Match It For Pratchett

Our Friends Electric Digital

Its been a few days since I gave a big wave to all the people who have linked to us and supported us. Out biggest friend is StumbleUpon so huge thank you to users of that service who have clicked on our link. Next up are Neil Gaiman and Nielsen Hayden. Both these blogs have sent us a mountain of traffic which in turn has helped raise thousands of dollars.

Live Journal is the birth place of Match It For Pratchett and hundreds LJ users have linked to us but a special mention must go to George R.R. Martin. He has sent us over 500 visitors. Thank you George.

Of course size isn't everything. The whole point of Match It To Pratchett is that we don't have £500,000 each but 500,000 of us each have £1. So I would like to thank all the blogs who sent us just a few readers. Like Mad Hatter Muses, Magic For Beginners, Lynn Gardner and Faery Scrapper.

Wear the Lilac, $100 so far

On her LJ Discworld community, auronsgirl reports

In just a little over a week, sales of lilac pins for Alzheimer's have reached and exceeded my inital donation goal of $100.00!

Remember, on May 25th, wear the lilac to celebrate the Discworld books and raise money for Alzheimer's research.

Look Out! Robots!

Nothing to do with Match It For Pratchett but I thought this might provide some light entertainment.

They are all there... 51 different robots from film, television, books, toys and one even from a famous classic rock album. Can you figure out all 51? Do you even know who Konky was?

Its from the T-Shirt store, Chop Shop and its called We Robot.

Aten't dead yet

On her LJ account, Pat has posted some donation news and has some things to say about Match It For Pratchett:

And yes, I know: Terry "aten't dead yet." That's the whole point.

Here's my thing (to phrase a coin):

Memorials are nice. They're OK. They're the mark of civilization, of an intelligence great enough to conceive of something beyond itself, to live beyond the five senses. But frankly, I prefer to help people while they're still around to benefit.

Read the complete post: Match It For Pratchett in Action

EDIT: Link fixed and now points to the correct post. (Thanks Jem)

Spend Money For Charity

Online comic strips Narbonic and Skin Horse are selling off original artwork at $25 a strip. All proceeds to The Alzheimer's Research Trust. Thanks to From Rim To Hub for the tip-off.

Alternatively you can spend your money on a variety of auctions including proof editions of Good Omens and Only You Can Save Mankind, as well as various George R. R. Martin books. All proceeds going toAlzheimer's Association. Full details of the auctions here.

Money & Match It For Pratchett

The amount of money the campaign has taken through the Donation Jar has been staggering. The jar itself was just an after-thought, quickly added to the web site when I saw Typepad made it very easy it set one up. I only ever expected it to be a connivence for those who had Paypal accounts and for it to collect a small amount of money. In some ways this is true, much much more money has gone straight to the charity. However several thousand dollars in my Paypal account is more than I expected to handle and this has been worrying me.

To the rescue comes Rebecca, CEO of the Alzheimer's Research Trust. We had a good chat yesterday and the Trust is in the process of setting up its own Paypal account. Once its up and running, I will switch the Donation Jar so that it pays direct into their account instead of mine. All the money collected so far will also be transfered over. Because of the bank holiday and the hoops the charity needs to go through to set up their Paypal account this is not going to happen until next week. In the meantime I will continue to give regular updates and list each and every donation on the Detailed Accounts page.

The money from the T-Shirt's will still flow into my account and be forwarded on to the charity at regular intervals. However I will be updating the site slightly to make it clear how much of each shirt goes to the charity. (Its $10 per shirt).

Rebecca has promised to keep us informed of how much has been raised and she sends her thanks to everyone who has donated, posted on their blog about the campaign or simply told a friend about it. The response of Terry's fans around the world has been fantastic.

$35 Dollars an Hour

In the six days this site has been running, we have raised an average of $35 per hour via the Donation Jar and T-Shirt sales with lots more given directly to the Alzheimer's charities. As an hour of Alzheimer's research costs $25, for every hour Match It For Pratchett has existed, its funded at least one and a half hours of research. This is purely down to everyone's generosity, in money, in time and effort spent spreading the word. Thank you.

