Wanna raise money for a book on Kickstarter?
We’ve seen so many different successful crowdfunding campaigns in the publishing category. Authors that end up raising five and six figures online. Wild!
I’ve had several of these authors on my show, like Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, and you can hear directly from them that what they’re doing isn’t all special.
Anyone out there can raise money for a book on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or another crowdfunding website. You just gotta have the right fundraising strategy and you gotta hustle.
With this article, I want to get into some of the tips that I have for any author out there looking to raise money for a publishing project. This will help speed up the process and keep you away from major pitfalls.
1. Where The Funding Comes From
When raising money for a publishing project, it’s easy to get side tracked and spend your money and time on things that don’t actually drive backers to your Kickstarter campaign.
I want to be super clear about where funding comes from when we’re talking about a crowdfunding campaign for a growing or emerging author. Your funds will come from:
- Your social network. Posting on FB, doing status updates, sharing on Instagram, and of course, directly messaging people will yield pledges.
- Your second degree connections. These are people who are friends of friends. They connect with the message that you are trying to spread with the book.
- Your existing tribe. These are the people who have bought your work before or connect with the message that you’ve been trying to spread.
- Media attention. People who read or hear about you from blogs, influencers, podcasts, etc.
- Kickstarter. You’ll be able to attract people who regularly back projects on Kickstarter if you have the right appeal.
You can learn about more sources of pledges in my book, the Kickstarter Launch Formula. For a limited time, you can get a free copy here with a free trial of Audible.
2. The Authors That Do Well
Typically, I find that the authors that do well on Kickstarter are willing to adopt a business owner mindset. You can’t just be a content creator. You also gotta be a marketer.
This means being willing to do things like spend money on advertising, coaches, PR, and help leading up to the launch of your campaign. You can’t do it all yourself.
It’s hard to do at first, but by delegating, you’ll be able to pull off a book launch that creates a splash for your name, the story, and impacts the lives of hundreds or thousands of people.
Great work is done in teams.
3. Build Your Social Following
There’s no question about it, social media is critical to your success. You gotta build your social following leading up to the launch of your Kickstarter campaign.
You might not use social media personally, but you’d be an idiot if you didn’t use it in your business. After all, that’s where your readers are hanging out!
Here are a few quick things you an do to start building your following:
- Post regularly. The more frequently you post, the more likely you are to develop a following.
- Be useful or entertaining. People don’t know you, so the only way they’ll follow you is if it benefits them in some way.
- Find your network. You don’t have to be on every network. My snapchat following sucks. Find the ones that are a good fit for your brand. Invest in that.
- Images, video, and stories. These are the types of content that get noticed and get attention on social media.
4. Create Eagerness and Anticipation
You want to make it so that when someone comes to your crowdfunding page, they are already sold on you, the story, and the project. They just gotta back it.
An easy way to do this is to tease the project before it goes live. This helps to create anticipation that “something is coming” and “it’s gonna be awesome.”
Your followers will start to tune into the major big announcement that is coming their way. You’ll get more eyeballs when you eventually do go live on Kickstarter.
5. Hire a Crowdfunding Coach
Literally, this is the #1 thing that you can do to ensure your success on Kickstarter.
Now, this coach doesn’t have to be me, but having someone help you with your launch will certainly pay off when you go live. Personally, I’ve seen so many campaigns that I know what works and what doesn’t.
A good coach will do things like:
- Strategic promotion. Set up a marketing plan for you so that you’ll traffic and attention.
- Email marketing. Help to get your messages right so you get instant funding
- Facebook advertising. Weigh on on whether or not this is a must for your project and which paid marketing avenues you should go down.
- Video and pitch review. Look through your video and pitch with a fine-toothed comb to ensure that it converts visitors into backers.
- Hook you up. Connect you with influencers, others in the industry, and service providers.
- Set you at ease. Answer all the questions that you have about the process and how your launch will perform (how much you can expect to raise).
If you’d like to bring me on as your coach, you can get started by answering this crowdfunding questionnaire.
6. Promote With These Websites
After you go live, you gotta get the word out there are about your new project or campaign. This is a must!
I’ve put together a few websites that you can use to accomplish this. I hope that they help you reach your goals.
Remember that PR is also a very important component of a crowdfunding launch. I recommend looking into these websites.
When all is said and done, you don’t want to look back wishing that you had done MORE when you were live. You gotta give it your all if you want to surpass your fundraising goal.
7. Up-sells and Making the Most of Kickstarter
Once you’re on Kickstarter or you’ve finished a campaign, that’s when the fun begins. It gives you tremendous leverage. Let me explain…
You can use this time when you’re live to increase the funding to your project by announcing add-ons, stretch goals, and ways that backers can get more involved.
You can also continue to sell your product after Kickstarter using things like InDemand or BackerKit. There are a lot of ways to capitalize on a crowdfunding campaign. Make the most of it.
Ask yourself how you can deliver more value to your existing supporters and benefit their lives even more.
Hope you enjoyed this article and if you want more content like this, you can subscribe to my email newsletter down below for some free killer crowdfunding tips.
