In the short term, we're getting down to the nitty gritty of the Nerdist contest. There's only 11-ish days left and Ghosts of War still has a long way to go to make the Top 5.  Here's where we stand right now:

• Ghosts is currently in 15th place (out of 323 entries!) which is all kinds of awesome in and of itself.
  
• It has sold 196 copies to 125 unique readers, which (as of this update) puts it around 168 readers out of the Top 5.
• That sounds like a lot...and well...it is, but it's not an impossible goal, not by a long shot.
• Positions 3 to 8 are separated by only 36 people, meaning that if we can get Ghosts up into that conversation, it's in with a shot at one of those final 3 places.
• At the moment Ghosts has 254 followers, meaning there are 129 of you that are yet to preorder a copy. 
• If we could get all 254 of you on board, Ghosts would be solidly in 9th place and in close proximity to the cluster of positions 3 through 8.
• From there it's just a matter of bringing in more people, even now without the extra 129, if each follower was able to get just one more person, we'd be knocking on the door of that cluster. If everyone was on board and did that, we might even be in a position to win this thing.

What's important right now is getting as many unique readers as possible by the September 30th deadline, and I know I can't force the other 129 people to buy a copy, and I don't want to force you. If you're following along, you've obviously had some amount of interest in the project and I hope that it's enough for you to place an order. If you can't do it before the end of September that's okay, not placing in the Top 5 of the Nerdist comp is by no means the end of the road, because...

As I said above Ghosts of War is currently sitting at 196 copies ordered, which means it's as good as 1/5 of the way to it's print goal. Even better than that, it's 1/4 of the way to it's ebook goal of 750 copies. In a little over a month Ghosts has nearly doubled it's reader base from the Sword & Laser contest (even without getting over half of it's prior backers back), and has well surpassed the total sales from it as well. So here's the plan going forward:

• The current funding period has 92 days remaining, which should be plenty of time to at least hit the ebook goal.
• I know it's probably not a reasonable expectation, but if we can get a 100% conversion rate on followers to readers (and them buying at least 1 copy), then as of this update, Ghosts would be sitting around 320-ish copies sold.
• Every sale helps push Ghosts into a more visible position on the Inkshares website. More exposure means more sales and more sales means a better chance of publication.
• I truly believe that we have the people power here to get this done by Christmas, you've all gotten me this far and for that I'm eternally grateful.

Beyond that, there are other avenues to get this to you. I plan on doing a self published version of the book sometime towards the end of the year and I'm keeping a record of all of you so if that ends up being the only way to get it, I'll make sure you can all still get one.

The end of the Nerdist comp isn't the end of Ghosts of War, this train is only just getting started.

All aboard...