How To Write Your Kickstarter Sales Page (Kickstarter Series #2)

Crush it on Kickstarter or like whatever it is.

Do you wanna just like change it now and we can, um, we can record this so that people can see like what we're doing?

Sure.

Like, are you okay with that?

Yeah, let's do it.

All right. So we're kind of entering in the middle of something awesome that Russell just said.

Uh, all right. So, uh, we're going through, this is the actual Kickstarter page. Behind the backend for the Kickstarter page, and Monica and I are sort of going through before launch and talking about what we have to do. And I was talking— see if I can get the— okay, so this is the tagline that she had before, and we're trying to workshop it. So I'll show you the reason why this is not great and what we're going to do to fix it. So if you go to the Discovery Project, so this is most people's experience with Kickstarter. They're either going to come directly to a page or they're going to scroll through. And they're going to come to a page, they're probably going to go through the whole page or a large part of it, but what you're looking for in this part, which is the same as Which is the same as this part is this. So this is the pre-launch page that, that you can get to after your project gets approved, that you hopefully will have gone to and clicked, uh, before, uh, before, uh, but they're gonna see this image. So this image becomes this, and then this text becomes this. And I was telling her— and so this is all you see when you do— when you're scrolling on your phone, you get it like one under the next, or if you're doing— or if you're getting— if you're scrolling on your computer, you get it to look like this. So I told her, you probably don't need to call it a book. You probably don't need to say who it's by unless like you want to put Kickstarter legend or guru or USA Today bestselling author or something here, but like I said, really what you want to put is something along the lines of like, um, And this is probably going to be too long, so I can't do that, so I probably don't need to. Just put one campaign from '18. Yeah, that's not going to be enough.

Just so you say— yeah, yeah, this is good. Um, so the thing I want to— the only thing I want to change is with excite your fan base, it implies that, um, you have to have a fan base beforehand, which I think we're— so I like every— I like everything. It's like, don't delete it all. You could— we could say like USA Today best-selling authors.

Um, let's say learn how to build your page.

Um, you'd say like learn how to build your campaign. Yeah, grow your— grow your fan base. Yeah, that's good.

We've got 30 more sentences, 30 more, 30 more words, but what do you think about that?

We could do learn how to, yeah, learn how to, we could also do learn how to crush your next campaign and grow your fan base. From the ground up, something like that. Just do 2, and then we can say from USA Today bestselling author and 18-time Kickstarter.

The thing is there's 135 characters, um, so learn how to, uh, learn how to— what if we just do Rush? Yeah, your next Okay, I crush your next campaign with 18 times.

Yeah, 18 times.

I see, I don't think we need USA Today bestselling author here either.

I think we need—

I don't think it's a— yeah, 18 times.

Time Kickstarter.

What about with, with publisher? No, that's not right.

$250,000. With books, right? Across comics and novels, maybe? Oh yeah, 18 campaigns. Oh yeah, projects is good.

Trying not to use the same word twice, but—

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

From—

You could say an author. Because that'll resonate with— yeah, 18. Um, yeah, that's great.

I had a crush for next campaign from all the— was raised over 200. So what we're trying to— so what we're normally doing here is, you know, exciting the fan base with as much SEO stuff as we possibly can. This is a little bit different because what I want people to do here is— what I'm expecting them to do is say, oh, great, another like Kickstarter book. Like, yippee-dippy, there's a million out there. So, and like they're going to start to scroll past, and I'm trying to just get them to say, oh, this is from an author who has done this across 18 publishing projects. And raised a lot of money in the publishing category because the thing about this book, like the secret sauce I think of this book is there are books about like publish— crushing it on Kickstarter, but they're almost always done or have always been done in the past by someone who does not launch publishing campaigns. And this book is from the point of view of two authors One of which literally wrote the book on book launches and the other who has raised— who has spent literally his entire Kickstarter career in the publishing category. If you were doing this for something that was like a book book, what you would be looking for in that sentence is— let's see if it's still here— is— I still have it somewhere. Oh, there we go. Okay, so you're just looking, you have 135 characters, and what you're trying to do is just try and get as many cool words smashed together as possible that makes sense. So like, a criminal rescues the Antichrist. It took a lot of me for me to boil down this into 3 words. Uh, okay, and so Um, uh, the, my, my general formula for a good logline, or it's a good thing on Kickstarter at least, is a X does Y for Z reason. And so a criminal saves the Antichrist and has to keep her alive until morning to prevent the apocalypse. So again, it's very simple. X does Y for Z reason. And that is because while on Amazon you have 250 words, here you've got 135 characters. And while Kickstarter has a lot more words in the copy than Amazon has, not so much in the general, like, loglines. You really have to be succinct. And so that is why, you know, this is a little bit different, but every word in here, if you're doing nonfiction, is meant to say, oh, this person has authority to, like, talk about this specific subject. They are an or the authority on this very specific subject, and in this case is launching on Kickstarter for authors, not for book programmer, not for video game developers or board game people or film. It is specifically for authors. So we're going to—

Yeah. Yeah, and just for background, one of the things that we've been talking about a lot is just how, like, the crux of this campaign is that we're the right team to bring it to people. Like, that is, like, our main message.

Well, and that there's not— this book does not exist.

Right. Yeah. No, this book does not exist. We have looked. It does not really exist. So yeah, I agree. I love your, by the way, I love your logline and I want to say, I think it's a great logline for an Amazon campaign, ad campaign. It's like, it would just do so well, you know?

