Ep 223 Kickstarter Rundown

Pencils&Lipstick podcast · Mar 25, 2024

Transcript

Hey everyone, welcome back to Pencils and Lipstick. This is actually episode 223, I believe last week I said it was 223, but you know me.

I'm actually trying to label things now so that I don't get this incorrect, but you know, whatever. It is March 25th as this podcast goes out. I'm recording in a few days early. Um, and today we're going to talk about Kickstarter. Now I'm not going to be talking about Kickstarter in the sense that I'm going to teach you. I've only done one Kickstarter. I do. I am not a teacher. I am not an expert at all, but I am excited about it as a possibility for you to use in your small business, um, for selling books for your creative small business in any creative small business honestly and there is there are a couple other places that kind of work the same as Kickstarter one is backer kit which Brandon Sanderson has now blown up and you know everything that he touches is

gold and that looks to be a little bit different in the sense that every time I go over there goals are at a much higher like threshold than in Kickstarter but there's a couple other ones as well if you just you know look up crowdfunding some of them are only for you know I fundraising or whatever but hey we're just gonna talk about Kickstarter today and what I'm really gonna do is just talk to you guys about what I've learned and why I think it's a great option why I will do it again and just gonna give you like heads up on the emotional ups downs. I'm also going to give you guys resources for the people that I use to learn about Kickstarter to set it up. Now full disclosure I am NOT somebody who goes through several courses and attends several webinars before I try something. I pretty much get the basis of it and with this one I dug slightly deeper and then I go for it. That's how I roll. So if that's not how you roll, these people have courses, they have books. I think that that is my way. It's not necessarily the best way to do it. And yeah, I think that this all, it depends a little bit on your personality and what lowers your anxiety, honestly. But first, just

kickstarter in general let's talk about what it is and what it is not kickstarter is not a store it is not an amazon store you know type place it is not even like a thrive cart where it's just your cart um and and that being said i don't think that you should use it as such because that's not what it's there for it is technically a crowdfunding platform in which, you know, the main idea of Kickstarter is that you have an idea, you want to bring it to market, you kind of gather some people that are excited about it, you write up a pretty decent business proposal for the landing page, you make a video talking about it, and then you get people excited and you try to raise the funds that would help you create that thing. Okay, you can find game board games on there. You can find super crazy, I found like a ballast pen like it's made I guess from like the ballast of a ship. Like there are really cool things on there. I think one of those rings you know that you hold on you wear on your finger and it like tells you your blood pressure and all that.

I've seen one of those on there. So you know as far as small businesses go it's kind of a place where you can raise your capital in order to go make that thing right? Instead of you sort of investing your house on that thing and then crossing your fingers and hoping that it will sell. So you make these rewards and people basically back it by purchasing a reward. Let's say it's a board game so you would purchase an early copy of the board game. Maybe another reward level would be purchasing two of the board games and usually you're getting like a discount on what it will be at in marketplace then you're getting it before everyone else and that allows them to get the capital to go make that thing and probably pay themselves as well and then you know have sort of this roof that people want this thing so then they'll go into stores and say look at you know what a great Kickstarter we had don't you want to carry this in your stores now as far as books go I think that there are two ways that you can do this one is that same way you want to make an audiobook but it costs $5 ,000 and you don't have that kind of cash and so you drum up some excitement among your readers you put together a really great landing page and then you try to fund the money basically to create that audiobook right so within if you're gonna do it like that within that you have to sort of budget somebody I know did it for their audiobook and some of the rewards were actually buying like receiving the paperback. Let's say you know you gave it for you gave $20 towards the project and you would receive let's say three ebooks. Well ebooks once they are created don't cost us as much to send. What we have to pay for is the Kickstarter fee and then the processing like the credit card processing fee and so maybe you take 10 % off of off of that $20 and then the rest of that is profit. But then if one of your rewards is get the audiobook plus my print my printed books like we on average spend let's say four to five dollars getting the actual print proof to our house probably would sign it right? And then you would ship it off. And you'd have shipping in that cost. And then they would all get the audio book, you know, and the audio book is digital as well. Once it's created, it doesn't cost you as much to send it, right? So you have to decide, you know, you have to really budget and make sure that you're actually getting the 5 ,000. So if you, if 5 ,000, let's say is your goal, Kickstarter takes a percentage, that's how they stay in business and Stripe the credit card processor also takes a percentage. So if

