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Message: <blockquote data-quote="3catcircus" data-source="post: 7656074" data-attributes="member: 16077">So then it sounds like they are trying to use the kickstarter for one project to fund the overhead for their entire company?  How are other products/projects that they claim are using their technology faring?  I'll reiterate that their website simply states "coming soon" with no additional links to other products, company officer information, other companies/partners using their technology etc.  Meanwhile, their trapdoor books website is offering a grand total of 6 titles.I'm guessing that they bet the farm on this stupid morningstar thing and are now so far in debt that they can't afford to pay residuals to their grand total of 6 authors - and we don't know how well trapdoor books was doing to begin with - I mean - their own website indicates that they used a kickstarter to fund publication of an author's (Norman Lafave) book...  Think about that for a second.  A publisher.  Whose job it is to publish.  Doesn't have the funding to publish.  And that, they barely managed to scrape by - funding to the tune of 105% with 64 backers.  And the best part - the quote "...it was an heroic effort in the last hours by Norman.  More than a few frantic phone calls later, some big donors pushed us over the top."  So - the author had to do most of the heavy lifting to get his own title published using these guys...  I wonder how many people are really going to buy this book when only 64 people backed it?  Wouldn't it be easier, as an author, to self-publish and throw it out there on Amazon, RPGNow or Lulu?Doing some more reading on their website - it appears Trapdoor's biggest "innovation" is having advertising embedded in their ebooks that readers can shut off by paying for the book.  Not innovative, and certainly is not going to be keeping their operation afloat for $4.99 per copy.What I've not yet been able to suss out is whether or not all of their authors also happen to be company employees.  That would be interesting to find out.The more and more I investigate, the more shady their whole operation feels to me.</blockquote>

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