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Nink Knowledge | Tactical Crowdfunding: Using Kickstarter for Quick Capital

This article by M.C.A. Hogarth is from the March 2019 edition of Nink, the monthly newsletter of Novelists, Inc.  (NINC). Nink, which is packed each month with informative articles for career novelists, is a benefit of NINC membership. 

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Most people know about Kickstarter, the website where creators crowdfund their projects to the tune of thousands of dollars, and for the most part we’ve heard about the outrageous successes (and the devastating failures). These stories paint Kickstarter as a “go big or go home” platform, which obscures one of its most useful functions: arranging for small infusions of capital, quickly. Would it be nice for us to swing one of those $100,000 campaigns? Sure, but who has the time to manage several thousand backers’ products? We’re too busy writing. But that doesn’t mean you need to pay for the small-to-medium expenses of your career on your own.

What kind of things am I talking about?

  • Putting your backlist in print again (or in ebook for the first time).
  • Getting a new cover designed for some of your backlist works.
  • Buying audio editions of your work.
  • Writing that niche novella you can’t justify otherwise.
  • Getting fun merchandise done for in-person events.

Most of us have some loose ends we’d like to tie up. Why not enlist your fans’ help? You can do it with the right kind of Kickstarter campaign.

Think small

First, ask for the least amount of money you can get away with. The formula is this: Amount I Need to Buy the Thing I’m Raising For + Amount I Need to Fulfill Prizes + 20 percent of that total for fees and taxes + another 20 percent for profit. (You need to pay yourself.)

Your total goal should be under $2,000; if it’s not, you’re out of the ‘quick and dirty’ Kickstarter range and into the ‘I need to take this a lot more seriously’ department. If your goal can’t be achieved in under $2,000, then you have three choices: (1) pick something else that does come in under that goal; (2) run the project intending to fulfill only some of your expenses, and (3) pay the rest out of your pocket; or retool to run a major campaign. (Which I don’t recommend. Write another book instead.)

The best way to keep things small is to limit your prizes and your tiers—that minimizes your mental overhead when it’s time to figure out who gets what. Most of your prizes should be virtual and cheap to deliver: wallpapers, ebooks, emailed cut scenes, cameos, names listed in the backs of the books, etc. Get creative; anything you can do once and reproduce infinitely is good! Are you good at singing? Send an MP3! Like talking to people on camera? Give them a backer-only video. Reserve physical prizes for very high tiers, and limit their numbers. Don’t get trapped into shipping several hundred hardcovers; have one tier for 10 autographed books and charge more for them.

Don’t feel bad about fewer tiers. Tell your backers that you’re streamlining so that everyone gets what they backed for as quickly as possible. So many Kickstarter projects never send their awards that if you do so consistently, you will be lauded for it.

Think quick

Don’t let these campaigns drag on. A well-run campaign needs daily attention, plus you’re going to be burning time fulfilling prizes. One to two weeks is good; generally the more money you’re asking—the longer you need. But there’s a point of diminishing returns: it’s hard to sustain backer excitement over three or four weeks, so don’t try.

The moment you hit your goal (and it might be fast!), start to work on those prizes so you can get them out the door as quickly as possible. You don’t want your responsibility to your campaign to linger any longer than necessary.

Think minimalist

One of Kickstarter’s features is the ability to offer stretch goals: additional prizes that get “unlocked” when the campaign hits a certain goal over and above the one needed for a successful campaign. These stretch goals give backers a reason to keep throwing money at the project. Usually creators promise things like more merchandise, extra gifts, another story—the possibilities are endless. Which is exactly why you shouldn’t declare too many. Stretch goals are a good way to overextend yourself. Pick one or two that won’t take much time or effort and don’t be tempted to add more as your totals go up. You’re not aiming for “most money possible” because that usually entails “most effort possible.” You’re aiming for “most money possible for the least amount of effort, so I can stay focused on my core business. Which is writing. Not fulfilling Kickstarter prizes.”

I usually pick one or two stretch goals, and tie them into something I want to do anyway, and can resell later, like cut scenes or bonus short fiction I can bundle later into a collection for retail.

I didn’t fund!