Well, you know, you bring up a great point before we move on to look at the copy of this campaign. It's just a Kickstarter gives you the perfect safe space because like you're not spending $1 million on ads, you're not running a lot of traffic here to test all of your best ideas for copy and ads for your Amazon and Barnes Noble and all of those launches that you're going to be doing later. You can say, okay, well, you know, generally when you do an Amazon thing, you have that top sentence, right? That one logline sentence at the top of your Amazon blurb page, the blurb. Is this a good one? Is, is it, is it, is it, is a different one a good one? And by saying it for 30 days, you can really hone in on like, oh, this is a good one. Oh no, this is a bad one. Because so much, like so much of Kickstarter, the, the not funding is like people don't have good copy. You know, it's not like a book. I've seen great books that, that like don't launch. And I mean, it is somewhat about the, like, the, the audience you bring in here, but there are people who literally just scroll categories and often you will get— go to a page and be like, oh, well, this isn't good copy. And, and, and so my, one of my favorite parts about Kickstarter is because you're talking about it, right? You're making this like you and your fans are interacting together. You can do a Facebook Live where you can like talk to people and you're like, oh, Well, that, that logline doesn't resonate. Uh, let's cut that one out and try a different one. Let's try a different one. Let's try a different one. You can literally do that for 30 days with no ad cost. Yeah. All right, cool.

So let's keep going. Oh, what about the title? Should we change that? Kickstarter for authors? Uh, so, um, maybe like Get Your— Get Your— Get Your Book Selling Book, or Oh, so I like this Kickstarter for authors.

I might say something like, um, so for authors, um, no, I don't know. I don't like that.

Um, Yeah, I do like that definitive guide type of messaging because it, I mean, it really is. There's no other book like this in that nobody, like any other book about this is Yeah, it's written by some— by people who have not done the— who have not done like publishing projects, basically. And there are lots of books in like the gaming space. What else? Like board games was a big one.

What's another word that's not definitive?

It could be like ultimate, premiere.

See, this is one thing, avoid exaggerating. Like, ultimately it will tell you, like, don't use these words, we don't like these words.

So what about premier? I mean, I'm fine with— yeah, definitive is a hard one because it's saying like, well, nobody else, you know, nobody else has like added anything to this. It's kind of, I don't know. One other thing I want to say is that we— so the fiction space cares a lot about the fact that this is for novels as opposed to nonfiction, because that's one of the things that they— that like fiction authors are not really into. They really want things to be for novels. So it's a little—

I'm one word off. Once I'm one letter off, this is always like a— once you get, um, uh, is writers the ultimate— is there another? This is what you do. You literally are sitting on here going like, um, guide.

I would change ultimate, right? Because it's not liking that word. Ultimate.

Synonym. Yeah. I think that marketing people don't use the same stuff.

I'll make it—

it should say like definitive. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Decisive. Definite.

Yeah. Okay.

All of these, none of these are any better. Exhaustive, authoritative. Oh, those are fun. Yeah, could also just do like best. Yeah, I do like authoritative Kickstarter for authors. It could just be like the authoritative guide or something like that.

What about the definitive guide?

Yeah, and like, there it is. You could just say your definitive guide.

The or your?

Big Story for Authors: The Definitive Guide. Um, book launches. Yeah, I don't know.

Um, I think I just— I think the best— I don't think— but I think the best you can do is just, uh, the definitive guide.

Yeah, or you could do, um, two launches. Doesn't have to be, yeah, two campaigns. Or we could also try to get publishing in there.

What about the definitive? The Definitive Success Guidebook. That is a lot of words.

Yeah, the only thing is like, it's not the title of it, um, which is fine. Yeah, well, I mean, let's do like Kickstarter for authors.

Get your book— this is actually a good title—

selling Kickstarter, the definitive guide. Come on, come on, come on, come on.

Get your book selling on Kickstarter.

Yeah, that's right. It's the wisest app.

Yeah. Get your book selling on Kickstarter, the definitive guide.

There you go.

There we go. Learn how to crush your next campaign from an author who has raised over, uh, $250,000 around 18 publishing projects. Yeah, I mean, I don't think we're going to get better than that.

Yeah, that's a significant improvement over what it was, I would say.

Yeah, we can look at what did— because it's not—

so— oh, because it didn't save?

No, it already did it. At least I saved it a while ago. Oh, you did. But all right, so that's, I think, the best we're going to do. The reason that you put Kickstarter for Authors here is there's a little trick to it. It's because when your project is approved by Kickstarter, you will— it will populate this field, the URL. And so we wanted the URL to be the smallest it could be So she did Kickstarter for Authors. It would've been even better if she had done Kickstarter for Authors, just one word. So there wasn't these hyphens, but like—

which you did tell me to do.

If you look at mine, well, I mean, do as I say, not as I do, right? Because like, this is my super long one when it should have just been Black Market Heroine.

Black Market Heroine.

Yep. So what happens is you go to your promotions tab and it will like, it'll say generate the URL. And at that moment, is when it has to say like Kickstarter for authors or whatever. So now we can make it whatever we want to because the URL is going to stay the same forever. Yep. All right, so the rest of this is fine. I honestly recommend— I mean, we're doing a— I've done a lot of campaigns before, but I usually recommend for your first campaign $500 because like just if you make $500, it's, it's going to be half or at least a fourth of your total like cost for making a book. So you're not going— you may not be like raking in the money, but like you're probably going to be able to raise $500. And if you do way more than that, phenomenal. But if you've already made the book, then, you know, you're really just— this is all like gravy before your campaign. And for me, my goal is always break even on all of the costs. So— or as best I can at all the costs. So I do about $2,000. For my publishing ones, but that's, to me, that's the most I can expect or most that I want to expect. So like I try and say, okay, what is the least that I can legitimately get? It's like probably $500 I'm going to get. I need $2,000. And so I try and play within that range of like, I think, what can I, for me now, it's like, what can I raise on day one? We were hoping to do way better than this on day one, but we wanted to do something that's reasonable because the last thing that you want is at the end of your campaign saying, oh my God, I've gotta raise $2,000 in the next 3 days. Yeah. There's going to be a point when you're thinking about your campaign where you're saying, all right, this amount I'm happy with. Like, this number is, if I don't raise any more than this, then I will be happy with this number. And that's the number you should go with. Do not go with below when you're like, if you're sitting there going, I don't want to do it if I can't raise $3,000. Like, whatever the point is that you're like, I will do this book if it raises this amount of money, is the number you should be thinking of at the beginning. Does that make sense?

