Lessons from Kickstarter

or, Week One of Four

My Kickstarter for my pitch black illustrated sword & sorcery novel is fully funded! In truth, we’re nearly double fully funded! We hit our funding goal, modest as it was, in a few hours.

Check out the video below to learn more or just click on this link.

So what did I learn in this first week?

Have an email list

If you’re a writer currently using a newsletter like Substack, you’re probably on your way there already! And I know this advice is given to everyone all the time, but it really is true and it really is useful.

While having a big social media presence is also very useful, you’re more reliant on the whims of the algorithm. Yes, there are ways to game this system, but there is a very good chance that even if you have 10k+ followers, only 1-5% of those followers will see what you post, unless you pay to boost your post.

So have an email list. These are people who are, presumably, interested in your work and more likely than random social media followers to back your projects.

Set up your Promotion Page!

After you fill out all your information for your Kickstarter, you can set up a landing page where people can be Notified when your Kickstarter launches. Essentially, they will get an email right away reminding them that they were interested in checking our your project.

This by itself fully funded my project. The people who signed up before launch were the first people who threw money down to back my novel and a decent percentage of those (40% for me!) have converted into sales of the novel at this point. If the remaining 60% converted right now, I think we’d blow past that first Stretch Goal.

Another valuable aspect to these backers is the rapidity of their support. While this didn’t cause a big algorithmic swing for me, there are a few people who backed me because they found my project on the Discover or For You page on Kickstarter.

Have a Plan on Launch Day

To be honest, this is where I struggle with any kind of advertising effort. My plan on launch day was just to reach out to my email list and post on social media and hopefully hit the funding goal as quickly as possible.

This is kind of a big deal, I think, at least on Kickstarter. If you can hit that funding goal quickly, you’re more likely to have the algorithm pick you up and spread your project around.

I spoke with a few friends before hand so they could help boost my initial post on social media. This didn’t lead to any sale conversions, but it did help spread the word a bit. And that is valuable. They say people need to hear about something about a handful of times before it even clicks in their head.

So what could I have done?

Well, so many things! But this first Kickstarter was a bit of an experiment. I wanted to see what I could do with as organic an approach as possible. While this succeeded for me, I don’t recommend it!

What I should have done:

• Sent out ARCs months ago so reviews could come out this first week

• Line up endorsements from writers to accompany the launch

• Set up an ad campaign to help spread the widest net possible

• Plan a coordinated social media campaign with book influencers

One week conclusions?

In a lot of ways, I did many things wrong or thoughtlessly, but it worked out, I think, based on the strength of my existing email list. Which is an argument for why your email list matters so much.

I have some more plans on what to continue to do with this Kickstarter to try to get to the next stretch goal and beyond, but we’re in a natural lull.

Crowdfunding projects see big spikes at the start and at the end of their campaigns. The middle is often a bit stagnant.

I was prepared for this but it does psychologically feel very different when you go from a steady rise in your numbers to a flatline or a very slow accretion of funders.

But that’s all right! I set the campaign at 30 days largely out of fear. I was worried we’d be one week in and only a quarter funded or something like that, so I hoped giving myself a month to scrabble together backers would save me. Fortunately, things went well! And understanding that, I think I’ll make a much shorter campaign for the next book I fund this way. Probably more like 10 or 15 days.

Overall, I’ve been very delighted by this crowdfunding experiment. I feel very thankful to everyone who has helped spread the world and so very grateful to those who have backed the project to make it a success. This book literally would not come out without all of you lovely backers!

If you haven’t backed yet, there’s still time!

Check out the first three chapters below and see if it’s something you’re into.