Kickstarter for Readers

In a few months, I will be putting my book on Kickstarter. 

What do you think when you hear Kickstarter? 

• Risky investments
• Pity money to pay hospital bills
• For inventors with wacky inventions
• What does that have to do with books? 
• Or maybe you think of Brandon Sanderson’s Kickstarter offering 4 books and making $23 million. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a-k6eaT-jQ ) He made $41 MILLION dollars! Well subtract out publishing costs and Kickstarter fee and etc. He probably made $15-20 million. But don’t worry, he’s using that money for good by leveraging his power to help the little authors who don’t have much power.

Kickstarter has picked up momentum with authors in the last 10-12 months and gone kind of bananas!

For a long time, I thought Kickstarter was just for inventors with wacky ideas. 

Kickstarter has changed a lot for the better in recent years. What I didn’t know until about a year ago was, they have a publishing category! There are hundreds of authors on the site now. Investors (you) are enabling authors to get their businesses up and running with high quality editors, professional covers, developmental editors, and professional proofreaders. All that costs a ton of money! Most authors just starting out don’t have $2,000-8,000 to pay all those professionals. Because of Kickstarter and people like you, who are willing to invest in authors, the whole indy publishing industry is able to raise the bar on creating quality stories! 

*Kickstarter calls the Investors, Backers. 

Is there Risk? Is it Reliable?

When Kickstarter first started promoting authors years ago, many authors said, “Pay me and I’ll write a book.” Well, artists are fickle and many of those books never came to fruition. Investors lost their money. 

Now, the authors will most often say, “I have this book already written. Help me publish it.” (If the book isn’t written and edited, don’t invest!) It’s far more reliable now and involves very little risk since Kickstarter has put in features for author accountability. I have ordered a lot of books and ebooks on Kickstarter for “research purposes” over the last few months. 😉 

It doesn’t come overnight because these are normal people, often with day jobs, preparing and shipping the items in the fringe hours of the day. But I’ve gotten all the books I ordered in a timely manner. For digital books, a week or two after the campaign is finished. For physical items like a hardcover book, it was a month or two. The authors are really good about sending updates like: All digital items have been uploaded and sent, or paperback books went out in the mail today. Kickstarter will not let authors run another campaign until all items have been shipped and received by all buyers. If the seller does not fulfill the orders as promised, the author can be banned from Kickstarter permanently. I’ve not had any problems at all with any of the items I ordered, nor have I heard any complaints from other people. 

What’s This About Swag and Tiers?

Most Kickstarter campaigns offer more than just books. There are tiers or levels of investment. This is how the tiers typically go from least to most:

• $1.00 (or any dollar amount you choose) Get nothing but love and gratitude from the author in return. You just want to support the author. 
• $5 tier gets you something like printable bookmarks or maybe an ebook of the first book in the series if this is not the first book. 
• $10-15 Ebook version of the book and digital swag listed above. 
• $20-25 Paperback level includes paperback books, ebooks, and digital swag. 
• $45+ Hardcover or Omnibus level includes Hardcover copy of the book, often a signed, sometimes numbered copy. It might also include the ebook and will include all the items from the lower levels except paperback books. 
• At the $45 – $300+ level it gets really creative and there are a lot of variations. Sometimes people will add color to the book, sometimes additional artwork is added in the chapters, sometimes special chapters are added. These are usually Kickstarter exclusive versions. Collectors, go nuts!! I bought a Kickstarter exclusive from an author. It has color maps added, color throughout the book in the form of roses at each chapter heading, a new cover design, signed and it’s numbered. I love it! It’s so beautiful! And the story inside was awesome too! 
• The higher tiers pack in lots and lots of value. Some people add tangible swag like pins, artwork, tarot cards for witchy stories, video conferences, phone calls, …all kinds of creative, fun stuff! 

Some authors that have a number of books to offer will add in a level with all the ebooks in the whole series. There was one author who offered books from other authors. So I bought her ebook and also got 5 other ebooks from different authors. I was excited to try the different authors. It helps those other authors, because I might discover a new favorite and go on to buy their other books. 