you only hit 5 ,000 you're not actually making 5 ,000 plus you still have to ship out all these books, right? So if you give a paperback as a prize sort of for funding the audiobook you have to deduct that from the 5 ,000, okay? And so you have to be careful with how you're budgeting for these projects if that is what you're actually if you don't want to put any of your money down on the project. The other way that you can do use Kickstarter and the way that I use Kickstarter is to not necessarily go for the goal that you need to recoup your costs for the books. So for these books of course I wasn't asking to be for people to order the books before they were written or printed or edited or you the covers put out. Of course in order to show somebody the product you need some mock -ups put together and so the covers were already paid for, the editing was already in the process and paid for, my time had already been spent on these books and so you know if I was gonna go and recoup the cost for two books putting together two books that would be quite a high goal. And Kickstarter is all or nothing and so what I use Kickstarter for and what I see other people using Kickstarter for is kind of drumming up a different fan base and just using it as a different platform. And so my goal was $750. A lot of people do $500. On one hand it doesn't really matter because just because you hit your goal doesn't mean that you can't make more. Let's you know look at Brandon Sanderson. Kickstarter will give all the money. Everybody gets their book. Everybody get surprised even if you go, you know, a thousand percent over your, your goal. But, you know, having a lower goal definitely makes it so that you hit that goal, right? All right, so my, my goal was $750. That pretty much pays for one of my editing, you know, books, one of my books being edited, which is amazing. Of course, from whatever I get, I have to deduct what I'm going to, what I'm going to have to pay for to get the books to my house, then sign them, and then ship them because I put the shipping into the price. All right. And so because it's 750 and now we are funded in above that, as I record this, I think it's at 940.

So I've kind of hit that and definitely have recouped editing costs, which is amazing. but more than that I have found people who are new to me who are going to receive my books and hopefully like them, right? So what I'm using it for more than anything is to sort of broaden my platform and I think it's an amazing thing for that. Now I still had to do a budgeting for it, right? I still have to decide like is if I only hit 750 is it worth even my time for that? I personally say yes I have really enjoyed the process but you yourself are going to have to see if that is something that sort of causes you anxiety or not. I am seeing people do it as groups which I think is a great idea as well and so you sort of parse out the work maybe parse out the anxiety you get more people. The The more people that you get following it technically, the better chances you have of getting funded. But just total transparency, I had 39 people following my Kickstarter before it went live. Only one of them was a friend or family member that was my husband because I don't really market to my friends and family because they just don't read what I write. That's not their genres.

And I think 12 people bought from those 39. So we're not at the end as I record this. Everyone says like the last few days, there's kind of a rush and you get a few more people as well. So I don't know what will happen with that, but you know, every piece of advice that you get is, you know, always take it with a grain of salt. So of course, my goal for this first one was 30 people. I was super happy with 39. I'm even happy with the 12 people buying from it because things change. People change their minds. I changed my mind. It's fine. I think for my goal for the historical trilogy that I'll be bringing out on Kickstarter first, my goal, I'll probably spend a little bit more time pushing to get followers just because I plan to do hardbacks with that and so I'm going to want it funded in a sense in the sense of like I'm going to want these I'm going to want to make a little bit more money off of it and and have that sort of buffer space when it comes to like ordering hardbacks and making sure everything's right. So you you have to understand that even if you see bigger numbers on on Kickstarter people aren't actually the margin of what they're taking home is not very big because in the end if

it's a specialty book it's costing like just the baseline price is pretty high all right like a baseline price of a beautiful foiled hardcover is is about 60 to 80 dollars depending on how much it weighs and how many specs are getting you add in sprayed edges and things like that and you're getting really high up there, okay? So I would recommend you, if you're interested in Kickstarter or Backerlit, to start out really low, and I'm just doing a paperback, I am not doing a hardcover yet, I'm not even doing foiled paperback, although I did think about it, but I'm glad that I didn't, just because I didn't have the experience behind it, I didn't have, I didn't even have the fan base,

