If you’re an independent writer, doing things on your own, the two biggest impediments to creating and publishing your work are time and money. No, I’m not reproducing the track listing of a Pink Floyd album, though the indiepub/tradpub battle is truly a tale of us and them, while trying to publish independently can make you feel like you have brain damage, but that’s neither here nor there. Look at me, my mind is on the run. I need to slow down and breathe before I take this stupid joke any further.
Crowdfunding, and what author
more broadly calls neopatronage, has helped to provide the money for independent creators to ply their wares. Not only can it provide the necessary funding for things like editing, artwork, formatting, and shipping,1 it also provides the knowledge that there is an audience for your work. Imagine actually having real-time feedback, being able to determine exactly how many people are willing to give you money in exchange for your book. It’s great and it has helped get many projects off the ground. Including three of mine. And that’s what we’re talking about today—me!—because as we all know, the Internet is good for three things,2 in no particular order:Bitching about something;3
Telling people what to do; and
Talking about oneself.
This is a post-mortem of my experience crowdfunding. The body has been in cold storage for over a year, but I am yet to dissect it. If you’re a writer who is debating whether or not to crowdfund your work, here’s the bottom line up front: Yes, you should. Especially if you want to get your work professionally edited, and have excellent artwork, without breaking the bank account. However, there are some things to keep in mind that I’d like to point out before you make the decision.
For the record, and because it doesn’t warrant its own separate section, I used Kickstarter. The platform worked just fine for me. I used it to fund three books: Dreamers & Misfits, Pulp Rock, and The Final Home. All three books were successfully funded and raised more than required. No, that’s not a humblebrag, it’s an actual brag. Anyway, this sounds like a resounding success, and it was, but as with everything, there are a few things I only learned from experience. If you’re like me and jump into things without doing copious amounts of research and just figure it out as you go, this post isn’t for you. If you’re not like me and prefer to be forewarned, read on.
Get Used to Deadlines
I announced Dreamers & Misfits basically on a whim. I had the introduction written, and had tons of ideas, and so with this paucity of material, I naturally launched a crowdfunding campaign. Pulp Rock was a little better—I had talked to a few writers and gotten them onboard, but I had only written a few paragraphs of my own contribution to the anthology. At least with The Final Home, the book was written before I launched the campaign.
I actually found the deadlines spurred my creativity. They forced me to hunker down and get writing, get researching, and get the more administrative aspects taken care of. But at some point, the pressure got to be a bit much. This is supposed to be fun, but when people send you money and expect an actual product, you have to produce and you have to deliver. In my case, my self-imposed deadlines began way too optimistic. Far better, I learned, to set a deadline far out and then deliver before instead of pushing them back. However, if deadlines are to be missed, communicate with your backers.
Communicate with Your Backers
Regular updates are key. People get angry when they think their money is going into a black hole. One of the best ways to prove that this is not the case is to not just respond to inquiries from backers, but to post progress reports, pictures of what you’re doing, artwork, or excerpts of your book as previews. Even if nothing is going on, it takes a minimal amount of time and effort to post an update letting backers know that things are tough in life, or slow, but here’s where you are, and here’s what to expect. Transparency goes a long way.
Deliver to Build a Reputation
This sounds simple, but it’s hard. You might launch a campaign and lament that you aren’t getting the interest you hoped for. Remember: this is because you’re an unknown, unproven commodity. When I launched, I had three books published already and had an online presence, which helped. But it didn’t help as much as I hoped. My first two projects exceeded my goals, but not by much. Once I got those completed and shipped, my third project raised almost four times what I was asking for. I chalk this success up to having built a reputation for results, and the somewhat vain assumption that my writing is good enough for people to want to pay money for. Don’t despair! We all have to start somewhere.
Success Will Create More Work
For The Final Home, I had multiple stretch goals that I didn’t have on my previous projects, where all I wanted was killer artwork. While I didn’t expect The Final Home to hit all of them, I actually hit all of them except the final one. And I’m glad, because the goals I did hit created enough extra work for me, and the last goal would’ve been more work than all of the others combined.
