While much of crowdfunding has collapsed due to the economy in 2025, there is one star in books rising above the tends as Joe Abercrombie has crossed $2 million on his Kickstarter for The First Law with three days left to go.
Joe Abercrombie is a British fantasy author from Lancaster, England, and a former freelance film editor whose debut novel, The Blade Itself, launched The First Law trilogy in 2006 and quickly established him as a major voice in modern fantasy. He has since expanded that world with stand-alone novels such as Best Served Cold, The Heroes, and Red Country, as well as the Age of Madness trilogy and the YA Shattered Sea books, including the Locus Award–winning Half a King. Abercrombie is important to contemporary fantasy for helping define the “grimdark” mode, melding sharp, cinematic prose, pitch-black humor, and morally compromised characters to interrogate and subvert high fantasy’s heroic myths while remaining compulsively readable and commercially successful.
The First Law is a gritty, character-driven epic fantasy trilogy that follows a barbarian, a crippled torturer, and an arrogant noble as their fates intertwine against the backdrop of war, political intrigue, and sorcerous power in a decaying empire. The books methodically dismantle traditional heroic fantasy tropes, replacing destined saviors and clear-cut morality with flawed, often brutal people whose rare flashes of decency rarely change the ruthless systems that control them.
The series has had tremendous commercial success over the years, making Abercrombie into a staple for modern fantasy readers.
Now, his trilogy has comet to Kickstarter, and the campaign has made over $2 million for deluxe editions of the books, helped by a $200 tier to get the trilogy signed by Abercrombie. The campaign has been backed by over 9,000 people as of this writing.
The campaign is described as:
We’re thrilled (and slightly terrified) to announce Lit Escalates’ first-ever Special Edition: a lavish, art-soaked hardcover release of Joe Abercrombie’s First Law Trilogy, signed and personalized by Lord Grimdark himself. What began as a sweet (ok, naïve) dream—to give readers the rare chance to own signed and personalized copies of Abercrombie’s savage masterpiece—quickly turned into a logistical bloodbath when we realized U.S. hardcovers of the First Law were as extinct as mercy in the savage North.
So, naturally, we did what any sane people would do: we decided to make our own. We sharpened our quills, called in a few favors from the dark gods of publishing, and teamed up with Orbit to create our very own editions. But here’s the rub: we need to print at least 2,000 copies of each book to bring this glorious vision to life. And while we may not have Logen Ninefingers’ stamina, Joe has valiantly agreed to sign AND personalize 6,000 bookplates as well as sign 12,000 more... a Herculean act of endurance that definitely deserves a stiff drink.
You’ll be able to choose your flavor of Grimdark: unsigned, signed, or signed and personalized—while supplies last, of course. Each book will arrive dressed to kill in blood-red covers with gold foil, wrapped in illustrated dust jackets by Joel Daniel Phillips, and stuffed with lush endpapers so you can properly lose yourself in the vastness of the Circle Sea.
In the grim and glorious world of Joe Abercrombie it is forbidden to touch the other side… However, you CAN touch these.
Many authors are launching premium editons of their works after seeing the success Brandon Sanderson had several years back with his Secret Projects Kickstarter that broke records for the fantasy author and propelled him into new stardom.
While Abercrombie is not likely to break Sanderson’s record, getting a cool $2 million plus for books he’s had out for years is certainly going to make the author pleased.
What do you think about these premium editions?
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I remember liking the first law trilogy despite it being so dark, it had two things going for it over Song of Ice and Fire: it had a little hole in it and it was actually completed. Haven’t read anything else by him, however.