There are a lot of reasons a Kickstarter might not fund, but most of them boil down to “my goal didn’t match up with my audience.” (It’s a lot like writing a successful novel that way.) But here are the most common problems:

  • You didn’t tell your fans. They can’t fund your project if they don’t know about it, and you should give them some advance warning so they can plan their budgets. (I usually tell mine a month in advance, and hit up all my major social media/newsletter/chat outlets before and during the campaign.)
  • You didn’t keep the project alive. You should plan to post an update to your project every day it’s active, and then regularly after closing, especially until you’re done sending out prizes. Don’t just talk about the campaign’s progress; have a list of topics related to your project. If it’s a book, you can talk about how you came up with the characters, or share photographs of the place the book’s set, or discuss forensics—whatever seems relevant. If it’s a side project, like merchandise, you can talk about the process of hiring artists, or what your vision was, or ask fans for suggestions on how to use the results. (Asking your fans things in these posts is a great way to promote engagement.)
  • You asked for too much money in too little time for the number of fans you have. Keep in mind 95 percent of your money’s going to come from your existing fanbase, not from people “discovering” you on Kickstarter: the amount you can raise is going to be limited by that number. If you have one hundred fans, don’t ask them for $2,000, ask for $250. Likewise, don’t ask people for $2,000 in five days (unless you have several thousand fans). The amount you can raise and the time you can do it in are directly related to how many people you can mobilize, so use that to set your expectations.
  • Something about your prizes wasn’t compelling. Best way to fix this problem is to ask your fans what they want—and what they find uninteresting. Mine keep telling me they love bookmarks, for instance, and aren’t very interested in patches, so I keep producing bookmarks!

It may take you a few tries to get the formula down. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t figure it out immediately. Use Kickstarter’s search engine to find other (successfully funded) writer projects and see how they handled it. (Here’s my profile if you want to see mine: https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/mcahogarth/created). Take notes. Listen to your fans, too; they’ll tell you what they’re willing to pay for, and how often. They want to help you! So let them!

Do it again

Did it work? Excellent. Do it again. One of the side effects of a good Kickstarter campaign is that it gives your fans something fun to get worked up about. They like helping you accomplish something; they enjoy watching the totals rise and unlocking your one or two stretch goals. Don’t let this tool rust now that you’ve mastered it … any time you’ve got a small project that could use some capital, use Kickstarter for a quick injection. Have fun with it!

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M.C.A. Hogarth is a former vice president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and the author of over 40 novels in the genres of fantasy, science fiction, and romance. She is also a professional visual artist, doodles cartoon jaguars for fun, and has written a book about Kickstarter.

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Nink Knowledge: Advanced Author Branding

This article by Nicole Evelina is from the February 2019 edition of Nink, the monthly newsletter of Novelists, Inc.  (NINC). Nink, which is packed each month with informative articles for career novelists, is a benefit of NINC membership. 

In the October 2017 Nink newsletter, I covered the basics of author branding—from internal aspects like mission statements and core values, to external elements such as taglines, colors and fonts—and how they influence your book themes, website, swag, etc. Now I’d like to take that a step further.

Believe it or not, your brand can and should influence everything you do, or as a lot of experts say, you should “be the brand.” Now, this doesn’t mean being inauthentic; if you’ve done the work in your basic branding, it should already reflect who you are. This is just taking it to the next level. Your brand should be reflected in:

What you wear
You only get one chance to make a first impression, right? When you’re at an event, a reader should be able to look at you from across the room and gauge your brand. Most of the time, that doesn’t mean wearing a costume (but you can, more on that later). It’s all about purposefully choosing your clothing based on the message you want to convey.

On the minimal side of things, think about incorporating your brand colors in your outfit or makeup or wear a shirt with your book cover or logo on it. If you want to go a step further, you might think about what kind of clothing would appeal to or make you fit in with your audience. For example, a YA author would likely wear something more casual and fun and a non-fiction business author would wear a suit. I know an author who is very open about writing erotica and she dresses in revealing outfits and red lipstick to compliment her brand. It’s a perfect fit for her, but it wouldn’t be right for me because the heat level in my books isn’t nearly spicy enough. It would be false representation for me to dress that way.

If you want to go all out, you can dress like your characters. I know several steampunk authors who regularly show up to events in full costume. Whimsical children’s author Sheri Fink attends events in colorful wigs and sometimes dresses as a unicorn or mermaid, per her brand and characters. Leanna Renee Hieber actually lives her brand by wearing Victorian/gothic dresses all the time, even when she is not at an event, and by leading spirit tours of New York. It is just who she is.

You might also consider adopting a trademark visual as part of your brand, especially if it appears in one of your books. For example, the ouroboros is important in Deborah Harkness’s All Souls Trilogy, so she wears a necklace with one on it to her events, which allows her to connect with fans in a different way. Similarly, Joanna Penn has recently adopted an octopus bracelet she often wears to events. It’s unusual enough to be eye-catching and memorable, it’s obviously symbolic of something she likes, plus it ties into her book Desecration. Author Laini Taylor is known for her bright pink hair, which fits with her being a YA fantasy author.

Your event booth/table
When you have a designated area to sell books and/or promote yourself at an event, your brand should be center stage. Your stand-up banners and table banner should reflect your colors and fonts, as should the items you place on your table, which should tie into your books. Oversize items, things that shine or sparkle or are interactive are all great attention getters. Like Penn’s bracelet, if you can make them odd, they will serve as a great conversation starter and a natural segue into talking about your books.

