How To Push Past $14,000+ on Your First Fiction Kickstarter Project

The first few seconds of the live, like right now. Hello everyone, we're live again with the Kickstart Your Book Sales podcast. So as people are joining us, um, I just want to give you an update. So Russell is at SDCC this week, uh, San Diego Comic-Con, for those of you who didn't know, which I am one of those people who did not know what that stood for for a long time. So happy to share that with you. And we're here in lieu of Russell, we're here with Daniel Potter. So Daniel Potter, he did a Kickstarter recently called the Freelance Familiars box set. It did very, very well on Kickstarter. It closed at, let me check, $14,665 from 190 backers, which is incredibly impressive. And he's also in the Kickstarter Accelerator. So that's how we knew about his campaign and kind of got a bit of the behind the scenes from him. So we get to ask him all of our questions. So if you are watching this from Facebook, make sure that you connect your Facebook account to StreamYard, and that way we can see who we're talking to in the comments. Otherwise, you can just comment on the video and ask your questions. Daniel is happy to answer them. And so we would love to answer some questions from people about how he did this campaign. So, Daniel, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself?

Sure. I am a full-time author. I've been full-time since 2020, um, when I quit my job in molecular biology research. Uh, my spouse bought a house in, uh, a cheaper house in Oregon, and I've been trying to make it work since. And while I am full-time, um, and I do make income, I couldn't do it without my spouse. So I want to be just honest about that. I've been writing. My first book was, uh, published book was Off Leash, and that was published in 2015. And while I was working the day job, I published about one book a year, uh, and it's— they're strange books. I don't write to market, so I feel I'm a very good fit in terms of like publishing weird books, you should go to Kickstarter for that. Um, uh, see, and I had been thinking about, uh, doing Kickstarter for a long time, but I've always also been chasing, you know, Amazon money. I'm mostly, uh, I've done wide. I am right now pretty much entirely in KU until recently, where I pulled out all my Freelance Familiars books from KU. I have 3 series. Freelance Familiars is the first, and it's about a guy who gets turned into a mountain lion, and it's an urban fantasy. So it's a perspective of all those, you know, standard magical, hidden magical worlds, but from the perspective of a 200-pound cat. And all his friends are the other familiars and trying to crusade against a rather unfair system for talking animals.

So that sounds really cool. That's awesome.

So it's fun. Everyone loves Rudy, who is a squirrel who likes to blow things up.

And this is like Saturday morning cartoons. I'm just thinking of like Wile E.

Coyote morning cartoons, but with kind of like this grim edge to it, because I, I always like exploring consequences. I'm really not good at like episodic things where, okay, let's go back to the status quo. I am super terrible at that. And so things always just keep on stacking each other, stacking on and on with each other.

So this is like how they wound up in a casino in Vegas by—

in the later books, and, you know, blowing up landmarks and all that stuff.

Well, that sounds super fun. Um, so the campaign was on Kickstarter. We'll bring it up.

I'm just trying to unblur my camera.

Oh yeah, no, I have— I've had, um, a couple things you said, uh, I've had trouble with blurred cameras before as well. It's just, I feel like it's just a thing with, uh, With StreamYard, camera does it all the time, and sometimes I can—

usually I can turn it off and turn it back on and it fixes it, but it's not this time. So anyway, so that's my first series. My second series was attempt— my attempt, my first attempt to follow the algorithms where like, drag, put a, put a cup, put a dragon on it and it will sit. And so I did the The Rise of the Horned Serpent, and that was a— tried to rapid release and do all the things, and they were supposed to be way shorter than they were. I took 2 years and rapid released, kind of, and it bombed so hard.

Such a bummer.

Um, I— and then my third series, Full Moon Medic, um I want it to do kind of werewolfy stuff, but without like kind of following some urban fantasy tropes, but not a lot of shifter tropes and that sort of thing. And that is my most successful series, and that sold over 10,000 copies in 2 months.

Congratulations, that's huge.

With that success, I'm I'm like, okay, I should definitely be doing that, but I also want to finish Freelance Familiars because it takes me 6 months to write a book. Um, so I'm hoping I can get Full Moon Medic, pivot back to that, and with the third book and revamp some of that success too. Yes. Um, so I needed to write Apex Familiar and give my fans who have been with me till the beginning a very satisfying conclusion to this series.