And putting it in. Yeah, it does make sense. I also think you want to fund like if you can, you want to fund within the first day. Because I know for myself, when I look at Kickstarter projects, if like they're at, you know, like 50% or less, like within a couple days after the campaign started, or like when I find it, I'm kind of like, well, is this even gonna fund?

Because usually the rule is that if you can hit 30% in your first 3 days, you're almost definitely going to fund. Um, it's like 90% or something of those funds. So like, um, I just don't want to have to worry about it. For some campaigns I can't do it. So I did a book called Ichabod Jones Monster Hunter earlier this year, and like, I couldn't— I couldn't— like, I literally, like, I needed $20,000 or $15,000 or whatever it was, like, literally just to make it all happen. And so that was my number. I said, hey, I need $20,000 or $15,000 or whatever the number was. And if I don't hit that, like, I can't make this book. And so it is, it's not like, oh, I'm just going to do $100,000, $1,000, and like, because then you'll be on the hook. If you make $5,000, you need $10,000, but it's the number of like, hey, you know, I'm going to go into a launch and I'm probably going to raise $1,000 or $2,000 there. And it'd be really nice if I can make $500 on Kickstarter also. And that's kind of how I think about it. All right, so let's go to here. All right, so haven't put in our— we haven't put in our imagery yet, but my first thing that I always recommend people doing at the beginning is actually right after this is— so I love having at the beginning just like, you can click here and read the book, because that will get you opt-ins. Even people that don't buy will opt in to read the book and you can put them on your list. So don't send this to a Dropbox link, send it to a BookFunnel link or some way to capture stuff. And then I like to do 3 questions like, do you struggle with— and you try and figure out like what the 3 things that are most exciting about your project.

Do you struggle with book launches. Yeah, let's— what do you think those 3 things are for our book?

I think, I mean, do you struggle with book launches? Are you sick of selling books without any idea who is buying them? Are you ready to crush your next campaign, then get your book selling on Kickstarter is perfect for— I probably actually— are you an author who struggles with book launches? Are you an author who struggles with book launches?

So I think for the audience, this audience, I think one thing that they care about is, it's something that you've talked about, which is basically, so yes, like, are you an author who struggles with book launches? Sure. But I think like a lot of authors, they just like struggle with book sales, period. Like they're not even trying to launch their book. They just struggle with like getting any sales on their books. So that's one. Yeah. So I think like lackluster sales.

Yeah. It's like a good one. Cause it's like, yeah, every author, every author feels they have lackluster sales in some capacity.

Yeah. So then another one, this is kind of, it's that they, it's kind of like they, they, they feel like publishing is too expensive, or they don't have the funds to fully publish their book. And so, yeah, like, do you lack the funds to, right, yeah, publish, publish your book? Or the other thing is people are like, I lack the funds to advertise my book or to market my book because I need so, you know, it seems like I need so much to advertise, and it's like a very pay-to-play market.

Tired of going into your book launch drastically in the red?

Yeah, like that's really— yeah, right. And so these are ones that will resonate with people regardless of their level of success almost. I've heard like 6-figure authors who are like, I spent like $10,000 to bring this book to you. Sure. And, you know, and like I had to make, you know, maybe I made back like $50,000 on it. But I've even heard 6-figure authors who are like, you know, I write the fresh book to trend just so I can keep paying for books 2, 3, and 4 in previous series that, you know, are not going to earn out at the level that the first book did. Like, just—

this is, this is a great thing about Kickstarter is like, because you need so few people to fund generally, you know, you're making $25, $50 a person who buys your book. I mean, I saw a friend of mine just launched a book, $100, $200 each person who bought the book. Like, you don't need a ton of people. So one of the things that I always, I always tell people is like, do you have a series that like isn't performing but like has a rabid— a small rabid fan base, then like this might be perfect for you.

That— yeah, this is a— that's exactly— so that's like a lot of kind of—

2 and 3 are kind of the same though. So, um, I think I like this—

this—

that's— that this one better. So I think we should cut this one.

All right, which one do you think it—

um, or maybe they're not as similar as I think.

I think the first one— so the, the second— well, the second one, um, it speaks to like the new author versus the third one speaks to somebody who is doing— because I, I don't think new authors do a lot of book launches.

Yeah, maybe just the top 3. Let's just do the top 3 and we can sit on it.

Yeah, um, all right, we could, we could try 5 questions, but I know, I know you've experienced magic at 3.

I like 3. I mean, you can, you can do 10, but like the question is how, how little can. How few can you do to get someone to say yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, I get it. Like, I want the book. So I think our minds are, like, magically attuned to three. Like, three is like a cluster. Like, they. I heard something that was like, you can only. Like, people could only keep three in their head at any one time. Like, three things in their head, which is why, like, Roman numerals are as they are. There's only like a series of 3, uh, and so like the most things are like either 1, 2s, or 3s, not so many 4s. Uh, so I like 3. Uh, you can try more than 3. I've never tested it against anything. I was listening to a marketing person give a— I bought a course, I was listening to it, and so he was like, look, I do 4. Like, I've never tested it against anything else, so like, I don't know if it's better, uh, or worse. I just 3 works for me. And so I do it. So I definitely think you can do more if there's more areas. I would say probably if you're gonna do more than 3 though, you wanna have something that's like really like different from these things that we listed. And I would probably say what I'd still probably say, what are the 3 things that are gonna get them to say yes, yes, yes. And then you can address the rest of them throughout the course of your page.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I think these, Those 3 questions then are kind of like the main reasons that people are interested, aside from like, do you want to make a big amount of money from your launch and then also launch on Amazon and be awesome? Like, right, yeah, like that's another one.