If you can’t tell, I’m loving the experience of buying on Kickstarter. I love art swag! I go nuts over the portraits of the characters or the digital downloads of desktop backgrounds of the book cover art with just the art and no text over it. I’m tempted to get an add-on of Tarot cards even though I don’t do Tarot; I just think they are pretty art. 

What is an Add-On?

Most authors will offer Add-Ons. Yes, this is like the candy bars at the register, enticing you to buy a little more, but it’s also a way to get the cool swag you want. So let’s say you want the 5×7 print that comes with the Super Special Hardcover edition and 25 ebooks for $300. The author may list that 5×7 print for $20 or a digital download for $10. And you could add that to your ebook tier and stay within your budget. 

So Add-Ons are pretty cool, right? 

Stretch goals!

Kickstarter is an all or nothing platform. If the author sets a goal to raise $5,000 and doesn’t raise that much money, nobody gets anything!! So you will often see authors hoping to raise a low number like $300 so they are sure to meet their campaign goal. But please know, authors are hoping to raise more than that! Remember books cost at least $2,000 to publish if they hire professional editors, cover artists, and etc. All that to say, Authors might have stretch goals. So if they raise $2,000 they might add an extra art piece, an extra ebook, color pages or maps added to the book, an extra some kind of reward to the backers. Then they might have another level at $4,000. This is an incentive for backers to share the campaign with their friends, thus helping the author reach those goals and backers get cool rewards! Please know the stretch goals are not just for pure profit or out of greed. These higher goals are still covering expenses.

For example: I will probably set my goal at $300, but I have spent about $2,000 producing this book. I will certainly have a stretch goal for $2000 in the hopes I will recoup all the money I’ve invested. Then I will use this money producing the next book so I don’t keep digging a hole in my savings account. If I set a goal for $2,000 and I only reach $1,000, well that’s less I have to dig out of savings for the next book. On the other hand if I raise, $5,000, then wow! I could pay my sensitivity readers. I could pay for the next book AND pay myself a little for the years of work I’ve put into writing the book and learning how to do this! I could show my husband that this is a financially worthwhile endeavor! I could afford to take a class and learn how to write even better! (Hello Intellection, Learner, and Input in my top 5 strengths!) I’m always learning and trying to improve something!

Okay, enough about me… back to you and your experience. You will likely get updates via email letting you know how the campaign is progressing. You might see something like, “we are only $500 away from our 3,000 stretch goal!” and then they describe the reward you could get if the stretch goal is met. 

What happens after I place the order?

You will get updates on how the campaign is going. You will likely be notified if a stretch goal is met. At the end of the campaign, assuming the minimum goal is met, the author will likely send a message with any important information. You will also get a survey, which will allow you to provide an address to mail physical items. They may ask for information such as your phone number and other information needed to fill your order. For personalized signed copies of the book, you’ll fill in who to address the autograph to. At this time, you will also have the opportunity to add any add-on items in case you changed your mind. 

If you ordered digital items, those will likely be delivered to you within a week or two. Many authors use Book Funnel to deliver the ebooks and other digital copies because it has an easy delivery system and tech support. (FYI: This service costs at least $100 per year for the author.) Some authors use BackerKit to deliver tangible rewards, but this is very costly and not everyone uses this. Many authors pack these items themselves when they get home from their day job. The hardcover I ordered came in about 1 ½ to 2 months. 

Why so long? After the campaign, the book is sent to the printer. They do a test copy and send it to the author. The author examines it for any printing mistakes, cover art alignment, and more. (examine it, as in goes through the book page by page, line by line looking for any mistakes.) Then they tell the printer how many copies to print and ship to the author. When the author gets it they sign the copies, package, address envelopes, and get them to the post office to ship. 

Finally, you have your book(s) and all your swag. Enjoy! It’s a long process, but know that you are doing an immense amount of good for the indy publishing industry and even more good for the authors you back! Authors love you for that! Seriously, there are not words to express how awesome you are for investing in them! And now that you have backed an author, you are not just a buyer of a book, you are now a patron of the arts! We could name a building after you now! Well, I don’t have a building, but I could name a character after you! Wouldn’t that be cool?

And that is EVERYTHING I know about Kickstarter at this time. Information given is based on my personal experiences as a backer. I’ll do another post to share what I learn from my own experience as an author on Kickstarter after my first campaign.