Awesome.

And I'm happy to say I think I pulled it off. It's a really nice book.

Yeah, very cool. So yeah, so it is so good to get that, um, background because I think sometimes people see like, oh, this person raised, you know, $14,665 on Kickstarter, they must have a huge audience, or they, you know, and it sounds like you do, you have built, um, it sounds like a very successful series. This is probably your second most successful series, is the Freelance Familiar series. So you were probably able to convert some of those people from your most successful series to this one, plus like fans of this series. And obviously you have incredible artwork, which we're gonna see if you want to see it on YouTube. You can't see it on the podcast, but you can go look it up. Uh, so it just I mean, it sounds like every author, like every successful author I talk to, it's like there are so many ups and downs in this business. So if you're out there and you're experiencing a down, it's okay. It's actually pretty normal, I think. And a lot of us have these kind of challenging, difficult paths where we kind of just had to keep believing in ourselves. Like, imagine if you had given up on authorship after Series 2, which sounds like it, it was a big investment of time and didn't, you know, didn't quite pan out the way you wanted.

Yeah, I mean, I'm always— I'm a pie-in-the-sky sort of guy, so I released series and like, and like the only one that actually lived up to expectations was, was Full Moon Medic. That was like, oh my God, and Um, but, uh, I always want— oh, this, this, this is it. This is— does it go to rocket ship?

Yeah, we all want the rocket ship. How do we get a ticket on the rocket ship?

I, I know, I'm, I'm just like, every time I release, this is gonna be the one. Because I am, I am just hopeless in this sense, and I'll always like Oh, it didn't take over the world. Oh, I'm so disappointed. You have to get good at like, okay, this is a success. We did the thing. We moved on, right?

Yeah. No, I mean, to me what it sounds like is that you built on the success of a couple series doing pretty well. So the one doing really well and then this one, which is pretty awesome as well. So do you want to talk about this particular campaign? Because This is the book, book 6, Apex Familiar, which has an incredible cover. It has everything you described, the lion, it has the chipmunk, sorry, the squirrel who's blowing things up. I don't think you could get more clear on the COVID as to what this is about. And then all the other covers are of course gorgeous. Let me see if I can Like, I mean, this fan artwork is just so like—

this is not a fan artwork.

So it's not?

Okay, this is— that's my box. That's, that's the box that goes around it. Hold on.

Gotcha. Okay, you talk, you talk about the campaign, not me. You tell me about the campaign.

That, that— so this is what started this whole project. Well, Basically, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna Kickstart a box set. We're gonna have this really nice box that all the books go into. So this is, this is the, the mock-up that my face—

so, you know, it's so cool. Look at that.

So what I did is like, I'm like This is gonna happen. This is— I'm gonna make this happen. And, um, like, okay, let's go commission the art. So I went to my artist who did the rolling print, which I think is— that might not be— oh, is that not on there? Um, oh, I must have took it off because I was going— anyway, it's this great print of Thomas and Rudy rolling down the strip. Thomas is poking his head out of the top of a limo, and Rudy's just like, I'm your man, maybe. And, um, so that's Jo— uh, Jois. And unfortunately she was booked, so I had to go to one of her friends, which is, uh, Dave Vera. And I'm like, I want to do this. And she's like, okay, I can do that for 3 grand plus commercial fee, feature the Kickstarter fund. And I'm like, sure, we could do that, no problem. I want this on my wall anyway. Yeah, regardless of whether the thing— so I said yes. And then I did the math and I'm like, oh, craps.

Yes, I remember that moment. So you were in our, our thing because you joined our course and we were like, um, like, what do we do with this map? Because like you had already kind of commissioned it and we were like, well, we tell people to do $500 as their reward. And when we had talked to you, you were like, yeah, I'm like, you know, I've already got the art coming. And we were like, okay, cool.

So the, the— I went and talked to my friend who has done a box set Dirk Ashton, who does Paternus. I think that's how you pronounce it. But it's a really cool epic box thing, epic urban fantasy series that does very well. But basically he gave me, showed me his quote, and it's All Book Covers, I think, is the company. Um, and I'm like, oh, those boxes are like $30 to ship and produce. I'm just like, and I need 100 of them.

