Let me say this right up front: I haven’t run a Kickstarter myself. I have, however, been an integral part of nine successful crowdfunded anthologies, as an anchor author or a stretch goal author, and also as part of the marketing strategy team, so I’ve been around this block a few times. I’ve also seen crowdfunded campaigns by other authors and other publishers that met varying degrees of success (or not). So if you’re considering using Kickstarter for your next publishing project, I can supply some tips from what I’ve experienced and observed.
Kickstarter is a way to take some of the risk out of publishing a book or anthology. It enables you to gauge interest, to collect money in advance in order to produce the book, and to start off with enough pre-orders to make creation of the book viable. The traditional publishing model requires the publisher to guess what will attract readers, shoulder the risk of producing the book, and then try to sell it to recoup production costs and eventually make a profit for the publisher and author. Many times, the traditional model doesn’t end up breaking even for a variety of reasons. A successful crowdfunding campaign assures you that—assuming you have correctly calculated your production and shipping expenses (a big ‘if’)—you’ll cover your costs, perhaps even make enough for extra enhancements.
Thanks to technology, it’s now possible to put out an ebook and a print-on-demand (POD) book that equal the quality of books produced by traditional publishers. The hurdle has always been coming up with production costs and bearing the risk of publishing ‘on spec’ and hoping that if you publish it, they (readers) will come. By reducing that risk, crowdfunding makes it possible for small presses to produce books that meet the interests of relatively small audiences without losing money. That’s important in a time when traditional publishers focus more and more on potential bestsellers that reach mass audiences, at the risk of niche books that might be very well written or have an important message, but will never top the New York Times list.
I’ve seen a lot of successful Kickstarter projects for anthologies, and also for continuations of series dropped by publishers but popular with fans. With both anthologies and dropped series, Kickstarter enables authors to reach the core audience and not lose money, even with projects that might not have a huge enough fan base to make the kinds of margins bigger publishers want to see. That’s a win for readers, because it assures more diversity in the kinds of books available. Remember, a Kickstarter campaign gets a book published. After that, it can remain in print indefinitely thanks to ebooks and POD.
One key to a successful project is having a clear theme, preferably a theme with a niche audience that feels underserved by the current books available. Athena’s Daughters, an anthology from Silence in the Library Publishing, became the most successful Kickstarter literary project to that point. It hit a nerve with its focus on capable female characters written by women authors. Heroes, another Silence in the Library successful Kickstarter anthology, offered stories about superheroes who weren’t your usual spandex studs, showcasing a variety of ages and levels of ability. The closer an anthology is to something you can find elsewhere, the less enthusiastic the backers. That’s important to note, because I’ve been in some anthologies that funded successfully but not by a huge margin, even with top-tier authors. The trick is to find a niche that is underserved, but has appeal outside of its core audience. So with Athena’s Daughters, we didn’t just get female backers. We got fathers who wanted stories about strong role models for their daughters and men who value courageous women.
That’s important, because a significant percentage of backers come from outside the audience you bring with you to the project. These new backers find you if your project gets designated a “Staff Pick” or makes the “New and Noteworthy”, “What’s Popular” or “Project of the Day”. Visibility means your project reaches people who aren’t already on your email list or in your social media network. Reaching those people is important to funding your project, and essential if you want to super-fund.
Take time to study what other successful campaigns have done, and what unsuccessful projects have in common. Borrow the best practices and make sure you don’t repeat the mistakes. Here are a five key elements.
- Have a theme that stands out and appeals to a core audience.
- Make it very clear what your project wants to create and why anyone should care.
- Create enticing stretch goals and reward levels to encourage backers to fund the project and nudge them to fund at higher levels
- Make it fun and entertaining—create and sustain a level of excitement and constant motion
- Have a plan in place to promote your project on social media and make sure you have a core group that will heavily post/tweet/talk up the project.
