Kickstarter for Authors 📖 Tips & Tricks for Crowdfunding Your Novel Campaign | Shipping | Marketing

how to run a Kickstarter as an author I'm so glad you asked hi everyone welcome back to my channel I am Emily and today is going to be a bit of a longer video because I'd like to sit down and discuss some tips and tricks for running a successful Kickstarter campaign as an author if you are new here welcome I am Emily I am an author and a graphic designer and illustrator in June of 2022 I kick-started my debut novel under the Earth over the sky about a grumpy old fairy King who adopts and raises

a little human baby this is my first full-length book and I kick-started it without a very large audience but a bit of significant marketing which I will touch on later just as a bit of a disclaimer I would like to mention that I am not an expert at Kickstarter I am not an expert at publishing or marketing like I mentioned this is my debut novel I have run that single successful novel campaign pain I have also just recently wrapped up an enamel pin campaign but that is a slightly different topic these are just all of

the tips and tricks that I have learned by studying lots of other successful Kickstarter campaigns and running this thing myself not all of these tips on tricks are you must do this or you will fail at kickstarting your novel these are just things that I have found most valuable in the entire process in this video I'm going to break down a few different categories first of all what the heck is Kickstarter anyway the second is 12 tips to actually running the thing the third is what do you even do about marketing and the fourth is

fulfillment and shipping are terrifying please help me so without further Ado let's dive in so what the heck is Kickstarter anyway and why should you use it as an author Kickstarter is a crowdfunding site where you can offer different rewards at different tiers in order to raise funds for your project there are lots of different categories for Kickstarter campaigns the most popular one is gaming however last year Brandon San Anderson ran the most successful Kickstarter campaign ever for his novels which has quite significantly broken open Kickstarter as something that is really a great thing for

authors the amount of Novel campaigns and Publishing campaigns on Kickstarter is rising and so is the success rate even for small time authors her authors it is easiest to picture Kickstarter as a special pre-order campaign usually they last 30 days sometimes 14 days but the average is 30 any longer than that and it can be difficult to maintain interest and shorter can not be enough time usually people only go shorter if they are more experienced with Kickstarter or have a very large audience so 30 days is usually the optimum time span kickstarters have lots of

excitement around them they're great ways to drum up Buzz about your book even if you have a very limited audience they are best to offer rewards to fun things that you normally wouldn't be able to fund or afford like audiobooks or special editions or Extra Care character art and even if you're not offering anything extra special just being able to connect authors and readers together in a really much more personal way than Amazon or Barnes and Noble or any of the other traditional selling sites makes it really exciting for both readers and authors I mean

even if you only set and reach a very small goal for your Kickstarter campaign I can confirm it is quite a bit of fun in fact it's mildly addicting I may be planning another book Kickstarter as we speak so that is the basics of what Kickstarter is and why as an author it can be a really great idea let's get into some tips and tricks for actually running your Kickstarter campaign first thing first absorb as many Kickstarter campaigns as humanly possible if you go to kickstarter.com you can sort by the publishing section and then specifically

you want to go into fiction because that is going to be all the campaigns that are most applicable to what we're trying to do if you just do the general publishing category you're gonna get other stuff like journalism and stuff that doesn't really apply to the the fiction or short fiction or novel areas you can also sort by most funded or newest campaigns or most backed campaigns popularity is a little bit iffy I'm not entirely sure how Kickstarter figures out which campaigns are most popular because they don't actually have the campaigns with the most money

as the most popular so I'm not certain how they categorize that so most funded most backed and newest are some of the categories that are easier to interpret take a look at what everybody else did memorize that page similarities and Trends in the most successful campaigns from small time or big time authors will become apparent also the things that failed campaigns have done or campaigns that barely reach their minimum goal and didn't hit any stretch goals things they do will become apparent as well and they're good things to avoid second thing is don't look at

just the most successful authors yes it is very cool to look at Brando sando's Kickstarter pages but but that man is something else he has a whole team of people around him Publishers and contacts within the industry that smaller time authors you just you really can't replicate it it is good to look at his campaign from a professionalism standpoint but it can also be very discouraging because you'll just go well I can't replicate this it's just me or it's just me and my partner doing this or me and my family who's helping me out don't

be discouraged by the really really big campaigns with a team around them and a huge audience pay attention to smaller and mid-list authors who are doing very well one of the authors I would recommend is Michael J Sullivan though he is very successful and he is a New York Times best-selling author and he does have a team around him I think what he does in his kickstarters is very manageable I based a lot of my Kickstarter structure and rewards off of his it's really great to take a look at what he does and just scale