Yeah, minimum, right?

Yeah, this is going to work. So, um, you know, after I did the math, I'm like, okay, well I can't take a wash on the boxes production-wise. I could maybe take a wash on the art if I need to. And so that's how the $6,000 ask came about. About— I need it like, uh, according to my estimates, I needed like 12 to break even. And I'm like, well, if it happens, it happens, and I'm just gonna do everything I can to make it happen. Yeah.

Yes. Yeah. So, um, I wanted to— so we, so we had a lot of people come to us, um, with an idea to do a box set, like, same, like the exact project that you did and that you ended up doing. And we did the math on it same as you, we did the math with multiple people multiple times and every single time the lowest that people could go was $5,000. And so yours was, you had commissioned the art and everything, but we were like, if you have the art already, if you designed this box set yourself, whatever it is and you already had all that, the lowest you can go is $5,000. So something for people to know out there because we saw so many people who wanted to do like this box set idea and it seems like a good idea, but just having to produce the box sets, the minimums, all of it, it is $5,000 minimum type of campaign. And so for you, you did the math and it was $6,000 for you for the goal.

So I just wanted to share that because that's what I would have taken a pretty significant loss at the end of the day.

Right. If you had only hit $6K. Yeah.

Because You know, a lot of boxes, you know, they're sparse. They have like, you know, the title, title, and like an emblem or some something. They don't have a wraparound mural.

Yes. Okay, so I'm gonna pull up because there's— yeah, this image. I mean, this is so cool. You can barely see it on here, but I mean, this is pretty awesome. So just, it wraps all the way around, and then like each of the panels is a special, like its own basically art piece of art. So it's like you actually got like, it's basically, uh, 4 pieces of art.

Well, it's basically 3 cover, 3 paperback covers, and then like some pretty top.

Yeah, yeah, the fireworks on the top, like it's very, very cool. Um, and you held it up and it was awesome.

So I just got the digital prints in just like an hour ago. Oh, and so exciting. Yeah, so I had to, I had to ship, I had to print, print the books real quick and like ship them out to them. And I should be getting a, so I've approved those, those, and I should get like an actual prototype in the mail next.

Very cool. So, um, can you talk a little bit about— well, first of all, so one of the questions somebody has had is, is the box set new or is the collection put together? So do you want to—

so I mean, the box set, so previously 1 through 5 have been released on Amazon, and so the 6th book and the box itself is exclusive to Amazon.

It's a Kickstarter.

I'm gonna have 100, 100 of them. I've sold like 50, 60, so I'm gonna have a few hanging around, around to sell at cons and through my own website and that sort of, sort of thing for a while yet. Um, but, um, yeah, so that's what's new. I also did a Notated Editions, which of all 6 books, or I will, um, it took a lot longer than I had hoped. So I have the first one out and I have to do 5 more somehow. Somehow soon. And I also have a book release due on the 30th of September.

So here's the annotated— it does, it does get busy. Yeah, so here's the annotated editions. But yeah, so right now the box set is exclusive to Kickstarter, obviously, and it's a, it's a, um, limited print run, uh, because you, you know, you would have to sell like, so you have, you know, whatever, 40 left. Um, but once those are gone, it's kind of gone because you would have to—

I'll definitely be hanging those on the insides. So yeah, they're, they're not gonna happen again.

Yeah, it's not gonna happen again because you'd have to get a whole other 100. Yeah. And like another $12 grand in order to make it happen. And so I think, um, and, and I believe if people want this set. Um, as we're talking about, if you're like, I want that, um, you can go to Daniel's Kickstarter campaign and yeah, I probably order it.

Yeah, so I'm, I'm not quite— I haven't really been able to like have BackerKit replicate pledge levels so much. Like, you can order like the individual pieces, like, but if you, if you order order the full box set for $200 on BackerKit. I will make sure you get all the digital stuff and print rewards as well.

Cool. Well, there you have it. It's, it's real now.

Yes. Um, BackerKit has been amazing. Um, I have actually raised, uh, $1,300 on BackerKit.

Nice. Congratulations.

Some of that is I had a couple high-tier pledges who fell through and they've repledged through.

Oh, gotcha.

But that's good.

