New Sherlock Holmes breaks records on Kickstarter with 3 days to go

There's so much to update you all on the new Sherlock Holmes collection I hardly know where to start - but I'll try and keep it brief. 

Firstly, the Kickstarter campaign has been wonderfully successful with over 250 backers raising over ￡12,000 which is 600% of the original target and now above our main target of ￡10k. Fans can get hardback sets about 30% cheaper than they will retail at in October which is the most popular perk chosen. There's 3 days to go so still time to get your order in. These first editions will be extremely sought after. Pre-ordering on Amazon UK has been strong with all three volumes topping the Holmes bestseller list in the past month.

We're pleased to announce that the editor, David Marcum, who has lived and breathed the project for a staggering 7 months, will join us for the launch on October 1st - traveling over from the USA. He'll be joining Stepping Stones (the school restoring Undershaw and turning it into a school) the Conan Doyle family, BBC Sherlock, The Baker Street Babes, several Sherlockian societies and many of the authors from the anthology. The venue is the 35th floor of Heron Tower. This is the view.

We haven't heard from Guinness World Records yet, but the new collection is certainly a new unofficial world record for the largest collection of new Sherlock Holmes stories ever created. The collection has grown to:

• 63 stories all from different authors, from a more than a dozen countries
• All the stories are brand new, and traditional in nature. They had to be set within the timeframe of the originals, feature the original characters and traditional style
• At over 1,200 pages the collection is spread across three volumes of 400+ pages each - they are split chronologically by the year in which they are set
• The Conan Doyle Estate has donated royalty free their seal for the entire collection.
• All the royalties from the collection go to restoration projects at Undershaw with Stepping Stones school

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Jay Ganguly from the Sherlock Holmes Society of India yesterday. Jay contributed a story to the collection and was over to see Hamlet with Benedict Cumberbatch. Watch out for that interview in a few days time. Jay shared the excitement that most societies have fed back about the collection,. It features some of the leading Sherlock Holmes writers in the world and is a project we won't see the like of again. To get 63 authors to share existing stories is one thing [there is a brilliant new such collection coming from Otto Penzler this autumn] but to get new material written specifically for a collection of this scale is unheard of.

It has been the excitement around the restoration of Undershaw that has done it and we can't wait to see the presentation from Stepping Stones school on the 1st October. We'll be announcing shortly a compeition for Sherlock Holmes fans worldwide to join us here at Heron Tower for the event - there will be ten fan tickets available. In the meantime - 3 days to go - please do share to help us finish on a high - Sherlock Collection on Kickstarter.

By day Steve Emecz works for Powa Technologies and at the weekend runs MX Publishing, the world's largest independent publishers of Sherlock Holmes books. You can follow his Sherlock Holmes specific blog on mxpublishing.tumblr.