This is especially true if an item seemingly contradicts your brand and makes a passerby ask, “Why do you have XYZ on your table?” Take an author whose brand is light in color and tone, yet she has a big sugar skull on her table. On first glance, those two things don’t seem to go together. But perhaps when you ask about it, she explains her book takes place in Mexico during Dia de los Muertos, or her characters are of Mexican heritage and really love the feast. Perhaps this is her opportunity to educate on the holiday being a joyous festival (as reflected in her books), rather than the spooky/evil time often associated with Halloween. That’s a connection a reader won’t soon forget, even if they didn’t buy her book.

Additional ways your brand will be reflected in your events include:

  • Interaction – The way you interact with people ties back in to your internal branding. Are you open to answering questions? Do you pose for pictures with fans and engage them in conversation? Or are you more standoffish? Some authors will sign books for hours, while others refuse to ever give an autograph.
  • Hashtags – Hashtag mentions and brand impressions on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram can easily show fans and followers what they’re missing and get them engaged even if they can’t attend.
  • Giveaways – Make sure they tie into your brand and your books. Giveaways that have thought and symbolism behind them are special to fans and give you another chance to connect with people as you explain their meaning.

Where you speak/appear and the topics
Obviously what you write and the opportunities you are given will be the driving factors in the events you attend, but your brand should factor in as well. For example, I’m a feminist and it shows in my writing, so you aren’t likely to see me at conservative functions; it’s just not a fit. Likewise, while my books have light fantasy in them, I may not be the best person for a convention that focuses on high fantasy and science fiction.

What you speak about should also reflect your core values as an author and the themes in your books. Sheri Fink speaks about courage, never giving up, and having fun every day, no matter what life throws at you—themes found in her books and also in her story as an author. If she were to attend an event and be serious and stern and speak in monotone, yet you pick up one of her books and it is all bright and cheery, you’d feel the disconnect, even if she was talking about raising brave children.

Do we really need all of this?|
You may be thinking this is overkill, and you may be right. But the purpose of a brand is to help readers distinguish you from other authors. They need to know what to expect; it’s a promise you make to them. All of these things tie into that promise and help strengthen it.

It’s up to you whether you just dip a toe into advanced branding or jump in with both feet. Neither way is right nor wrong. But I have personally found that every little bit helps.

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Nicole Evelina is a historical fiction, non-fiction, and women’s fiction author whose six books have won three Book of the Year designations. Her fiction tells the stories of strong women from history and today, focusing on biographical historical fiction, while her non-fiction focuses on women’s history, specifically little-known figures.

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Nink Knowledge: You Thought You Knew What Being a Hybrid Means?

This article by Patricia Burroughs is from the January 2019 edition of Nink, the monthly newsletter of Novelists, Inc.  (NINC). Nink, which is packed each month with informative articles for career novelists, is a benefit of NINC membership. 

One of the great benefits of being a NINC member is access to the wealth of knowledge and experience available in the NINCLINK email loop from writers of all different backgrounds. Recently someone presented a confusing question, “What is a hybrid publisher?”

Most of us know what hybrid authors are. But it took some Googling to discover that there actually is such a thing as a hybrid publisher.

It primarily boils down to financial risk, and who is taking it.

Until the 21st Century, most publishing was what we now call traditional publishing. The publishers took all the financial risks from editing, to publishing, to marketing, to shipping. And the author usually got paid an advance up front!

The opposite of traditional publishing was vanity publishing. These publishers fed off a writer’s vanity (or more likely, desperation) and promised the sky—but the author had to pay all the publisher’s expenses, plus more, and then ended up with boxes of books to market and ship. Vanity publishing was rarely a good idea and almost always ended in frustration for the author.

But after the turn of this century, authors gained the power and ability to skip the traditional publishers and publish their own work profitably. Yes, self-publishing.

We all know the term “hybrid author” as a writer who combines both publishing paths in her or his career. Publishing has evolved its own hybrid, not to be confused with “hybrid authors” any more than it should be with “hybrid cars” or pluots, a hybrid of plums and apricots.

A hybrid publisher is a publisher that—in a perfect world—brings a lot of value to the table that the author usually can’t provide. Namely? Marketing and sales through established access and relationships with libraries, schools, and brick-and-mortar stores.

But it’s not that easy.

One reason there are so many definitions and descriptions of hybrid publishers is because they have widely different business models. Also, different companies that range from legitimate to scammers are using the term.

It’s up to writers to know what to look for and what to avoid.

The simplest and most accurate definition of hybrid publishers is that they combine aspects of traditional publishing with aspects of self-publishing.