So recovered money is recovered money. So, um, so tell us a little bit about how you got— because you had 200 people, or almost 200 people, 190 backers who ended up supporting this. So how did you get people, especially people, you know, who may have picked up the original series in KU, how did you get those people to come on over and buy the book on Kickstarter? That's a really big ask. It was also a really, you know, a pricier box set. You go from like a $3 or $4.99 KU book, which might be free to that, effectively free to that reader, or like part of their subscription. To paying, you know, $200 for the box set. So how did you do that? I know you had the exclusive book, but I mean, I asked, um, that's—

I'm like, so I have a Discord server, and, um, this year is really— I have decided that this was the year of the Discord, and I was gonna do stuff on my Discord. And so sometimes I stream on my Discord, sometimes I do I'll do readings on my Discord, and I focused a lot of energy into just building up my Discord. I— every email I'm like, join my Discord, and that sort of stuff. And, um, I'd have to say there's more Freelance Familiars fans on that Discord than there are generally Full Moon Medic fans, and that's just the kind of the way it, it it wound up. And they got really excited about this. They really wanted this when I started talking, talking about, about it. Um, and, you know, so I— and, you know, there's, there's like 150 people on there. I'd say 30 who interact. Um, regularly. And I, I put this together, um, you know, of course I emailed everywhere, but I think it was mostly that hardcore people in my Discord who got me there so fast to that 6,000, uh, goal. And, you know, I had some going, oh, that's a lot of money. And you're, you're like, I know it's a lot of money. It's, it's, it's a big ask, and I— if I could make it work cheaper, I would. But, um, a lot of them just go, okay, you know, I'll do it, whatever.

They like you. They really like you.

Um, it was just so gratifying, and it has really The Kickstarter has just energized that community and made it much more active. I've gotten new people there from, from the Kickstarter. I did, um, and of course, you know, throughout the campaign I posted on my Facebook. I've never been so active in my face on Facebook. I posted on my Facebook every day. Practically. There were a couple— my parents were visiting at some point, I missed a couple days. Um, I emailed my list, um, I, uh, I tweeted, and I talked about stuff on, on Discord every single day. And they came. And once we, we kind of like topped out around— once we hit 8 $8 grand, and then it was just this slow drip, drip, drip. Mostly people I, I didn't know personally from the Discord or anywhere else. I'm, I'm not sure where they come from. Some were personal friends who's like, oh sure, I'll kick in, or, you know, but they just came 4 or 5 every day or so. So I ran it for a little longer than, than, uh, totally recommended because my parents were like visiting in the middle and I did not want my last couple days of my Kickstarter to be with my parents visiting. So I extended it out to that Friday.

Yeah, that's funny. I, I run super like unnecessarily long Kickstarter campaigns, so it's okay.

Yeah, I mean, I, I've— it's just exhausting to do, do if, you know, I'm glad it wasn't any longer because I have to do some writing and trying to do writing while like my word counts— I was doing some writing but my word counts were way down. Plus like with my, my parents visiting, it's just like, yeah, I'm a slow writer. I do me if 2K is a real good day for me. That's my goal. And I write weekdays. And yeah, I did not hit that pretty much throughout the entire campaign.

Oh, man. Yes, I feel you. I've definitely been there. Yeah, so okay, so I'm just gonna like summarize a little bit of just to break out those points to listeners. So basically, the Discord server— so to me, Discord is a code word for super special place for fans. It's a place to, like, cultivate fans rather than, like, rather than readers, really, or like, on top of them being readers, to cultivate them into being fans of your actual of your work and of you and that sort of thing. So that's kind of how I see authors using Discord anyway.

Discord is like, I really prefer Discord because like I can't make myself to make a listicle for any, any amount of money in the world. Like I just don't like making blog posts or that sort of stuff. If I can have a conversation with you or just like ping up a link to something that's cool every once in a while, or just you can ask me something and I will respond. I am much more comfortable doing that. I am much better at that. Um, like, I love going on podcasts and talking to, to people. That's really what I would prefer to do. Do— I tried to get on some podcasts and it didn't really work out.

For the campaign?