But that is a little asterisk that surprised me. I did not get that many people translated from my newsletter, which is a couple thousand, to purchasing through Kickstarter. Despite the emails that I sent, despite the educational emails that I sent, despite telling them, yes, you, you know, you are, it's a new platform, but it is a secure platform. It has dealt already with $7 billion has gone through Kickstarter. Your, your credit card will be processed through Stripe, which is a very secure processor. But people have to make a login for it and people don't like that. And so a lot of people told me flat out that they weren't going to do it. Other people simply didn't pay any attention or, you know, just didn't tell me, but they didn't want to do it. I had to talk to a couple of people personally, even after the emails to tell them more about it. So it is a different platform and a lot of people are a bit squeamish about that. So that did surprise me and I guess it shouldn't have but just I just want to be totally transparent with you all I

think these Kickstarter's that are getting funded in four hours is most likely a they have a younger crowd of fans or they have fans who are not risk adverse to new platforms or they have a fan base that already understands Kickstarter. And that's possible. But that's okay. You can overcome this, right? If you have a really large fan base already and you want to educate them about it, I would probably set up Zoom calls or live calls in which people can ask you questions about it. If you really, really, really want them to solely purchase through Kickstarter. Now, one of the ways to get people is solely purchased through Kickstarter is to have that exclusive hardback, you know, sprayed edges, beautiful book. But again, that takes a lot more work and a lot more goal, like a higher goal. So it wouldn't be worth the money to have a goal of $750 because, you know, getting a hardback with sprayed edges would cost already a lot of money. So, Um, if, well, and I say that, but like, if you put your goal at $750, but you are pretty sure that you're going to hit 5 ,000, then okay. But, um, everyone I spoke to who had done Kickstarters before told me, go small, go simple.

Um, just learn from the process. What else did I like about the process? Um, I liked that I listened to these people who know what they're talking about. I liked that the feedback that you can get on the Facebook groups that you can find there, actually some of them are free. You can, I liked the information that I got so I'm gonna give you two resources. The authormedia .com has one called crowdfunding for authors so I guess it's not specific to Kickstarter. I have not done this one but I've heard a lot of really good things about it. It's only $99 and I've heard a lot of really great things about it. I if you become his Patreon, Thomas Umsed's Patreon supporter for $50 a year, I think you get half off. So if you only want this, it's probably not worth it. If you are part of his community already and you have forgotten, go back and figure

that out. I actually use Russell Nolte's and Monica Lionel's writer MBA and let me see. I use their crowdfunding platform course. They have a book as well so you can start with get your book selling on Kickstarter. It's on Amazon. It's on everywhere, you know, everywhere that you can find anything. So I would start with that book. Russell is like the king of Kickstarter so he knows all these things, and then you can sort of move there into their course if you want, and then get into their exclusive or private group. But you can also start on Facebook, you can search for Kickstarter and start there, and lots of people are willing to give you advice. The other thing that I liked about it is that it forced me to prepare for a bigger book launch. I'm usually quite adverse to a book launch. I've never done one for myself before. I've done it for other people but I always feel a bit odd about it. I never take the time to make all the resources, all the graphics, all the emails, all the things. I feel just odd doing it. I would rather be doing other things than a book launch for my own book. But now that I have a lot of the emails written, I have a lot of the graphics done, I have I mean I have a ton of graphics done, I don't think that I'll be so like anxiety bound by it by doing the the launch. So I'm actually gonna do a pre -order once I get all of the Kickstarters out. Now a little to make the Kickstarter a little bit different, I am the the box that people will get with the Kickstarter is going to have more things in it. If you order the book from Amazon it comes from Amazon printed through Amazon and you don't get any of the extras. I will be setting up my own store and so that comes with its own thing when you sell directly. I can do more things but then getting people to buy from you directly is almost as hard as getting them to Kickstarter. It's always easier to just send people to Amazon because we trust Amazon. That's how it is, right? So I will be doing a pre -order for Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Kobo and I'm kind of excited that I have like 90 % of the work

