Kickstarter Series Intro: Advance Considerations

I'm going to go ahead and do a series on Kickstarter, as much for me as for anyone who's interested. At the time of this post, my campaign (what your project is called) has finished, but I haven't fulfilled the orders yet. Starting the series now will hopefully keep details fresh.

First, some common terms and definitions:

Kickstarter - A website that allows you to crowdfund a creative project in return for product related to the project.

Campaign - The project you're funding on Kickstarter.

Pledge - The "bid" made by someone interested in your campaign. (Note that a pledge is not a contract to buy. It can be cancelled. Bear that in mind when figuring out your goals.)

Follower - Someone who clicks to follow your campaign and get notified when it launches or when notifications are sent out. 

Backer - The people pledging on your campaign. Your supporters.

Rewards - The items people are pledging on. (Example: A paperback book is a reward.)

Reward Tiers - Packages you can set up for different tier pricing. (Example: A paperback plus an e-book might be a tier. A paperback by itself is a tier. The e-book plus an e-book from your backlist is a tier.)

Goal - You set a funding goal according to your needs.

Stretch Goal - Goals you'll set beyond the primary goal in order to encourage people to pledge more.

Stretch Reward - Special rewards on top of the regular reward tiers. You set a goal, and if it is reached, everyone gets that stretch reward in addition to what they've pledged to purchase. (Example: a short story. A bookmark. An art print.)

Flash Reward - If your campaign gets stagnant (it will), you may set a specific, special reward that people will only get if you meet a goal by a certain time. (Example: Anyone pledging by Friday will get such and such extra reward added on.) While other rewards are often based on a dollar amount (though I did a mix), these are best set to a certain number of backers.

Launch - When your campaign goes live, meaning people can now back it.

Pre-launch - Before you push the button to launch your Kickstarter (make it live), you will have a pre-launch page up with some information to get people interested.

Bespoke Edition - Specialized book formats with additional bling, such as sprayed edges, color illustrations, or foiled covers.

What makes a good Kickstarter?

People on Kickstarter love special editions of books. Especially hardcovers. Those are the campaigns that will make a chunk of change. Examples of blingy editions are sprayed edges, foiled covers, cloth slipcovers, color illustrations, vellum inserts, etc. These books cost $50 and up for backers.

However, e-books, paperbacks, and regular hardcovers also sell. (Audiobooks, not so much, but some people still try.) As this was my first Kickstarter and I was using it as a learning experience, I decided to go simple with a paperback and e-book campaign. I did consider also doing a hardcover, which certainly would have netted me a higher netting campaign, but because I joined to be part of a group doing something (which in itself went wrong) at the same time, so I had extremely minimal lead time to even figure out what I was doing and HOW to do it. Not having formatted a hardcover before, I didn't want to torture myself and my husband (who, in turn, had not created a book cover for a hardcover before). So paperback and e-book it was!

One of my reward tiers

Some people also do things like make special book boxes, which I might try in the future, or including merchandise. Omnibus editions of short stories or combined books in a series are another option. Again, I wanted to keep it simple. From perusing Kickstarter groups on Facebook, forums, blogs, etc. it really seems like focusing on books does the best.

What needs to be decided in advance?

You'll want to know what you're doing. When I started, I thought if it was going well I could just learn and add the hardcover later. However, once I'd already started, I learned that was frowned upon by folks on Kickstarter. Like a bait and switch. While people can upgrade their pledges, it seems some are bothered by this and may simply cancel pledges. Some people do it anyway, and plenty of them are probably successful. I decided I didn't want to pull that on people, and backed off adding the hardcover.

So is this going to be for e-book, paperback, hardcover, bespoke editions, audiobook, book boxes, or something else? The only rule Kickstarter really has on this is that they are for creative projects only.

Are you going to do illustrations or artwork of some sort? Merchandise? Know this is in advance. 

Also, you'll want to know what you're saving for rewards. If you're planning on making an element of the book, such as sprayed edges, something you set as a stretch reward, you're going to want to set that as a reachable goal and include the pricing for that in your reward tier for the blingy edition. Otherwise, you'll be eating that cost, because you can't change the price of a reward tier once someone has pledged to it.

Basically, you need to know everything that will be included and/or offered before you launch the campaign. You're going to want to know pricing, have an idea of how you're shipping (are you drop shipping direct from a publisher like Ingram or are you having the books shipped to you then shipping them individually to your backers), any rewards or specials, etc. Even if you're a panster like me, it's time to do some plotting. Otherwise, you risk losing money and eating a lot of costs.