Who are you? Why should we care? Or just, you know, more ether? It's like, yeah, maybe sometimes we talk about books. Join our, join our Telegram chat. Oh man, Telegram are asking me to do way too much work. Work to get on your podcast. I mean, yes, I understand why, and I respect that, but—

That's funny. Okay, so doing Discord, I think you said something really basic that I think is so worth highlighting, which is people wanted the thing you were doing. I think that's like one of the most important things of marketing that sometimes people skip. Like, they think there's like a secret to this, and it's like, no, like, they wanted the 6th book of the series. It's very simple. They wanted—

they definitely wanted that. Yeah, they very definitely wanted the 6th book. They are all super sad that I have ended the series.

Yeah.

Yeah, man, I had just like— he started way down here and he's way up here now, now because, you know, consequences. He hasn't killed— gotten it— gotten himself killed. So of course, you know, he's, he's gathered the amount power. So it's, it's like we are no longer the scrappy little individual. We're graduating Thomas to institution level. Where he can mentor the next, the next fuzzy who comes along.

All right, that's your next series, maybe.

Yeah, yeah.

Are you doing the next generation?

Maybe, maybe.

Um, I think getting an exclusive right here.

I mean, the, the world is plenty big enough for another story. Thomas would not be the center of it. Rudy would certainly be kicking around. Um, And, uh, but I want to focus and finish Full Moon Medics first and see where, where that go.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. So I think, you know, they wanted the 6th book. They obviously— this, this box set is wildly cool. I mean, hugely cool. So they wanted that and I would have done it all hardcovers if I could, but yeah, that's crazy. Oh, totally.

That would have, that would have like tripled the cost of the book.

Right, totally.

Yeah. What some friends have done, what Dirk did, is he Kickstarted the hardcover of each book, and then on the third book, it's a trilogy, he did that and the box. So I'm kind of thinking I might do the same with Full Moon Medic down the line.

That'll be cool. Yeah, I mean, I think that's, you know, that's one of the things that we say about Kickstarter is really that if you can, if you are, you know, um, like not a super fast writer, but if you can, you know, do a campaign for each book because you will just get more money per book, and then it, you know, for the whole series, it really adds up to quite a bit. So, you know, I think that's a really good strategy for people, especially if you have a series that is, you know, tested. So I think that was another thing about the series is that it already had readers. You were cultivating that fandom, which to me, like, readership and fandom are two very different things we're learning, especially, well, for me, through teaching this Kickstarter stuff and through watching so many campaigns, it's like, we see lots of authors who have a huge readership, but they don't have a strong fandom versus authors like yourself who have a huge readership as well, but they've cultivated a small fandom and then their—

Extremely huge readership is huge, not huge.

I mean, we're talking, you know, Right, right. Yeah, relative numbers. But, um, you know, just that you have a good, good readership clearly from, um, your several series, and you've taken a small portion of those and cultivated that true fandom as well. And now you can kind of work with both, and it, it's really, I'm sure, kind of stabilizing in your career, um, because you can—

I wish I had started when I first put out Off Leash, I think I would be in a very different place right now.

Right.

Yeah, I started it maybe— I think I either just started it or started it after I moved.

Wow. Yeah. So that was a couple of years ago then.

Yeah. So that was 2020. We moved and bought a house right before the pandemic.

Yeah. I was thinking like 2020 is like, oh, Yeah, it was bad.

We moved— we, we closed on the house in December and we moved in January, and then we're in an entirely new place and don't know anybody and totally stuck in your house, which is a lot better than being stuck in a 2-bedroom apartment in, uh, on the outskirts of San Francisco.

Oh yeah, yeah, that's quite a move. I've— I actually want to move to Oregon Um, the coast of Oregon, but I'm also—

my brother-in-law is there. I'm in Salem, which is an hour away from the coast.

Yeah, I know, I never—

we're the capital and we're an hour away from anything interesting. Portland's an hour, hour, hour north. Um, we're an hour away from the coast, hour and a half depending where you're going, and an hour from— hour and a half from mountains and hiking on Mount Hood, that sort of stuff.