So if you're a fiction author, like, here are the 3 that I used that are like, do you like fast-paced action? Are you gaga for monsters? Are you obsessed with urban fantasy and magic? Like, if you say yes to those 3, like, you are going to like my book.

Yeah, that makes sense.

And so then I want to say like, uh, written by Literally wrote the book on book launches. We have spent our careers. We I'm just going to put this there. Um, um, I'm going to put this— it's not perfect yet, but like, we're not trying to be perfect.

We're just— no, no, we're just, we're just trying to get it all down and talk through it.

Wrote the book on book launches and then like, and then something else goes here. Sometimes that's the best you can do.

Nice. So funny.

That is a terrible acronym, but we're just going to say that because I don't want to keep writing that. I'm going to copy this actually so I can keep doing it later. Uh, no, not going to bold it. I want to unbold it and then see. Um, Gibsoc. Gibsoc.

Um, it's like get your book selling.

Okay.

All the combined knowledge about book launching and Kickstarter campaigns. Yeah, so, so since we're recording this for others, I'll just kind of talk during this. So what we figured out with this book is that we're— so it is very focused on Kickstarter, but we're also just using the concept of book launches in general, because we believe that launching a book on Kickstarter is not really different from launching on Amazon. And so the way the book works is we talk about, We kind of talk about launches in general in many ways, and then we get specific about Kickstarter. But we really just want to show people that, one, you can do a Kickstarter first and learn so much about book launching that will then prepare you to do a really good launch on Amazon or any other retailers. And then, you know, the other thing is if you already know how to do a launch on Amazon, you can do, you can do a launch here and you can get far more money per person because you can sell things that you can't sell on Amazon. So like you can't sell like your time on Amazon, you can't sell, you know, all sorts of things. You can't sell like a character name on Amazon, you can't sell a dedication on Amazon. So there are a bunch of things you can't sell, like special art edition. I mean, you kind of can with the book cover, but You can't really. So there are a bunch of things that your fans want that you're not able to sell through Amazon or any other retailer. So that's a big part of what this book kind of shows you is that, hey, you can sell all of this stuff on Kickstarter and it really probably isn't going to hurt your Amazon launch much at all. Like even if you, even if you had like you, even if you're a very successful indie author and you lose like maybe 500 sales, um, from Amazon or any other retailer and you get it through Kickstarter, like, first of all, you're gonna get way more money per sale. Like, you're not gonna— it's not gonna be like a $5 sale. It's gonna be, um, well, Russell's average is I think $38 per fan.

That's somewhere between $20 and $38. We can be between the project. But one of the coolest things that you really can't do, especially between series, is is, so like I sell other series during my Kickstarter campaigns. You can see like right here, you can, like this is a whole different series that I'm selling during this campaign. I can bundle. So this is all the complete Godsverse series, but somewhere down here, here, I combine all of my novels. Like while you have series pages on Kickstarter, like you can't combine literally all of your books together. And this book, this one right here, you know, only had one backer, but like that's $95 from one person just because they wanted all of my books. And what's great about this is a lot of these books aren't great sellers. So like, you know, those standalones that you wrote at the beginning of your career or those series that just kind of sit there and don't, you don't, like you don't sell a lot of copies. Well, like you can combine them all together and make like a really nice bundle of books because like we know that those books are great., but like Amazon does not push them because we don't have—

we don't spend money advertising them. Yeah, yeah, and I think another thing about that is, um, it's really— I think Kickstarter is really part of a larger idea and a larger ecosystem for authors, which is that, um, A, you want to like kind of increase your revenue per customer, and so most authors are doing that by just like having a series, but like Russell said, you can do bundles, you can do merchandise, you can do just your time and energy, like all sorts of things that increase your revenue per reader. And then the other thing is that, well, it's basically that it's part of a larger ecosystem of, you know, as you do a Kickstarter, You can also do direct sales. You can also do live events. And right now those things are a little bit challenging for most authors because, you know, in order to do these live events, you've got to have some sort of capital. Like you can't just, you know, it's going to cost you thousands of dollars to go to an event and to have all the merchandise and to have all the, you know, all the the display stuff, like to dress your table and to go to the event and buy the table and all that stuff, where you know you should be at these events and you know you should be selling. And Kickstarter is a way that you can pre-fund all of your merchandise and all, you know, all of your stock for that thing. Same with direct sales, like for the most part, I mean, you can sell directly without having to have a ton of stock, but it helps to have stock because then you can sell directly, you can sell more directly. And so Kickstarter is part of a larger ecosystem that Russell is really good at working. So he does all of this stuff, he does Kickstarter, he does events, he does direct sale. I believe you do direct sales as well on some level. So I mean, and Kickstarter is a way to directly sell, so sell in many ways. But yeah, it's like you, once you have this other ecosystem, then it's like, well, you need audiobooks. Instead of funding that from your profits that you should be holding on to, you can pre-fund it from your fans, and then you're able to get those audiobooks done. And it just makes, it makes a lot of sense really that you would, kind of come into this other, this other side of things that you can make a lot of money on that is not really— it's compatible with Amazon and other retailers, but it's, it's kind of like a separate add-on thing that could be, it could really be tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, like additionally to what you're already doing on Amazon.

Okay, so I'm just going through— we'll talk about a couple of the sections that I added.

Yeah, sorry, I was just chatting over it, but yeah, let's go back and chat about this.

