Tobias Buckell’s “How I used Kickstarter to reboot a book series, and my career (and maybe my life?)” is a fantastic, detailed postmortem on
his experiment with continuing his commercially flagging science fiction
series by raising money directly from his fans on Kickstarter. As
always, the most important part is the mistakes made/lessons learned:
I launched the project at noon. Because I was writing and fixing things
that morning. So I set it to go live. Rookie. That meant I missed four
hours of first day, the biggest day, of word-of-mouth and fundraising.
The momentum was slow from day one. People love piling onto a winning
project. Mine did not come out the gate strong for The Apocalypse Ocean.
Next time, I set it to go live at 7am.
I set the eBook price too high. $25. It worked, because fans backed the
project and jumped aboard. I think I could risk focusing harder on a $10
eBook. Then maybe a $25 trade paper, and then move up.
While I got backers their eBooks as fast as I could, roughly by the
deadline, I vastly underestimated how long the project management of
creating a print book would take. Physical copies had to be mailed
around. Proofed. Schedules had to be lined up. It was all… fiddly. I
thought August/September I would have books delivered. Instead, it ended
up being early December.
This is a must-read for anyone contemplating a similar audience-funded artistic project. Here’s the book, which, knowing Toby’s work, is bound to be excellent.
Other tips for getting a crowdfunding project off the ground:
* Prime your audience before you send the project live. Let them know it’s coming, and when to expect it, ahead of time.
* Do you already have fans? Whether they’re your nearest and dearest, or previous readers, or a Tumblr following, get your most devoted fans lined up to donate IMMEDIATELY after the project goes live. You might even set the project live the day before you announce it and send them an advance link so they can contribute early. People do like backing a winning deal, and seeing on the first day that people have already thrown in will get you more interest.
* DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE the power of sharing. Even if people don’t want to contribute, they may be willing to share. Encourage them to share as widely and in any direction as they want.
* In the section where you tell people how long it will take, give yourself loads of extra time. Don’t be ambitious with this. Better to get things in ahead of your deadline than to have to apologize for it taking longer than you expected.
* If you can, try to line up some press for your project. Do you have some material already written or designed? Do you have any previous readers or fans who run a blog or like to review books? Anybody you can convince to do an advance review? It’s worth trying. And if you can’t line anyone up ahead of time, keep working on it throughout the project.
* Post updates frequently during the crowdfunder and after, letting people know how things are going, thanking them, and sharing any good news or support you get.