on that already done. And I personally did not have a lot of anxiety during the Kickstarter. I had a lot of emails already done. It doesn't bother me to send updates. I do have to say to be transparent again it lulled pretty quickly so I had a lot of like orders in the very beginning and then it got to 49 % and like stayed there for the first weekend and then it sort of inched up and then it stayed at like 58 % and then it stagnated at like 78 % and then all of a sudden it funded. So for almost two weeks, I was like, I don't know if this is gonna fund, honestly. I think it funded on the 10th day or so, maybe 11th. And so that was a bit more than anxiety. I think I was like, oh, this is gonna be embarrassing if this doesn't fund. And I think I could have worked through that if it doesn't fund. You in the end, I've done things where people haven't shown up. I've done things where it just didn't work out. And so, I was already prepping myself to be like, you know what? You're just gonna have to... Like it didn't fund and it's not a big deal. And so, I was already sort of counseling myself through it. And then all of a sudden it funded and I was like, oh, okay. Okay, it funded. Oh, well that's good. Now, I

have to counsel myself anymore. So I just, I do want to say like, that's normal. You might go through that. Contemporary fiction is a bit rougher than sci -fi fantasy on Kickstarter. I would set up and, you know, sort of really ask people to share. Some people, just like anything, when you ask people to share, some people share and some people don't. Um, I would give yourself some time. Your first one, unless you're, you know, unless you're running around trying to, and get like 200 followers, which is fine. And that's possible. It really depends on your personality and on your list and the fans that you have already. Um, your first one probably won't fund in four hours and it probably won't get that sticker of projects we love you know from Kickstarter because you're just you don't know what you don't know until you're in it right and so some people don't fund and that's okay and again mine I felt like mine wasn't going to fund for a while so just be I would advise to be prepared for that if something like that really pushes your anxiety level I would do it as a group Again, you'll have that much broader of a base of followers, you'll have the work will be spread out more, you can sort of lift each other up throughout it. So yeah, this really depends on your personality. So in the end, I will be doing Kickstarter again. I really like it. I think it fits my personality really well. I learn more when I'm in the middle of something and so I have already adjusted things for myself. I have sort of noted down how I react and what I want to do next and how I would work it out. My strategy, my strategic just doesn't see things and can't, you know, connect the dots until I'm

doing it and so for me it works out really well. Again, like I'm excited to have all the things done for launch, like 90 % of it done. So that come August and September, all I got to do is start telling people that the pre -order is there, right? And like the books are coming out on the retailers. So I'm excited about that. I was like once, even before it funded. So as it started creeping up, once it hit 58, I was like, oh, it might, might actually fund. Okay. I actually started writing another book and part of that was like to distract myself. I also will say I did a hardcore workout like every day leading up to it and during this to sort of alleviate the mental stress that I was going through. So through February, I think I had more stress in February just like making sure things were in place things and things weren't getting into place as As I wanted them to and so that caused me a little bit of stress like just the book blurb here and getting things back from certain people

Wasn't coming down exactly how I wanted it to come down and so I had already planned to do a pretty hard workout routine Um, so if that's kind of how you deal with stress, I would, I would figure out how you deal with stress and really, um, implement that into your schedule. It definitely took away from the other things that I could do. Right. But I think that it overall helps me mentally stick through it and get through it and come out a little bit clear. Doesn't mean that I didn't have like moments of like, Oh my gosh, this isn't going to fund and that's embarrassing.

Of course I had those moments, but I think it would have been worse if I hadn't put in place a plan to manage my stress day to day. Okay, so just giving, giving that, putting that out there. So yes, I will be doing it again. I'm very excited about it. I think that it is something that you should check out. I wouldn't just go and like set it up now, but I think that you should learn about it, check it out, watch some, maybe back a few and see how it happens, see what their updates are, sort of educate yourself on it and see if it was gonna work for you. And as always for all of these things I think just keeping an open mind to the possibilities of using things other than the retailers to sell your books is a good idea. Alright so I went a bit longer than I thought. If you guys have questions you can always reach out to me on Twitter or x whatever at pencils lipstick or on Instagram it's Kat Caldwell author or pencils and lipstick all spelled out I'm also on Facebook and you can find me there definitely sign up for my newsletters below and you'll get even more information about how the writers one talks about more the business and the craft of writing and my readers newsletter will always tell you what I am reading and the books that I I'm working on. So next week we're back to interviews. We have a lot of interviews leading up into summer that I'm really excited about. So I will see you then.