Now here’s an interesting twist on book promotion. Let’s say you have a great idea for a book project, but you don’t have a publisher or cash for hiring an editor or marketing firm. What to do?
Author Lee Carlson posted his book project on a startup Web site, KickStarter.com. The site is ostensibly for raising money to fund creative projects, but it does much more than that. Lee has raised more than $10,000 from 82 backers to self-publish and promote his book. Each backer receives a copy of the book and becomes an evangelist for the book. Everyone who joins in the project has an instant connection, an emotional bond to helping launch the book.
Kickstarter works like eBay, on a deadline basis. (Lee’s project still has 16 days to go, in case you’re interested). He expects to get several more backers before the deadline is up. He’s linked the KickStarter page with other traditional social media like Facebook. Kickstarter has an entire category devoted to writing and publishing, and several authors are doing the same thing.
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4 Comments
Steve,
What do you think about this sort of thing? I’m of two thoughts.
1) Great idea, gets people to buy into your enterprise early on that may not want/need what you’re selling, yada yada..
2) Kind of seems like begging, but no more than seeking just seeking out venture capital
OK, I’m leaning to #1 now.
Thoughts?
John,
From a marketing point of view, I think it’s brilliant. The more people you can get to talk about your book, the better.
From an investing point of view, you’d have to look at it very skeptically because I’m sure the failure rate for first-time publishers is greater than 95 percent, and that includes the ones with talent and a good book. So even if you’re investing in someone who looks very credible and talented, the odds of success aren’t good.
Whenever someone asks for my publishing advice, I say to spend your available funds on things like cover design and editing, not traditional marketing. My guess is that the vast majority of money spent on book marketing is simply wasted. You’re better off just trying to generate word of mouth through good old-fashioned elbow grease.
I need to learn more about this and how it works. For instance, do the backers then share in the proceeds from book sales? I am assuming so. Thanks for this article. I will research this more thoroughly.
How did you get so many backers though? I have put up 2 projects just recently and I cant get any play at all. It seems like there just so many of millions of projects now that kickstarter has become mainstream. Any help is greatly appriecieted!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2075220129/the-wrong-time
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2075220129/saddle-in-the-night