Friday, June 04, 2010

Kickstarter

Well, my kickstarter campaign has ended. I finished with almost $3,000 raised of the $5,500 I needed. And while technically it was a failure, I learned some valuable things. If any of you are thinking of starting your own kickstarter campaign (and it can be used for more than just publishing books), here are a few lessons learned.
  • You've got a have a good pitch. I think the video I put together really helped. I was overwhelmed by how many of my friends and family donated to the project, but I was also amazed at how many total strangers donated money, just based on the video and my pitch. You can't just throw up a page that says, "Hey, I need money."
  • You have to be fearless when it comes to marketing. Network, network, network. This is where I fell short. I posted the link to Facebook a few times. I posted here, and on Twitter. Every time I did I'd see more people donate. But I didn't want to turn into one of those blogs or Twitter feeds that is just pestering people to donate. I've never been a good marketer, and this time was no exception. I should have been passing out cards, and telling everybody I knew...but I didn't.
  • Kickstarter works. I've seen a lot of projects get funded, some incredibly so. This one asked for $10,000 and got over $200,000. I'm convinced that Kickstarter and other similar sites provide a new model that decentralizes the whole grant process. And that is a good thing.

I'm glad I started the project. I heard from many people telling me they enjoyed the first chapters. It's motivated me to redouble my agent/publisher hunting and try once again to get this book published.

Thanks to all of you who supported.

2 comments:

Chuck said...

What about just self-publishing it for print-on-demand (lulu) or something. You know that at least the people who pledged on kickstarter would go buy it there. You should be able to deduce that your audience or customers would be at least that group. I know it's not as sexy as seeing your book on the shelf at the big-box bookstore on the corner, but at least my kids would stop hounding me about waiting for the next installment/rewrite of The Super-Trio. ;-) Yes, you discover at the end that my motives are completely selfish, and that I just want you to hurry up an publish the damn thing. I've been exposed.

Marion Jensen said...

I've considered LuLu, and may do that once I get the e-book version up.

Right now I'm having a crack writers group pour over every page, and I'm getting it as polished as I can. Then it's going onto every e-book reader I can find, and probably LuLu.

Tell your kids I'm a slow and lazy author, and if they ever want to amount to anything, they shouldn't be like me. :)