I'm just putting insert image here, uh, because I believe that you should have an image after every section. I just think it makes it look nicer and breaks it up. And the eye doesn't— the eye can kind of see this as a break, but if you have a different image after every section, like your eye will immediately be like, I'm transitioning into something new. So I go to Depositphotos or Pexels or somewhere, and I— it's usually Depositphotos, cuz I know that they are licensed. Right. Same. Yeah. I mean, I try not to, in anything that's sales related, use anything that's like Pexels related because of Pixabay. I use Depositphotos. They always have like a 100 thing for $30 through AppSumo. So I subscribe to AppSumo for literally just that deal. And I pick up 1, 2, sometimes 4 of them and I just use them for marketing. And while this one was a comic, was something like this, that's a novel series. You can see like this is just the— this is what I'm trying to do is get the vibe. Like I want to get the vibe of the thing. So like the book is heroines. Mythology, like space and like time and all this like crazy stuff. And so I go, you can see like there's a lot of demonic stuff and demons and there's hell's a big part of it. And all of these are just kind of the vibe of the book. And so even though you don't have imagery, because this is a novel, unless you are making imagery, which is really cool, you can put this in here. Monica, we talked about this earlier. Add reviews of our books. Check out these awesome reviews from Monica from the series, the Book Sales Supercharged series, because we have a whole series, Book Sales Supercharged, that I've helped Monica on. So you can put that You just literally pull all of this stuff, and right now what I'm doing is I'm literally just pulling information from my other pages. So the nice thing is every Kickstarter that's ever been run, good or bad, is all in the system, so you can literally just pull it up and look. So I often go back and say, okay, what do I need? Sometimes I'll just copy sections of it. Two types of Godsfrist books, don't need that. The, the, the, so we'll have to put, like, you'll probably wanna put up here something like, and we kind of do it. So like, I like at the top to do the, the, the blurb. Yeah. I, we kind of figure out the blurb at the top. Mm-hmm. Just wanna make sure you have down here, then you have, you have the, the tracks.

Yeah. Just to be clear, I copied all of Russell's pages.

Yeah.

This is the first time you're looking at it though, right? I mean, yes. Like going, going deep. Yeah.

Going deeper in it. I would, I like to put something, if you're gonna offer like a special thanks or something, I like to have them pulled out. And then again, like just so like the event track, maybe I would do like Like an image. Yeah, yeah, image for each one of these, just because—

yeah, no, Heather, images are so important.

Well, I like to put up to at least 10 to 15 images in each campaign. It will set you out apart because nobody in publishing really uses them except maybe a mock cover. So by using them, it just visually breaks up the eye, and you learn, oh, like, this person, like, probably knows what he's doing, they're doing.

Yeah, and I think like that's an interesting thing to speak to, because like you said, you are using images that get the vibe. To be 100% clear, these are not— this is not the image of your cover, and I think that's really helpful. For nonfiction, I think the types of images that really work are like systems, frameworks, methods. So we have a couple of those that I'll add to it. Also, of course, like the book cover, And like the book series, we had talked about doing some of that. Our author pictures will probably need to go there. And really your author pictures should kind of always go on there. I think Russell, you always do that.

Always do, because I want people to know what's coming. I also always put like here, like where's the money going track somewhere.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I did want to put that section in, but I was like, you know what, I don't know the answer to that. I mean, I know like where it's going, but—

I mean, this is— so I do that here. So you can see this on this screen. When I don't know, I say this is easily the most expensive novel series that I do. Here's where I think it will cost to break even. Uh, this is POD, so I'm not— I'm guessing here, but you know, based upon my knowledge, you know, if we're gonna break even on all this stuff, like, we need— here's where the $1,000 or $2,000 are going. And you'll see that like this, even though this, this was at $11,000, um, to break even, the campaign was only $2,000 to hit goals. So I do say very like, this is not enough. Like, $2,000 is not enough. Like, this is just like, this is how much we really need. And that's where I make it. But I find people like this. And people often say that my campaign pages are quite long. But I think that if only 5% of people look for this, if even 1% of people look for this, if only 10 people will, if only 10 people will, will look at this thing that I want, that's what I want. I want, I'm willing, it takes me 10 minutes to do. If if it gets 5 people to change their mind or to sign up to get notified, then I want that. And then at the bottom here, I always put our other— my other books. So if I have other books, I do— I don't do a lot about them, but I'll say, here is this book, here is the COVID here is a little blurb about it, and then here is where at least where you can sign up to get and check out the first issue or check out something. And I do get people every campaign who will click and they'll be signed up for the Ichabod mailing list, or they'll be signed up for the Katrina mailing list, they'll be signed up for something. It's always a nice sort of thing to add.

You don't have to add it, but, um, yeah, I think for this campaign it does kind of make sense because two of the, uh, tiers are for kind of like all the books in the series.

Yeah, and you have that picture, we have this, that really cool, all of it.

Yeah, we have a lot of pictures of the series.

And what's nice is you already have the blurbs for them. So like literally you just can put in like this title, here's the image because you already have the image, here's the image, here's the title, here's the blurb, here's the title, there's the image, here's the blurb of like all of the books.

So there are like, there are like 30 books though. Like, like literally, would you put all of them or would you do it by series? Because there are only, there are 3 series.

I would probably do it by series. That's what I was thinking. But you probably want to do something on, now that you made it, now that you put it here, you know, you've already put who we are. So I would, I would probably move this section. I'm not going to do it for you, but like I would move this section a little bit lower and then do, what is this? Book about, which you kind of touch on, and then what is the series about. Yeah. And then, and then like have these two sections with, of course, imagery, insert image. And one of the— just so you know, one of the goals One of the things you can sign up to buy in the campaign is me doing, like literally doing what I'm doing with Monica right now. You can have me go through and just say, you know, I will, I will write what I can, but like, you know, I will tell you like, here's all of the things you need. Yeah.

Do you mind if I talk more about this? This is like the most exciting, like, first of all, I think I think, Russell, I think you're crazy to give this at the tier that it is because it's only $100, guys. So I'm going to tell you what it is. He's basically going to guide a group of us through Kickstarters. We're all going to do our Kickstarter projects at once. So this will be November, December, January of this year, probably like towards the end of November. And starting more in December, but we're all gonna launch in January, and Russell's gonna guide us through Kickstarters. And it's for— you can Kickstart anything, but we're gonna focus on probably like novels. And the nice thing about that is that a bunch of us are going to be launching Kickstarters at once, and we're able to like cross-promote, and you will have exactly what I have had this the last several months, which is like the expert of experts on how to do this, like looking over every single thing, like all the details. And you can really follow Russell's system. Russell's system is killer, by the way. Like he's, I mean, he's like refining this right now, but I also think that I, you know, just from following his system from the book basically, and from his course and everything like this, this project still could have been pretty successful even without him like guiding it as, you know, with the fine-tooth comb that he is right now. But, um, yeah, so it's like you'll have him like essentially consulting, um, you in a group setting, just to be clear. It's not like all the focus is going to be on you, but he will be consulting all of us, um, through our Kickstarters. And I think it's going to be huge for so many authors.

