I want to share with you an experiment I am running in marketing my next novel. And potentially for all my books after this one, fiction and non-fiction.
My goal is to share the process, warts and all, to encourage you to think creatively on how you can sell and market your books.
My intention is to model creative leadership and entrepreneurship.
This year for me is all about shifting my focus to sell more books and create more products, and doing a Kickstarter campaign fits nicely with the first goal.
Kickstarter for Authors!
My intention for the project: I want to use a fun way to launch this next book especially because I want to celebrate that it is the end of a four-book cycle.
While I do intend to write books in this mystery series, these first four books were written as an ensemble and I want to celebrate the combination of this work.
I also want to earn money with this launch and if I design it correctly, I will earn money with this Kickstarter.
If you’re not familiar with Kickstarter, it is a crowdfunding site, that manages and helps you manage raising money from ordinary people who believe in your project and who want your finished project.
Kickstarter creators launch all kinds of products, including technical books, art, novels, comic books, penknives, music, films, food and crafts, and games.
Kickstarter is quite popular in United States, so has a built-in audience to a certain extent, if I can take advantage of it.
Why am I using Kickstarter and not Indiegogo the other popular crowdfunding service?
The stage I'm in: the very beginning stages, the preparation stage, the pre-launch stage.
To that end I have put a Coming Soon page up. You can check that out here:
Super minimal. This page only has a headline, a short sentence, and an image. Plus a cool button that says "Notify Me on Launch." Kickstarter automatically puts the launch button there.
{Imagine: an image of a rocket taking off here!}
There are many other things I need to do in the pre-launch stage:
- Build out my reward tiers. (So many decisions.)
- Write my landing page, which has many sections, but I will explain when I get there once I do it!
- Outline the many emails I need to send to market my campaign once I launch on March 1.
- Also outline and start drafting emails that I need to during the pre-launch phase. (This email is the first of that sequence to writers. I'm also writing pre-lauch emails to my readers. You can sign up here to see what I send readers.)
- Make a video for the launch page. Well, first outline the video. (Do I really need a video?)
- Continue to network with my allies with whom I will cross promote. (Russell created a Facebook group for us and it's busy!)
- Study the course material that explains all the steps I need to do.
I’ll keep you posted of my steps over the next 4 weeks as I prepare this launch.
You get a front-row seat of what’s working, what’s hard, and what my results are.
Let me know if you have any thoughts, questions, or request for clarification.
Does doing a Kickstarter appeal to you? Have you used crowdfunding for your fiction? If so, how did it go?
Thanks!
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