Firstly I'm wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction for information about companies that can create/produce physical collector's edition of a game. The thing is, we think it would be extremely fun to have a physical collector's edition of the game we have set a up a plan for to put up on kickstarter towards the summer.
You know, pledge 15$ for a digital copy of the game or pledge 60$ for a physical collector's edition with a cloth map of the world and some other cool stuff etc etc.

It is just a fun idea that people who catches a big interest in the game would enjoy. But do you guys think it is even a realistic goal to aim for, or would it just be a headache to try and include? ...And if the game didn't catch that much popularity in the kickstarter phase, would it also be a big waste if only a few couple of people wanted it?

Thanks!

Just be aware of the cost of sending out physical rewards to backers worldwide. If you are located in the US and have to send it to an US backer this will most probably not kill you...

But now, if you have to send rewards to China, Russia, different EU countries, greenland.... the moon.... You know, things will get expensive and complicated fast.... thus you should factor in a big overhead cost for your physical reward tier. If the cost to produce the stuff is 10$ per copy, you most probably also want to calculate in a 30$ or so average cost for sending out the reward (just guessing here, actual average postal cost could be way higher depending on where most of your backers live), BEFORE you add the pledge you want from the backer...

Thus personally, I'd be careful with handing out physical rewards for a reward tier below 100$.... make sure to check the cost for sending stuff to the most expensive, most remote location you can think of before fixing the pledge cost.

Most Kickstarter postmortems talk about how the underestimated the cost, time and logistic needed for physical rewards.

Non game related, but for example, Order of the Stick Kickstarter, it had a bunch of physical rewards (books, posters, calendars, short stories, drawings, etc). The guy spent I think almost two years ironing out everything. Things like shipping companies or dealing with the mismatches between what he requested and what companies delivered (wrong size in the designs, packages, mismatches in color, fonts, etc).

So, read about it. A lot.

Thanks a lot for the responses! It seems as it is too big of a headache to try and include. We're only 2 people working on the game, and putting a great portion of our time into just investigating the possibility of physical Kickstarter editions will probably be a poor decision.