It was 7th June 2013 when I decided to look into crowdfunding for my planned self published book. My crowdfunding campaign ended successfully on 20th August 2013. I held my first book in my hands on 29th November 2013. As of today (9th December 2013), I have sold almost 400 copies of the 1000 book print run. Not bad for six months work considering I had only written 10,000 words by 7th June. I hasten to add that I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that tight a deadline!
Why You Should Crowdfund
- Increases the brand awareness of your book – however, you do need to be active on social media to achieve this.
- If your crowdfunding gets press coverage, not only might it result in more pledges, it will also help you increase sales when your book does come out.
- People feel they are part of the journey and it is as though they have purchased a gift for themselves. I funded a book some time ago and it is due any day. I’m really looking forward to its arrival and seeing what it turned out like.
- It gives you a deadline. If you are like me, a deadline really makes you focus and get things done. My deadline was so tight I did end up putting pressure on myself but it worked. You promise your pledgers you will produce the book by a certain date and you have to do your best to adhere to that.
- Part of your publishing costs (printing, editor, illustrator, website) are covered by the crowdfunding so there is less risk in printing your first print run of 500 or 1000 copies.
- It gives you a great start in sales. 225 books were pledged for in my crowdfunding campaign which gave it a huge boost.
- Your pledgers become your ambassadors, they are excited to see your work and if they like it, they will tweet about it. I’ve had pledgers sending me glowing feedback by twitter, taking photos of the book and sharing them on twitter and facebook.
- Book Blog Tour – I had forged good blogging contacts during my crowdfunding campaign and asked these bloggers to take part in a Virtual Book Tour whereby each of them reviewed my book or interviewed me within a blog post for a different day of the week, resulting in six dedicated blog posts, all linking to my website.
- When people see your story in the papers again (and the successful crowdfunding adds an additional good news element to your story) it will jog their memories and encourage them to purchase.
If you have a book inside you and you want to write it, I really recommend that you start blogging to gauge the response to your writing as well as building up your community. When the time is right, crowdfunding provides a wonderful vehicle for funding your book and testing the market.