One of the reasons anthologies work so well is that instead of one person relying on his/her own social network, you’ve got twenty or more authors reaching out to their networks. Understand that not everyone who is your friend or follower or who has liked your page will see every post (organic reach is about 1-2%), so be prepared to flog the program A LOT on social media. You can find entertaining ways to do this, with funny memes, mini-contests, excerpts, author interviews, pre-funding stretch goals, heavy promotion of stretch goals that are close to being met and celebrating milestones just past, etc. But you’ve got to have buy-in from all the authors to promote and reach out to their connections among bloggers, reviewers and social media sites or the effort won’t get traction.
Stretch goals and reward levels are also important. Stretch goals celebrate funding milestones after the base funding is achieved (and sometimes, are inducements to reach that base level) by adding extra authors to the anthology, extra stories, and other bonus goodies. Reward levels get backers to go beyond the minimum contribution in order to get extras like Tuckerizations or the ability to write the dedication.
There’s too much to say for just one blog post! Kickstarter is a viable way to bring publishing projects with a strong core audience to market and do it in a way that is fun for readers, can be profitable for authors and reduces risk for publishers. It’s a win-win-win!
My Days of the Dead blog tour runs through October 31 with never-before-seen cover art, brand new excerpts from upcoming books and recent short stories, interviews, guest blog posts, giveaways and more! Plus, I’ll be including extra excerpt links for my stories and for books by author friends of mine. You’ve got to visit the participating sites to get the goodies, just like Trick or Treat! Details here: www.AscendantKingdoms.com
Book swag is the new Trick-or-Treat! Grab your envelope of book swag awesomeness from me & 10 authors http://on.fb.me/1h4rIIe before 11/1!
Trick or Treat! Excerpt from my new urban fantasy novel Vendetta set in my Deadly Curiosities world here http://bit.ly/1ZXCPVS Launches Dec. 29
More Treats! Here’s an excerpt from Iron & Blood http://bit.ly/1GAvGOc
Treats not Tricks! An excerpt from my story The Breaking Point in the Heroes anthology http://bit.ly/1xiiQB4
Spooktacular scares! Read an excerpt from Retribution, my story in the Athena’s Daughters anthology http://w.tt/1sipN0O
Trick Or Treat excerpt from Tales From A Goth Librarian http://www.darkoakpress.com/goth2.html
Halloween excerpt from Tales From The Mare Inebrium http://www.darkoakpress.com/mare.html
About the Author
Gail Z. Martin is the author of the upcoming novel Vendetta: A Deadly Curiosities Novel in her urban fantasy series set in Charleston, SC (Dec. 2015, Solaris Books) as well as the epic fantasy novel Shadow and Flame (March, 2016 Orbit Books) which is the fourth and final book in the Ascendant Kingdoms Saga. Shadowed Path, an anthology of Jonmarc Vahanian short stories set in the world of The Summoner, debuts from Solaris books in June, 2016.
Other books include The Jake Desmet Adventures a new Steampunk series (Solaris Books) co-authored with Larry N. Martin as well as Ice Forged, Reign of Ash and War of Shadows in The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga, The Chronicles of The Necromancer series (The Summoner, The Blood King, Dark Haven, Dark Lady’s Chosen) from Solaris Books and The Fallen Kings Cycle (The Sworn, The Dread) from Orbit Books and the urban fantasy novel Deadly Curiosities from Solaris Books.
Gail writes four series of ebook short stories: The Jonmarc Vahanian Adventures, The Deadly Curiosities Adventures, The King’s Convicts series, and together with Larry N. Martin, The Storm and Fury Adventures. Her work has appeared in over 20 US/UK anthologies. Newest anthologies include: The Big Bad 2, Athena’s Daughters, Realms of Imagination, Heroes, With Great Power, and (co-authored with Larry N. Martin) Space, Contact Light, The Weird Wild West, The Side of Good/The Side of Evil, Alien Artifacts, Clockwork Universe: Steampunk vs. Aliens.