In general, the author often provides the book and the money to cover editorial and production costs. This is usually far more than the typical self-published author pays for the same services, even if they hire them done. Thus it’s even more important that the publisher can hold up its side of the bargain.

The publisher provides the knowledge and experience to publish and market the book. This can include providing developmental editors with a background that matches the author and book, as well as later editing, professional layout and covers, and of course—selling books.

How do you get this magic on your team? You pay high publishing expenses up front and then split the royalties with the hybrid publisher, hopefully at least 50/50. Unless your financial investment is low, anything less than 50/50 is not a good deal.

So the author pays huge expenses up front. How is this any different from a vanity press? The publisher should then market and sell the book with a vastly wider reach than the given author could do alone.

This sometimes works.

Let’s just accept that sometimes this actually works out satisfactorily for the author who earns back initial expenses and more. Some hybrid publishers can point to at least a few true successes and connect a prospective client to authors who are willing to recommend said publisher. (If not, it does not bode well to assume that with your book they will suddenly break through and sell thousands or tens of thousands of books when they haven’t before, no matter how flattering it feels to be told your book is special, ‘the one’ they have been waiting for.)

So, again, hybrid publishing can be a good deal. But in all actuality? It’s a long shot.

Beginning with—there is no association or body to monitor or penalize hybrid publishers who are simply vanity presses with a clean, unblemished new term to call themselves.

An author interested in hybrid publishing has a lot of research ahead. Here are some questions to ask and things to investigate.

Are their books editorially curated?

Do they have a gatekeeper and standards a book must meet or do they take anyone who sends them a submission?

Do they provide sound, professional editorial support?

Do they provide developmental editing, copyediting, proofreading, and all the steps expected from a reputable traditional publisher?

Do they produce quality books you’d be proud to have your name on?

How do you know? Read as many free samples on Amazon and elsewhere as you can find. If those pass muster, buy some in digital and print, if the publisher does both. Read complete books to see if they maintain the quality you expect. Hold actual print books in your hands and don’t just read them. Compare them to good traditionally published books.

Do they provide a higher than standard royalty since you are subsidizing production of the book?

Assuming the author investment is significant (as it seems to be in most if not all cases) that should be at least a 50/50 split of net royalties.

What rights does the publisher want to claim?

As publishers, they may want more than you want to give. An important question is, do they exercise all the rights they want to keep? Do they actually create quality audiobooks that are selling and getting good reviews (or at least no bad reviews) on sites like Audible? Do they actually market print books to libraries, schools, stores, etc.? If the answer to these or similar questions is no, it’s incredibly difficult to justify a publisher keeping them, no matter what traditional publishers might do. You have more clout in this situation than you do with a traditional publisher. Carefully consider whether you want to let them sit on your subsidiary rights, hoping someday they’ll be able to use them—or better, that they’ll be worth something because of your later success (which may have little to do with this particular book or anything this publisher did).

Perhaps one of the most important questions is what do they offer in terms of marketing and distribution?

Does the publisher have an actual print catalog of their books? Do their books get reviewed in PW, Library Journal, or specific publications and websites that have an authoritative voice and reach in your book’s genre or niche?

Do they have an actual marketing or sales team that will be actively attempting to sell your book, in the way you would expect a traditional publisher to do? Do they buy ads in places that count or promote their list in other ways? Do they have a marketing and sales strategy for your books? Did they and/or their sales team come from marketing at a reputable publisher in your genre or niche? If not, how are they going to be able to sell more books than you can on your own? Being able to point to books in an Ingram online catalog is not proof of their connections. You can do the same thing yourself. Being in the catalog means your book is available for books, libraries, and bookstores to order. But if the publisher can’t actually stimulate sales, how are they holding up their part?

Remember…

A hybrid publisher should bring a lot of value to the table that the author can’t provide. That means not just producing books but selling them.

A publisher that isn’t every bit as vested in making money from your book as you are is a publisher whose business model is based on getting money from writers.

There is no standard definition of a hybrid publisher, what they offer, or what expenses they expect the author to cover. Do your homework and you may find that special situation that will actually make a positive difference to you. Just remember that in this, like many aspects of publishing (whether traditional or self-pub), the odds aren’t in your favor until you’ve done your due diligence and made smart choices.

The IBPA (International Book Publishers Association) has a helpful and informative webpage with downloads, which states their IBPA Hybrid Publisher Criteria and details the IBPA’s “Industry Standards Checklist for a Professionally Published Book.”

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Patricia Burroughs is a Screenwriting Fellow of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, an award-winning romance writer, and in this phase of her career writes SFF. The last book in her YA Dark Fantasy series, The Fury Triad, will be published in late 2019. Her first cozy mystery, Mourning Chorus, will be published by Sweet Promise Press November 30, 2018.

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