funding period was active? Like why now at the tail end of the project?

Quoted from Billy16:

Maybe the book would get done faster if Joe only hired male interns...

Quoted from frolic:

I think we can count on some "ebay style" shipping charges to generate some positive cash flow.

Quoted from j_m_:

I wonder how many of them will end up on ebay?

Quoted from ChrisBardon:

Has anyone tried to get a CC or paypal refund on the kickstarter charge?

Quoted from frolic:

I did a little bit of reading to see how they positioned themselves at the start of this. This quote cracked me up:

Their kickstarter also said a run of 1000 books, but now they're saying "500 and we're out of here".

Quoted from Max_Badazz:

Google maps says he's mailing these from a field LOL

[quoted image][quoted image]

Quoted from hool10:

That isn't where it was shipped. It could be an old photo (likely) that Google has and other stuff that I won't put on Pinside. Rent is not cheap in Los Angeles!

Quoted from The_Blues:

Wow! Didn‘t know that he made a camera! Interesting.

Quoted from mtn-:

Or you could perhaps use them for a Prince Albert.