It's only $100. Like you're gonna have 5, 10, hopefully more than that people doing that. But I think we should probably, now that I'm looking at the rewards, you probably should add, I'll talk to Monica about adding a section where like, I will one-on-one, like go through your page. We don't have that here, but like, I usually do it for like $500. I will do a literal go through your page, just like I'm doing now. And I will rewrite stuff. I will tell you what to do. I will, we will, We'll talk about it for an hour or two. And then you'll, and then once, and then you'll go away. You won't see this part, but you'll go away and like fix it. And then I'll come back. Me and Monica will like go over it again. So like me and you will go over it like a second time just to make sure that it like makes sense and that you're happy with it and that you understand it. Because my goal is not to make you do it 10— it's not like the next time Monica does a campaign, like I don't want her paying me $500 again. Like, I want her to like know what to do. So it's really important that like you get the methodology here and that when I, when you go away and refix all the stuff, I go, oh, that's great. Okay. So let's go through this really quickly is, um, all right. So are you an author? We kind of have this part here. I like to then do a book image right under that and then be like, uh, boom, here is Here is the stuff. I probably would actually go on, like, talk about sections of the book. Yeah, I can do the 5, like, you know, we talked about the, like, the 5 pillars or like, yeah, you know, we'll talk about, but like, you'll put like the designing, designing, yeah, figuring out Awards, yada, yada, yada. You know, whatever the things are, and like, you'll then be like, in this section, this section, dot, dot, dot, and then the same thing, like, I don't know if I would put it here or here. I probably would put it, um, probably put it here. See, I really like this part. I wouldn't have thought about doing it, but like, it makes sense for that picture. Like, I think that this is like a really nice— I probably would add like 2 more bullet points here.

Just, yeah, that has—

it's a little— there's plenty of other reasons, but like I would add like 2 or 3 more.

We have 6. Yeah, I don't know why I didn't put the other 3.

You know, put the other just to make, you know, as many as you can. Yep.

Um, and then I think you did not re-paste that thing that you just—

no, because I'm looking for where I'm gonna put it. Um, so I'll probably put it here. This makes the sense most sense, like what's the book about, the sections of the book, and then the series, because we have a whole series. Um, I don't know, I, um, I'm gonna bracket this and just say like this is kind of like 3 different sections in one. This is the— this is one of the best things that I can tell you about, like doing a page is break up the pieces into the sections and then focus exclusively on those sections because people will search out the sections that they want. And for instance, we've already talked, you've talked, we talked earlier already about that I've raised $250,000 or whatever the thing is. So like, we can just talk about the series here and then we can add, um, "Who are we?" right here, just to be like— because some people, almost everyone is going to read this first part until here, into the first book image. Most people are going to read to this part. Most people will read this section, and then what they'll probably do is they'll start skimming. So now you want to make sure that you have every section. Okay, they want to know the specs. It's a trade book, 6 Whatever the trim is. Okay, it's 100% complete. All right, here's the section. Oh, I'm looking for the sections of the book. That's what I really care about. I don't care about what— you're going to do like your blurb here. I just want to know what the sections are about. So that's good. All right, and then there's a series. Cool. Why is this book different from the hundreds of others that are out there? Yeah, I guess I kind of care about that. But they probably will be like, okay, the series about— now who are these people? So the one thing that I would say is maybe it makes sense to put the— with fiction, you wouldn't do this ever.

Right, this is all nonfiction specific. Some of it, not all of it, some of it.

With nonfiction, what probably— I would probably move, which I would never do. Again, I would never do this with fiction, but for nonfiction, I would probably put who we are up here. And then another insert image, just because it's so important to display authority when you're doing nonfiction. I know you knew this, Monica, talking to the other people, but so people are like, oh, when people are going to say then like, okay, this guy knows Kickstarter, this woman knows book launching, now I want to know what the book is about specifically. It's just, it's just, it's the most important thing because like when people are buying nonfiction, what they want is to consume information. They do not care what the— it's like, oh, this person has authority on this, cool, I want to know it, boom, I'm buying. Um, so I think that all of this stuff— why is this book different? Um, you know, this part is this part probably needs to be a little bit polished because you don't want to like insult other books, just want to accentuate the positive in our book. So I'll probably buff down— when you go— I'm not going to do it because like, you know, I'm trying to do this all as quick as possible on camera, but, um, you know, I probably want to like move something. But you do want to talk about why the book is different You did this part about why the pledge level would you choose, print tracks, event tracks, where's the money going, you know, other. So you would put the Book Sales Supercharged series. No, the Book Sales Supercharged would go be here. Yeah. Oh yeah. The other books. So what's going to happen is someone says, awesome. I love Monica. I love Russell. Like, what else can I get in this thing? Like if I love their stuff and their teaching. So that's where you put like Productive Novelist, Novelist, and, uh, and, um, the How Not to— How Not to Build— How to Build Your Dot Dot Dot, you know, all of this stuff. You put the courses. Do you have any other courses that we're going to offer? Anything that is here, but it has to correspond with either an add-on or preferably a pledge level. Yeah, that's kind of it, I think. I'm gonna go through one more time because there's the books, but yeah, and you'll see I do a lot. I have a lot of books, so I— this is like longer than every other section almost of the whole campaign.

Yeah, and I—

oh, go ahead. No, no, no, that's it.