Yeah, cool. Yeah. So I'm trying to think of— I had a couple more questions, and if anybody has questions from the audience, feel free to ask. But I think we've kind of covered a lot of why this campaign has been so successful. It was a box set. Really ambitious. Like, I remember we had chatted quite a bit in the group and we were like, you know, like, go for it. But we want to let you know this is a pretty ambitious goal. Like, $6K is not a joke to try to raise on Kickstarter. And we've, you know, we have seen campaigns that, you know, are only hitting like $1,000, of course, or sometimes even less. So we're like, okay, it's $6K. Ah, like, we were a little nervous for you. But then of course you funded second day, if I recall correctly. And you were very close on the first day.

50 hours. We missed like the second day.

Yeah.

I'm a little like, I'm a little sore that we never got a project you loved.

But you didn't.

We never got that.

I think they're just so busy.

Yeah, I don't know.

I feel like, you know, I'd be salty.

A little salty about that. I didn't really like email them for it, you know, or yeah, anything, but I'm like, I'm not— I, I'm the highest funded publishing thing in your thing right now, at least for a couple days in there.

Yeah, well, that's a bummer. Yeah, um, I just always email them now. And they're always like, yes, Monica, Russell already emailed. They're always like, Russell already emailed because Russell is actually friends with, well, several. Yeah, a couple of people there. And I don't know them, but obviously chat with them and have their email address and everything. But I still just go through the form and they're like, yes, Monica, Russell already let us know. And I'm like, okay. So, but yeah, yeah, they're, they're busy. They're busy. So I don't think they're— this is a good lesson for people. I don't think they're looking at all the stuff all the time. And I do think if you want it, like, definitely email them because they will, they will give it to you, especially if you, you know, are in our thing. So yeah, but you wanted to earn it, I think.

Yeah. We did well, you know. I think, you know, when you have a $200 level and that's the premier level that everyone wants, you have a much higher average, uh, pledge. Pledge— my, my average pledge was $80. So, um, so, you know, that's how we get— I got to like Russell's pledge levels with half as many backers.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, so Russell, this probably would be the most, um, the most successful fiction campaign. So it is the most successful fiction campaign that we've had in our group, um, aside from Russell's. So Russell just did one that was like slightly above this, but, um, I mean, we're pretty impressed. This is, this is pretty impressive, uh, just especially it's your first campaign. You know, that was like his 20 third or 24th campaign or whatever it was. Like, you're doing pretty good. Yeah, I agree. I think, you know, so obviously, like, charging more is going to get you a higher revenue, but being able to charge more is the thing that's hard.

Without you and Russell's advice, I wouldn't have had— I wouldn't have asked $25 per paperback. I just wouldn't have done that.

Yeah.

And so the margin would have been much lower and I probably wouldn't have— I would have eaten some. This because I based my estimates off Russell's Dragon Strife campaign and he actually had a higher number— or a ratio of, uh, he had more physical backers compared to my, uh, my amount. So it worked out. I've got about 31% were physical and his were like 40-something, I think. And because I had a, a little more, more than I estimated digital backers And I actually made more of a profit at this level than I estimated.

So nice.

Not a lot, but I think a nice, nice amount to, to bank and put in to future projects. And, and I'm, I'm going to buy a very nice board game for myself.

You have to celebrate.

Oh, I also bought a metal print of that.

Of this. Oh, that's really cool.

I'm just trying to figure out where I put it. I haven't hung it up yet because I want to, I want to revamp the entire office and like put it behind me. I, um, you know, I'm always jelly of all of many authors who stream in front of, you know, right, temple of books. And I've just got this very, uh, very, uh, disorganized shelf. But I'm a very disorganized guy, so it is very me. But perhaps I want something a little better, so I'm gonna move this whole thing around and use this other wall and move some books and put some prints and that sort of stuff eventually, someday.

That's very cool. I think that's very cool. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's so great because this was a huge milestone, too. So it's like your audience was really celebrating not only finishing the series— it sounds like your first series that you finished, the first series that you started with to begin with, and then the first major bucks box set that you've done that is limited edition. Like, that's huge. I think it's so great that you have found ways to like celebrate with it. And I mean, to your point, you know, if each book was $25, there were 6 books, so that means people were willing to pay another $50 for the box set just for the case. Um, they're called— I think they're called slipcases.

Yeah.

Uh, and, and like, that's pretty incredible that you had 16. I didn't even work out for that an early bird discount or anything.