it down into what you do and keep a lot of that professionalism and passion number three is that artwork and Graphics are your best friend in a Kickstarter campaign Kickstarter is a very visual platform it's not it's not really the same thing as Amazon images are the number one thing that are going to make your campaign look very love one thing I will say as a caveat to this is it is best to avoid using large sections of text as an image having headaches to your campaign in a special font that you export as an

image and put into the campaign that's fine if you put large sections of your Kickstarter text in an image then that text isn't actually searchable because it's in an image and it is harder for people to find your campaign through search engines so I would not recommend doing large sections of text as images if you don't have as much of a budget you can try applicable stock imagery there are places where you can get custom art made rather cheaply many authors are using modified air I'm not really interested in getting into the debate about AI

art right now I'm just letting you know that that isn't option that is a thing that people do Point number four is something very important that I see a lot of authors with failed campaigns have done this and that is they don't talk about their book which I know seems funny this may seem really obvious but readers and potential backers are not going to feel as excited and have any love for your book if you don't seem super excited and like you love your book yes your blurb should be in there but you need to

talk about your book in other ways it doesn't have to be as formal talk about your characters talk about your world building talk about your magic system or your science fiction Tech or anything else that makes your book unique talk about you as an author and what brought you to this point write down the reward levels that you are using as well as your stretch goals be open about the shipping talk about why you're using Kickstarter the more info for your backers the better tip number five is that a campaign video is a very smart

idea yes a lot of people will cringe at that idea and there are Kickstarter campaigns that fund nicely without them but the majority of successful campaigns have a video this is yet another place to draw in potential backers they can see you they can see the excitement and the love you have for their book and they can connect with you on a more personal level than just reading words on the screen if the idea of being on camera is really just you can't do that refuse to do that or you are working with a pen

name or you don't want to show your face even if you're not on camera a simple and snappy book trailer with text and images and music or maybe just a voice over along with that those can work wonders tip number six is to set your campaign goal as low as you possibly can without losing money especially if you don't have a large audience I set my initial campaign goal for 500 which was just enough to cover a very small printing of books from ingramspark the packaging I would need for those books a little bit of

buffer room and the small fee that Kickstarter will take you want to set your campaign goal as low as you can get it and then add in and stretch goals after that stretch goals are unofficial goals that you as the campaign Creator pick and outline in your campaign Kickstarter is an All or Nothing campaign meaning I set my initial goal for 500 and if I had not reached that 500 I would get zero money and no one would be charged and since I reached that 500 initial goal everything was good to go stretch goals do

not have a All or Nothing funding because this is something you do yourself they offer extra rewards for backers or they unlock Extra add-ins that backers can buy my very first stretch goal was fifteen hundred dollars that was just enough to unlock printing a minimum of 10 copies of a special edition of my novel this one right here very shiny very foil stamp and for anyone who's curious I printed this with 48 hour books I would highly recommend them their printing quality is fantastic and their customer support is a million times better than Amazon in

ingerspark I set more stretch goals at the two thousand dollar level and three thousand dollar level for added in artwork in the book at twenty five hundred dollars that unlocked a sticker sheet at thirty five hundred dollars bookmarks at five thousand dollars art prints at seventy five hundred dollars I did custom header illustrations for all the chapters and at ten thousand that unlocked the audiobook basically this takes a little bit of math to try to figure out how much of a buffer you would need to be able to afford these next stretch goals [Music] all

of that is a bit custom to who you go to to manufacture all these things and what you want to do so it's a little bit harder to give an example you just need to get quotes for everything and work out how much buffer room you think you can have it can be a little bit scary to do that so I would recommend having your stretch goals be larger than the amount of buffer room you think you will need because something will always be more expensive than you expect tip number seven is that setting your

Kickstarter goal so low can get you funded really quickly and that can get you something from Kickstarter called project we love this is the category that Kickstarter puts you in that just means it is a campaign that they love and they are going to start pushing it out a little bit to people who visit their website it is not the end of the world if you don't get this sticker but it is a nice little boost there is no set way to get the project we love but the general consensus is fund as quickly as

possible and have a really beautiful campaign and communicate with your backers that's the best you can do tip number eight like I mentioned is when setting your campaign goal make sure to factor in that Kickstarter will take a small percentage of your cut and you want a little bit of buffer room in case something is more expensive than it should be even if you're doing a really small campaign the last thing you want to do is have to lose any money trying to do this tip number nine is to put as much value into your

levels as possible especially with offering digital rewards so that you can give more to backers without having to pay more money for printing and shipping for example I gave an ebook of my old short Story collection digital copies of the cover and interior art for under the Earth over the sky and Backer names in the book as a thank you as a default in every level even the paperback levels and the hardcover levels and the special edition levels had all those things as well as an ebook copy of under the Earth over the sky all