I was just gonna speak to, um, two things. The the tracks. So like the way Russell does is, is he does an ebook track and a print track because that's kind of what people want to, want to see for books. They're either going to say I'm an ebook person or I'm a print person or like a digital person. And if you have ebook and audiobook, I, I feel that you can just do that under digital and then the print is like a kind of a separate thing. And then the third Sometimes you'll have a third track depending on merchandise. I know Russell did one on pins because he's got a lot of, like, fans who like collecting pins at this point from his Kickstarters. But what we did for this Kickstarter is an event track because that is kind of what makes the most sense for nonfiction. So we have some virtual events and we also have an in-person event that we're doing. So, and I don't know how you feel about more than 3 tracks, but that, that those numbers, 2 to 3, sounded really— it seems like really manageable to me.

Yes, I'm gonna save this, uh, and then I'll go back to the rewards just so you can see, like, what happens with the reward tiers is they just are all kind of jumbled here. Like, they're just kind of like— you— I don't want someone to have to look at each one of these to see, so I always try and say Um, uh, okay, so, and I try and use— if you're doing multiple campaigns, I use the same images on each one. So like, I just— this is my— this is like my image for— this is my image for digital. It's like this one. So that's— over time, if you do them like a lot, people train your eye to be like, oh, Oh, that's the one for this. I changed some of them a little bit of time, but like usually I'll have the same, at least for the comics and the novels. So, um, so yeah, I want to have as many tracks as I think people are going to look for. Like I might do a consulting track if there's consulting stuff to do, like just because someone's going to be like, hey, is there one-on-one consulting? Is there group consulting? Like something like that. Yeah. But just any amount, any, I tend to try and keep as little tracks as possible because like, what do you got? You have a book, you have a, you have a, you have a, you have a book, you have a print book and you have pins and like you have a couple of courses otherwise, but people aren't usually coming to my thing for courses. So, you know, I might do a courses track or I might do consulting and courses. Just like do one thing in there. But anything that's— anything that has more than like 2 or 3 options, I want to— and I— and that I think people are going to want, I'm going to put in there. So like if I did— if I put in like the Godsverse Chronicles books in this thing, I probably wouldn't do it because who's gonna— no one's gonna like look for that one-off thing, right?

Um, no, that makes sense. So it's not enough— it's not a specific number, it's, um just organization. And I think for our campaign, maybe we do want to do courses as a separate one and consulting as a separate one. The courses, there's a couple, a couple that we have, a couple tiers that have courses added. The consulting, I had kind of put it as like an add-on, so we could, we could add it as a tier. It'll take us over the 10.

Well, I don't— I think what's important is like, because I talk about 10, 10, 10 things, but what I, what I, what to me what is important is that you say, okay, um, uh, I don't— how, how it works is in order to— because you can do add-ons here in the rewards. Um, go back and save. No. So you can do reward tiers or add-ons, but the problem is that people have to pick a tier and then they get to the add-ons. So if someone goes, oh, I really want one-on-one consulting, like, and I think more than— so how I work with my campaigns is like, if I will do, uh, like the complete pin collection. Here's one. And like, I don't have just every single pin listed here because if you want a pin, then you have to go on the add-on. But if you want a bunch of pins, then they're here. So like, I, I make sure that you can, you can get to the pins if you want them. But like, if you want to add another pin or you want to add a pin to your pledge, you can do that on the add-on menu. So anything that I think is going to be like the main reason someone comes to my page— like, I don't think someone's going to come come to this page and be like, I need every pin. Like, I need like these 3 pins. They're coming here mostly to see book. But I do think that like, when you're talking about consultancy, like having a book, like someone's probably going to be like, this is great. I just watched this hour-long video or whatever, which was completely off the cuff.

We did not expect this. We didn't plan on recording this. So we just, we just are now. Here we go.

Yeah. But if you see this and you're like, wow, I'd really love that thing. Then I want, I want them to be able to say, and it's at the $500 level that I want them to be able to see that.

Yeah, no, that makes a ton of sense. And I mean, we have had a lot of people ask, you know, especially for Russell's consulting, but people have asked me too. Actually, someone just asked me before this, like, hey, do you still do one-on-one consulting? And I was like, no, not really. But Actually, we're going to offer that again just for the Kickstarter. So yeah, I think, I think that just based on kind of the feedback so far, we will probably need that as a track. And we'll, and we'll have the courses too, because I don't, I don't really sell my courses anymore. And Russell, you're kind of, you're certainly not promoting them actively. I know you still, they're still available, but you're not promoting them actively. So It would make sense to have those as extra tracks, I guess.

You make a really good point of like, if you have things that, let's say, you have lying around of like, you know, a lot of authors that have published books before, like they have prints, printed books lying around. Yep. Like that, they're like, oh, I just have a bunch of books lying around. Like, this is the time to be like, I'm going to put together a 3-pack book series of like my Fated Mates trilogy, and like you can get that signed for like $35 or $60 or wherever, $70 from what you're selling that for. But like, that is like— this is the time to be like, oh, I know you all wanted me to like do more signing signed books. I don't offer signed books, but I'm— all books are signed when you get them on the Kickstarter, or like something like that. Like all of that You know, I do pins, but I don't offer pins on my website. Like, I only offer them through Kickstarter, or like if you see me at a show. So like, you know, prints, all of that stuff, or all the stuff that you're like, oh, these are what people— these are things people have asked me for over the years, I'm gonna do it because it's been a year since I offered this thing. Or like, you know, I have first editions of like a book that now is on its third edition with its like fifth cover, but like there are fans who will just want the first edition to have the first edition. And like, this is when you can bring all of that stuff on— coaching, consultancy. One of the things that I do, um, uh, for my fiction is like, if you spend more than $50, you get a VIP room invite with me. So I'll do like a group thing with people, and like, I don't do that. That's not a thing that I ever do. Yeah, I do it on Kickstarter.