I just said, here it is. And you know, it's— it was my first campaign. I feel like, oh, I probably should have done that video thing or that sort of stuff. Oh, it was just so much to try and put together and that sort of stuff. I just couldn't quite get the energy to do do that and maybe I would've gotten a few more backers that way or not. I feel like I actually, my mailing list, you know, I have a hardcore audience on my mailing list, which was built on Freelance Familiars, but the majority of that was brought in by Full Moon Medic. And so I didn't really get a lot of traction through my mailing list. I felt I was just kind of shouting to the void a bit. And we'll see if— it'll be interesting to see when, when we do a full moon medic book if I get like just a lot more sort of interaction. But I got a lot of— I got a fair amount of interaction through, uh, Twitter. I got it through, um, some through Facebook, um, and definitely, of course, and, you know, the Discord. I mean, they were like, it's almost to this stretch goal, it's, it's almost there. They really want to see, which was my $15,000 stretch goal. We didn't quite get there, but I, I've commissioned 2 stickers, and so that's a, that's a little $5 add-on for physical backers.. So cool. I don't know what those are going to look like. I've commissioned them, but I don't have the artwork yet.

Well, that's cool. And it sounds like you kind of have a framework for doing this again, and you have— it sounds like possibly a bigger list for the Full Moon Medic stuff, right? So it's like you kind of have a playbook for doing this, like get them to the Discord, get them to the campaign, you know, like you said, maybe do a video. I haven't done a video for our current campaign that's running and it's at like 27K. So it's like we've just seen kind of, and yours hit almost 15K. It's like there was another woman in our accelerator, hers hit almost, I think it hit 6K and she had not done her video. And so we are seeing people who like they didn't do their video and it's still doing okay. So I think if you're really afraid of Kickstarter because of the video, it's okay. There's definitely some success stories of people who are doing it without that. But yeah, I do think video can help convert. I know it did for my last two campaigns. I don't know why I haven't done it for this one. I should probably do that. But yeah, like you said, energy.

Especially if it's, you know, it's something you're not familiar with. With— I did TikTok for about 3 months, and it's a real drain just trying to like think up, you know, very short stuff. And yeah, um, in a video you're always like, well, I've seen it done so badly, I don't want people to look at me like I looked at them.

Yeah, I got that. So I think we should probably wrap this up because we're a little bit— we're running over. But I did want to ask you as kind of a closing question, what are some of— what's a piece of advice or maybe a couple quick pieces of advice that you would give to somebody who wanted to run not just a Kickstarter campaign but wanted to run a campaign similar to the one you did, what would you tell them?

I would say you've got to make sure you've got a direct line somehow to your audience. You have to have fans that you know by name, or you have to have a lot of them. Like, um, you have to have some sort of community that when you're gonna put, put something out, um, they're gonna jump on it. And the scary thing is, is you never— you're not gonna know until you try, right? Because I put this on and I didn't know I didn't know, you know, I had, had, I, I knew I'd get at least, you know, 5, 5 people on board and that sort of stuff. Um, but that's not going to get you there. Um, so you've got to try it, try it. If you've been building a series and you know there's people who love it, then, then you can— you just have to go for it. You don't have to do commission the art before you run it. You can't— you don't have to be as deep as sunk into it as I, I was. But yeah, so it's a long way. You need, you need to have your core audience to support you, right?

Yeah, no, I think, I mean, I think to your point, like, you, you stack the deck in your favor, um, to the best of your ability before the campaign went live. But then it goes live and like, that, that's the real test. Like, like you said, like, you know, 5, like, like you need to sell like at least half of your 100, 100, uh, minimum 100 minimum.

30, 30, like sold them. But you know, then you get the digital and— right, yeah. But everyone you sell, you get— you— that, that's, that, that's, you know, $50 plus the profit. And so you get closer and closer to breaking even. Everyone you sell, sell, that's a little less of that sunk cost into printing that's not just sitting there.

Now that you've done one, I know you talked about doing another for your Full Moon Medic series. Are you thinking of doing any before that, or are you going to kind of go with the same model once again for your next one?

Well, I'm going to do— I think what I will do is small—

your actual intro.