of those digital rewards cost me nothing to add but they add in a ton of extra value for your backers the last stretch goal that I had that was the audiobook stretch goal I added that audiobook file into every backer's level once it was unlock that really encourages people to I want to back more I want to get to that final stretch goal I want to share the campaign so more people back and more people get to that stretch goal because I really want that audiobook file as much value as you can get to your

backers without increasing too much cost for you it's just it's fantastic number 10 is that Kickstarter has an updates section where you can write updates that will be directly sent to your backers inboxes you absolutely need to use this feature as the campaign is running it shows that you care about your campaign and you care about your backers and that you are good at communicating and that you are indeed a real person after the campaign is over this is perfect to keep everyone up to date about the process of fulfillment if something goes wrong in

manufacturing or there are delays absolutely keep your backers updated honesty about problems is a million times better than not telling people and them starting to wonder where the heck their rewards are okay tip number 11 got a little bit messed up so I'm going to have to voice over here for a second and tip number 11 is that go ahead and set some goals that are more expensive than you would expect people to back at my first stretch goal unlocked the special editions which added in a 70 level for a special edition and a hundred

dollar level for both a special edition and a hardcover I had no idea how many people would back at those levels because they're more expensive than the average but I had almost as many people as people who backed at the normal paperback or hardcover or ebook levels even if you're doubtful that having expensive levels can be a good idea it never hurts to have them and a lot of people might actually really love them and tip number 12 is just a little bit of a take a deep breath and don't panic if there are days

where you don't get very much funding weekends tend to be Duds as far as funding the general advice is to not launch on a weekend but I have plenty of days both in my under the Earth over the sky Kickstarter and my enamel pin Kickstarter in the middle there where I got zero backers or you know ten dollars worth of backers and you tend to go oh my God is nobody interested anymore am I not going to reach my stretch goals there are large jumps at the beginning and at the end of your campaign the

end of your campaign the last 48 hours is a truly wild time because everybody who has saved your project Kickstarter will start sending them emails going hey the kickstarter campaign's ending in 48 hours now it's ending in eight hours you might want it back you will also randomly get really great days in the middle as well as kind of dud days it will fluctuate so don't immediately Panic keep up on your marketing take a deep breath everything's okay speaking of marketing what about it what do you do this is a very tough one especially since

I have run a single campaign and what I did may not work for everybody just like what I've seen a lot of other authors do did not work for me all I can tell you is what I did and what I know other authors do and marketing is kind of an individual thing where I'm sorry to say you really will have to figure it out mostly for yourself consume a lot of marketing research and then figure it out out for yourself I use tick tock social media takes a lot of experimenting and I have had

a tick tock account since 2020 but it didn't really get any traction started until I had under the Earth over the sky to promote I didn't even have the physical book yet I was just using the cover art and the kickstarter campaign to promote it and that actually worked shockingly well even still I have a small account now even after I got a bunch of followers from the campaign and from actually publishing the book I have barely around 6 000 followers I am not a large Tick Tock account by any means I have never gone

truly viral on Tick Tock that being said I funded a relatively large campaign especially for a debut novel on a relatively nothing Tick Tock account you don't need to go viral to fuel your dreams basically you need to be passionate you need to be patient you need to be willing to try different marketing techniques and not give up when something that other people do fails for you and of course you do need quite a a bit of luck so obviously I would heavily recommend Tick Tock I would also recommend doing Instagram reels I recycle my

Tick Tock videos I download them without the watermark and I use them on Instagram Instagram for me is a little bit of a dud but sometimes it really does pull through and that extra five or ten minutes it takes to post it on Instagram it's worth it outside of that type of social media other authors I know of have used Facebook or Instagram as to fund their Kickstarter and they have done so with great success I have not I experimented with a very very small Facebook ad to do a pre-launch campaign but I only got

about two sign ups to my newsletter for about 10 or 20 dollars worth of ads so for me I have not experimented with Facebook ads enough to give advice I am very sure they can work and they do work but I have never experimented enough to find my Niche on Facebook as I have experimented to find my Niche on Tick Tock mostly because Tick Tock is free Tick Tock and Instagram reels they're free social media is free it never hurts to try all that being said a marketing tip that I found very useful and very

helpful and just generally really encouraging as well is to do campaign swaps with other authors this means you mentioned their campaign in your updates section and they mentioned your campaign in their update section you can message authors on Kickstarter and ask them if they want to do this though it's a little iffy and it kind of seems like spam when you do that but fear not there are Facebook groups that are perfect for this one is Kickstarter for authors and there is a experienced Kickstarter for authors and cross promotion they let you set up these