Summary of Accounts as of 21/3/2008 at 10:39

Donations via MatchItForPratchett.org: $4504

T-Shirt sales (Completed and Pending): $845.01

Costs (Paypal Charges): $-203.58

Total Raised via MatchItForPratchett.org: $5145.43

Full details on the Money & Accounts page.

Thank Goodness For Google

We are seeing a slow down in traffic arriving at the site. This is only to be expected as the freshness of the campaign wears off and we head into the long Easter Weekend. But it is clear that the idea of Match It For Pratchett has entered the internet consciousness. Hundreds of visitors have arrived here after searching on "Match It For Pratchett" in Google*. We also have been picking up traffic from the wonderful bloggers like Jemjabella and grrlScientist who continue to link to us.

*If, like me, you are fascinated by search engines and all things internet, the fact that Yahoo has supplied less then 10% the number of visitors of Google may be of interest. The first visitor from Google was at 11.41 PM on the 15th. Not bad as the site only 2.34 PM the same day.

Wear The Lilac - May 25th

It is a tribute to the Terry Pratchett's writing skills and his friendly attitude to fans that he has inspired not only Match It For Pratchet but a second campaigns to raise money Alzheimer's.

In Nightwatch, the men who fought and died (and in one case, fought, died and kept on fighting) in the Revolution are remembered by the wearing of sprigs of lilac every May 25th. The online Pratchett communities have adopted May 25th as Wear The Lilac day, an unofficial holiday celebrating Pratchett's work. Now AG has taken it one step further with these fantastic Lilac Pins with the proceeds split between the American Alzheimer's Association and the Alzheimer's Research Trust.

From AG's website:

These lilac pins are made from life-size silk blooms and tied with a black velvet ribbon. The large size blooms are approximately the size of a lady's corsage spray, and the smaller blooms are the size of a gentleman's buttonhole/boutonniere.

More details on Wear the Lilac for Alzheimer's

We think that Wear The Lilac is a great idea to show your support of both Terry Pratchett and to raise money for Alzheimer's research. Here at Match It For Pratchett we have ideas to support Wear The Lilac with special Icons for download and possibly T-shirts. |f you have ideas or ways of supporting Wear The Lilac day, please let us know via the comments.

Buy Books

Dan Blum writes

I've just listed two items on eBay with 100% of the proceeds going to the US Alzheimer's Association: The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox (signed limited edition) and The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox (book club edition). Obviously Pratchett items would be better but I have nothing in that line of value except my own copy of Once More* With Footnotes (unlike some people I only have the one :)), and the Noreascon shirt, which I can't find. If I can find the shirt I will auction that. In the meantime I figured other humorous fantasy works would do well enough. The signed edition of this is highly collectible (less so when reprinted in October, to be sure), and even the book club version can go for $100 or more these days. I will probably put more items up soon, such as Lankhmar hardcovers.

I've not read the book (its a collection of Bridge of Bird, The Story of the Stone and Eight Skilled Gentlemen) but my partner has, and has reread it, and reread it again. So buy these books. The money is going to a good cause and someone you don't know thinks they are good enough to warrant repeated reading.

Details of all the charity auction and fund raising events happening are on the aptly named Charity Auctions & Fund Raising Events page. If you are thinking of auctioning something for charity then read this:

I've been a full-time seller for 8 years now, and am pretty much used to navigating the myriad rules on eBay. So if anyone else auctioning anything for Alzheimer's would like me to cast an eye over their listing for anything that might get the listing removed, I'll be happy to do so. Just drop me an email - sue -at- tamebay -dot- com.

Sue's blog, Tamebay, was one of the first non-LJ places to cover Match It For Pratchett. Sky's problems with its auction show how easy it is to get things wrong so please take advantage of Sue's offer. The Luggage's current bid is £2,550.