Our intro. Um, where I'm going to do a hardcover, you know, I have a hardcover of, of the first Full Moon Medic book made up, but what I'm gonna do, and I, I did have a few hardcore fans who bought that, but what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get a hardcover with an illus— fully illustrated cover with, you know, that instead of you know, the made-for-Amazon cover. I'm gonna do something epic on that cover and do that as a hard— they'll probably do both the hardcover and the paperback version and say, you know, at the end when we do, when we do all the 6 books, there will be a slipcase for the hardbacks. And one of the comments when I was setting this up, oh, I wish they were hardcover with the slipcase for the— I'm like, I'm not making 6 hardcover and paying for all the— those redoing of the covers with one campaign. That is just not possible. So, but if we do this step by step by step I think it could work.

Well, that sounds like a really good plan in my opinion, because you have basically like 6 campaigns and then you have the slipcase, right? It sounds like. And that, I mean, that's like so manageable for people. Like, okay, I'm gonna pay, you know, my $35, $40, whatever your hardcover is. Some, some are up to like $50, um, but I'm gonna pay this much for that and then I'm kind slowly building, you know, and that's like people— each campaign you get, you have more people. Yes. Yeah. And I think it's also like in your mind. So one of the things that we talk about with fandom is you got to take up their— you've got to get investment of their time, their energy, their money, and their space. And that's how you create a fan. And so it's like, this is that is kind of like they're already budgeting space on their bookshelf in their house. Like, they're literally, like, renting out their personal space for you as an author. So they'll be kind of, like, stacking up those 6 books, and then they get those slipcases, and it's really cool. So, yeah, I think that's a great plan. So smart, so brilliant. So thank you for sharing it. I'm glad I asked that question, even though we're, like, way over. Good, good insights there. So thank you so much. Is there anything else you wanted to share about the campaign or any other wisdom bombs you want to drop on us?

I don't think so, really. It's just I'm still hyped about it. I'm still so happy it's done so well, and I feel like this is really going to kind of energize my career a bit. Definitely. Yeah. So yeah, I see myself using Kickstarter as a continual tool going forward.

Awesome. That's awesome. That's what we— that's kind of like what our goal is. So we have one person converted. We have a couple others that we heard from, but awesome. So thank you so much, Daniel, joining me here and talking about your campaign. And thanks for really doing the campaign. It's like such a cool case study because we haven't had anybody who has really been able to pull off this box set idea so far or has attempted it because, well, we don't really recommend it as a first campaign. So that's kind of why. But I'm so glad that you took the chance to do it and You know, I know we finagled it a bit to try to help get those numbers up, but yeah, you really brought your audience is really why it was successful. So thank you so much. And do you want to tell people how to get the Freelance Familiars box set?

Sure. Just go to Kickstarter, of course. Look for— probably have to type in Freelance Familiars into the search and it will come up. And there's a pre-order thing and you take you to my BackerKit store and you can get one of those 40 boxes that are left. I will be printing, um, I am, uh, still waiting on receiving Kickstarter funds. They should be here tomorrow, in the next couple days. And, um, so I'm just about ready to pull the trigger on printing all the books and get that moving. I'm hoping that this whole process— and I can ship these out sometime in September. Um, and of course, you know, there's, there's, uh, you can get the digital box set with everything I've, I've done, done, including, you know, Freelance Familiars, Full Moon Medic, and, uh, The Horned Serpent, which, which, you know I know didn't do that well on Amazon, but I still think it's a good series.

Very cool.

Cool.

So if you want to get that, you come over to Kickstarter. I typed in Daniel Potter as well. That worked. You can type in Freelance Familiars and it's really this blue button. You click preorder and then it'll take you to the BackerKit store and that's where you can preorder illustrations, books, uh, cool pins, obviously.

So I have pins, but they're full—

or, uh, yeah, we're full memetic. Awesome. So there's lots of other stuff here, um, and it looks like this is the, uh, box set. The— this first one is the box set. So very, very cool. Okay, so thank you so much, uh, Daniel, for being here. Thank you to everybody who is listening. You have one more comment which Nice hat. I have two that look just like that.

So it's kind of very sexy. I was inspired by Terry Pratchett.

He always had the hat. So yeah, I was wondering who that was reminding me of, and I could picture it now. So cool. Okay, thank you so much for everybody watching, and we will see you next week. Bye, everyone.