swaps and they will also give you feedback on your campaign before it launches you can ask questions from successful people it's very very helpful I love those Facebook groups would highly recommend so we are moving on to the part that scares everybody and that is shipping shipping is scary please help OMG I don't know what to do the world is ending the sky is falling shipping is terrifying yes I know I know believe me look it's okay shipping was by far the most concerning part of the process for me just shipping domestically seemed terrifying shipping

internationally seemed terrifying however it is not nearly as frightening as it seems something many Kickstarter campaigns do and I did as well is charge for shipping after the campaign is over if you include your shipping in your Kickstarter funding itself the percentage of a cut that Kickstarter takes also takes out of that shipping fund so it's a bit difficult to not lose money on shipping and it's a bit difficult to estimate how much shipping you would need without losing money it's also a great idea to charge for your shipping after your campaign when you're about

to ship because shipping prices can fluctuate greatly between the time you are running your campaign and when you're actually about to take packages down to the post office especially the fact that right now the world is a wild place and prices are shooting through the roof I ran my campaign in June about the average shipping cost calculator price that I found was between five and ten dollars to ship domestically by the time I started shipping around October the average domestic shipping price was fifteen dollars I would heavily encourage you to charge for shipping after your

campaign when all of your stuff is in your house and you are ready to package your stuff up campaigns like a backer kit can make charging for shipping after the campaign extremely easy it also lets you organize your shipping in really easy to use categories I am not affiliated with backer kit um backer kit sponsor me I love you I just really really love their services they are the most helpful support people I think I have ever talked to they made all the shipping especially international shipping completely painless I hear Kickstarter is rolling out a

similar service or you can charge for shipping later but I've never used it given how helpful backer kit is I will probably continue to use backer kit they have waived their expensive initial setup fee and they just take a small cut of your profits from Kickstarter just like Kickstarter does important note about international shipping if you are planning on letting your backers pay their own customs duties and taxes you need to make a note of this in the kickstarter yourself some campaigns collect vat taxes and everything else in their shipping and they pay them themselves

that always seemed a little bit too complicated for me it is something you can do don't let me discourage you if that's what you want to do but you can just let backwards handle their country's fees you just need to make sure you are up front with how you are going to handle international shipping make a bold note of it in your campaign those are my main tips and tricks that is addressing the terrifying Beast that is shipping especially international shipping one other thing I did want to mention because I have had people message me

and ask me this question specifically was how do I decide how much to charge in my Kickstarter levels when you're doing print on demand for most of your projects like I did I used ingramspark as my print on demand company it's easy to figure out how much just the cost of a single book will be and in the simplest term you need to add up how much a level will cost you for a single backer add in a little bit for the kickstarter fees and add in a little bit of buffer and profit because Kickstarter

is not just a break even campaign Kickstarter is meant to fund things but also to make a little bit of profit this is essentially a pre-order when you put your book for pre-order you want to make a bit of profit you are selling your hard work just like you would sell signed copies on Etsy or Shopify or just like you sell copies on Amazon it is not a bad thing to make some profit off of this I have had people ask me you don't need to just break even you can make a little bit of

profit everybody expects you to but for example say I am making a paperback level for a pledge I want to figure out how much a single paperback copy is going to cost me obviously this is a little bit different if you're doing a print run if you're having a hard time calculating it yourself talk to your manufacturer but since you're doing print on demand you can do one-offs I figure out what the cost of a single paperback is say it is ten dollars to get a paperback after approximately 8 million hours of figuring out what

you're going to do for shipping you figure out that a bubble mailer and packaging paper will cost you about two to three dollars these are not exact numbers I'm just giving you an example factor in another dollar or two because Kickstarter takes a little bit of profit and it would just it's easiest to add that buffer in when you're thinking about your levels it's 14 to 15 to 16 dollars to send a paperback to a single backer a very reasonable cost for a paperback level given that would be 20 to 25 bucks it's all self-contained

shipping is done later most things about kids starter like shipping and like making stretch goals and like doing backer levels it seems really complicated as an overall thing if you just look at it one at a time and try to isolate what it is you need to do it's much much simpler so wow this is a long-winded video those are my tips and tricks for running a successful Kickstarter campaign as an author feel free to ask questions in the comments if I get a ton of questions I might do some sort of q a video

thank you all so much for watching this video I hope it was really helpful and I hope you really enjoyed it if you did giving it a thumbs up and a subscribe really really helps out my tiny little author Channel you can now read under the Earth over the sky and paperback hardcover ebook and audiobook at all retailers you can also get a few of these leftover copies all the links to these are in my bio as well as those for any of my other books thank you all so much for watching happy Kickstarter campaigns

to everyone and I will see you all in the next video bye which is rattling stop why by creatives where you can rougher rewards inventions wow this is gonna be a long day successful author novel those are my tips and tricks [Music]