Kickstarter is a visual medium. What does this mean?

Everything about Kickstarter is visual. Prospective backers want to see mock-ups of the books, images of the special features, offered artwork, etc. This means you'll need those visuals available before you start. Just saying, "I have all these special features on my book" without an image won't cut it.

You have to have a banner and a pre-launch information page before you start. That banner is going to be displayed at a small size on the Kickstarter search page, and you want it to draw people in so they follow your campaign. It's recommended you keep words to a minimum, IF you include any at all. My first banner was wordier, so I made a new one and replaced it.

My original banner

My replacement banner

Some people even use that Kickstarter banner on their pre-launch page as a cover reveal. That way, you've already gotten your readers, followers, and subscribers teased and ready to see what the cover is. This gives them a reason to go check out your campaign.

This also means that, much like blog posts, you're supposed to break up any wording you're using with visuals. (I know, I'm failing that on this post, but am hoping to have some screenshots for the rest of my posts in this series. Otherwise, I'll find you squirrel images. You don't want to say too much or repeat yourself on your outward facing pages.

Additional Notes:

A lesson I've learned is that I wish I'd had the book completely formatted and ready to go, having also received proofs to know everything was good, before launching. Kickstarters take a LOT of work. Doing all that while also finishing up formatting and uploading the book everywhere was highly stressful. Have your book ready to go (but not available for purchase unless you're doing the campaign for a special, exclusive version), as well as any extras, such as merchandise, artwork, etc. Let yourself focus on the campaign, because you need to be able to pivot throughout it and keep people engaged.

Now, I say have it ready, but that doesn't mean you have to post images of everything at first if you want to be able to post reveals to increase excitement. While it's generally best to have the book cover visuals available from the beginning, you can hold back on showing other things and let people know when you're going to release those visuals.

One of the images on my main page (the Story)

You want to be in pre-launch for a longer period of time. I think I was only in pre-launch for a week or so, which worked out fine for me, but could the project have been even bigger? Possibly. Again, I went into this a little different than others likely would, so I was pressed for time and working on someone else's timeline. You'll want to plan out your campaigns in advance. You can only have one active at one time, but you can have multiple in pre-launch. There were people saying they left them in pre-launch for up to a year. While that's unnecessary, a few months isn't a bad idea. The more followers you have at pre-launch, the more eyes there may be on it once it launches. To be clear, there's a very low conversion rate from followers to backers, for whatever reason. I did know that in advance, so it wasn't a stressor for me. But those followers make a difference toward your launch, anyway.

On that note, it's all important to understand that not many of your regular readers will likely convert unless a lot of them are already familiar with Kickstarter. It's an entirely new medium. Until I took on this group project, I had pledged once to support a friend. And I'd never found the book (funnily enough, I have NOW found the book as I was learning everything and figured out how to get to it). I wasn't all that interested in Kickstarter. Now I've pledged to several campaigns and will likely continue. (Also note that the more projects you have backed, the more random strangers who frequently pledge on Kickstarter will be interested - your cover page shows how many campaigns you've run and how many you've pledged to. I learned that one AFTER I created a new author account instead of using the one I'd previously pledged with, so I lost that credit.) 

This is important, because you need to make sure that you're talking to complete strangers who are discovering you, not so much your usual readers. Keep that in mind while you're creating your visible pages. I attended a seminar while I was doing the setup where they said they use Kickstarter as free marketing. As long as you don't overreach and screw up on pricing, you won't be out money on your Kickstarter, so it's technically a no-cost way to reach new readers. If you view it that way, you'll have an easier time figuring out what to do and say. This also makes your backlist an excellent way to add add-on items and bigger reward tiers (we'll talk about this on a future post).

Another reward tier I did with all my horror paperbacks

Kickstarter frowns on using "sales language." These campaigns are meant for creatives to have backing on projects they might not be able to do otherwise. You want to make sure you speak in a way that doesn't make them refuse to approve your project. Don't refer to anything as a "sale price," for example. Don't talk about "getting a deal." Those sorts of things will get you in trouble AND they'll turn off your followers/backers.

The big, vital thing to remember is that you need to bring your creativity to your Kickstarter campaign. View it as a fun, creative project where you get to do fun things you can't normally do with normal book distribution. I've heard it repeatedly called a party you're throwing. That will help you immensely in figuring out your campaigns.

I'll talk about getting your site ready next time.

Have you considered trying Kickstarter? What questions are you hoping to find answers to? What's holding you back?

May you find your Muse.