It’s great to provide stretch goals, because it gives people an incentive to keep backing. If you just need, say, $1,000, and you get there, then the project is funded and potential backers will see that and figure they’ll just buy the book when it’s published. With stretch goals, there’s more of an incentive to contribute beyond the base costs. This is another thing that sounds so obvious, but it’s the psychology behind it is something I certainly didn’t take into consideration until P. Alexander of Cirsova pointed it out to me.
The caveat is that your project won’t truly be done—it won’t feel done—until all of the extras are finished. I still need to get the The Swordbringer omnibus finished. Here’s Manuel Guzman’s stunning artwork for it though:
Don’t Underestimate Shipping Costs (and Beware of Overseas Shipping)
Although my campaigns did well, I always ended up slightly in the red due to shipping costs. I did some research, but still missed the mark in an attempt to not ask too much of my backers. But that’s dumb, because I’m shipping to them. Why should I lose money on this?
FYI, shipping to Europe can cost upwards of fifty dollars. For a book or two. If you are going to expand things to ship internationally, be up front that the costs will be higher than those for domestic shipping.
What Kinds of Stretch Goals?
For The Final Home, the stretch goals were (1) Illustrations for each book in the series, with revisions to books 1 and 2, (2) An omnibus collection of the trilogy with an all-new cover, and (3) An illustrated worldbook.
Some writers like to have fans create elements for the book. I toyed with the idea of doing a “create a monster” reward, but decided against it. I also decided against another common reward/stretch goal, which is “You will be a character!” I decided against these because I’m snobby. My writing, my art, is my creation, and as fun as things like this are, I want to present my unfiltered, unified vision without any outside contributions. But this might be something you want to do, and if that’s the case, go for it! Such incentives seem to be really popular, and I’ve seen people contribute extra to get killed off in a space battle or whatever.
You can be really creative with these. Ryan Williamson, who wrote a story for Pulp Rock, came up with a great idea for a goodie: backstage passes with Manuel Guzman’s amazing cover art one side, and a QR code on the other, taking one to exclusive YouTube playlists created by each author for their story. Cool idea!
At the end of the day, crowdfunding/neopatronage/your term of choice relies up on the relationship you have with your readers (or listeners, or players, etc.). If they feel like they are getting their money’s worth, and if they honestly like what you have to offer, they’ll be happy. And you, as an artist, owe it to them to make sure they’re not being scammed. Therefore you need to (1) deliver the goods, and (2) deliver good goods. And better late than never. The worst thing you can do is leave patrons dissatisfied with what they receive . . . or leave them dissatisfied with the fact that they haven’t received anything. As with many things, it sounds simple in theory, but it’s harder than it sounds in execution.
At the end of the day, would I do another crowdfunding campaign? Absolutely. But I will take these lessons to heart and make sure I do it in a way that works better for everyone.
To anyone reading this who backed one of my projects, once again, thank you. It’s truly a thrill to see the product of one’s mind translated into a concrete format to be enjoyed by others. It never gets old, and it couldn’t have happened without you.
- Alexander
Thank you for reading. If any of my books sound interesting, check out my author page on Amazon and get a book or two for yourself. You can also help contribute merely by subscribing to this Substack . . .
. . . sharing it . . .
. . . or sharing this post with someone whom you think could benefit from it:
This is a reader-supported publication, so one of the best things you can do to help is to simply spread the word. Thank you as always, and I’ll see you soon. Take care and God bless.
More on shipping later.
I’m deliberately leaving out the more prurient uses of the Internet, so I don’t need 75 of you telling me “YOU FORGOT PORN HA HA I AM SO SMART!”
Politics, sports, pop culture, etc.
Fantastic write-up on crowdfunding. Your points on delivering what you promise can't be stressed enough!
Thanks for the article! Definitely bookmarking this for future reference.