Don’t
worry, though. I'll still publish the book, hopefully later this year in time
for Christmas. But, I won't be able to print up any cool posters of the cover
art. Too bad. I was looking forward to sending out Igor's great artwork to the
suppporters.
(If you'd still like to help, the best way to do that is to post reviews of my books on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, Goodreads, and so on.)
Anyway,
I had some very good suggestions on how to create a better Kickstarter project,
which you can read in the comments for this previous post.
One
side effect of the project as that I was able to sell several copies of DeadDwarves Don't Dance to people who read my Kickstarter project.
The
project ran from June 2 to July 2, and I used Amazon Associates links back to
my Dead Dwarves Don't Dance book page in the project page. Based on the Associates
report, I earned $5.21 in advertising fees over that period and also sold 9
copies of Dead Dwarves Don't Dance. That's the best free advertising I ever
experienced.
So,
even though I didn’t raise the money, I hopefully did get a few more fans.
Now,
for those authors out there who are considering Kickstarter, here are some
things I learned:
1. Successful projects seem to
have more updates. So update at least once a week to keep people's interest. I
didn't do this, and it probably hurt me.
2. Build a larger community before
you setup your project. I have 172 followers here on my blog, 77 twitter
followers, and 53 Facebook friends. There is probably a bunch of overlap
between all these. But, still, 172
followers were not enough to garner enough pledges. So, if you're an author
with fewer than a couple hundred people in your hardcore fan base, I wouldn't
expect to earn more than $500, so set your Kickstarter goal appropriately.
If
any other writer out there has setup a Kickstarter project and has differing
opinions, go ahead and comment below! I'm just one person with one project
under my belt, so I could be very wrong.