And I, not ironically, because we have discussed this, we're actually doing that for our campaign. So if you, just a little plug here, I mean, this whole thing's a plug and educational, I hope. But yeah, we're doing this at the $50 level for our, for this campaign too. And we don't do this like neither Russell nor I, we're not, we don't, I mean, we love, I think we both really enjoy doing consulting, but this is not a regular offering for either of us. So yeah, I do think those pieces that are not your core business, because you don't have time to make them your core business, you can bring those in for these campaigns.

Well, and just like, to me, a Kickstarter is about celebrating the fans of the thing. And so like, if you, for instance, spend $100 on this campaign, you get like, uh, you can, you get to sprint with us.

Oh my gosh, this is like the very best here. I'm sorry, but it really is.

Oh yeah, you also get the VIP coaching thing. You also get a print book of the book. You also get a digital of the book, and you get my $27, uh, usually, uh, um, Build a Rabbit, uh, uh, audience building course.

I forget what it's called at this point. It's called Build Your Audience from Scratch.

Yeah, all of this stuff would cost, you know, Oh yeah, you wouldn't— if you wanted to sprint with us, with me, you wouldn't ever be able to get it. But like, you know, if you wanted to, to get, uh, you know, these things you couldn't get. But like, you know, we're doing consulting, I think, uh, our consulting for like— yeah, forget, it's like $200 or $300, whatever it is. But like, whatever it is, like, that would be— if you got it after the campaign, you would be paying that for that thing. But during the campaign, you get that plus sprinting, plus VIP, plus the print, plus the digital, plus the course, plus all of the bonuses. And like, that is kind of— not that this is like, I mean, this is not, not a pitch, but like, this is what I'm talking about when like you want to make your page really enticing. Because like, why are people coming to Kickstarter? Like, the, the thing that you are thinking right now in your head, probably before you started watching this, like, But my books are on Amazon. Like, why would I— why would someone go through the trouble of signing up for a Kickstarter account and, like, getting the Kickstarter and, like, doing all this stuff? And it's like, well, how often do you send, like, personalized messages about, like, thanking them for buying your book? How often do you, like, send updates about the book launching? Very little. So you get also that. How often can someone, like, get the digital and print simultaneously? How often are you ordering prints? How often are you doing a VIP hangout? Like, how often are you doing these things? And the more— how often are you offering bonus books? Or, like, which we didn't— which we're not going to talk about, but it's not part of this thing. Yeah. But, like, how often can you get all of this stuff? And that is kind of what, for me, the Kickstarter is. It's about, like, celebrating your biggest fans and celebrating, like, the series that you're making and celebrating, you know, if you're— whether you're doing an exclusive hardcover or you're just relaunching the print books or you're doing new covers, like, whatever the thing is that you're doing, like, it's kind of about celebrating fans and about you and your series, like, not necessarily about you, but, like, about this series and about giving the fans as much as they possibly can get, and the more you can give without obviously taking away from your other stuff, the better it's going to be. But you know, this VIP coaching call, it's going to take an hour, 2 hours of our time. Like, that's not a huge commitment for what it gives, but it's something that we're just never going to do again. Like, I am— I mean, I'm not going to say never, but like, the odds of me doing a VIP coaching call on the same line with Monica again for the rest of our lives is very low. It's not a thing that neither of us want or need to do.

Exactly. Yes. Well, I think, um, something that people don't understand is how excited— so like, we are both like very excited about this campaign, obviously, but it's like our excitement is contagious. So like, even just like some comments that we've gotten on social media, like, okay, I can't resist, I'm in. I was already in, but now I'm mega in. Like, people are excited about this because it's just different. And well, nobody in our space is— nobody in this space is really doing any Kickstarter. So that's like kind of part of it. But yeah, there's— it's like they don't even know what we're going to unveil yet. Like, we've posted about one of our reward tiers so far. And all of this can change. I just want to say that because obviously we're still in edits and this will go out before the campaign goes live. But yeah, it's like, people don't even quite know what we're going to do, but they're already like really, really engaged. And a lot of those people are not necessarily huge fans of us. Like they may just be people on Facebook that we know, our peers, maybe they have been following us for for a while, but they may not even be on our email list. Like they're not necessarily like these mega fans. The Kickstarter is actually engaging them in a way that they're becoming, they're growing deeper in their fan, fan-ness of us or how Russell, I feel like you have better words to explain this.

Yeah, they're growing. I like your fan-ness, but like they're just growing their engagement and their, like their relationship with us really, like, to me Kickstarter is about bringing the relationship of your most ardent fans or even new fans to like a deeper level. And one of the things that is great about this, especially, I mean, I do, I'm an old ham at doing Kickstarters, but like Monica's not. And for her, like, this is a pattern interrupt. Like, this is like, oh, this is a completely new weird thing. And people are going to be intrigued that she's do, I hope, well, I hope, I mean, fingers crossed that this happens, but you know, we're, You know, whether you're doing one or you're doing 10 or whatever, you know, I always try to make it this like pattern interrupt of like, look at the excitement. Like, I mean, how often in the last 2 years have you been genuinely excited for a thing? And like, I kind of, to me, the secret weapon that I bring is like, hey, this is a thing. Like, you can be excited for this thing. Like, we can be excited together. You know, I've made this thing, but I've made it for you. Right. So yeah, I think that is about the best I can do without you doing a little bit of work and us doing this offline. But we talked about the basics part. We talked about the rewards part. We talked about the story part. We talked about the promotion part. I've given way more than I intended to give. Oh yeah. Uh, you can go to, uh, Kickstart Your Novel and, uh, and, uh, and, and if you're doing this before the campaign launches, it will redirect you to the, uh, to the page you can get notified. If you're doing this when the campaign is live, then you can go and back and see how it all turned out. Yep.

Yeah, so kickstartyournovel.com. And I agree, Russell has given away so much in this video. And we— he always does this. He gives so, so much. He's, uh, so brilliant, as you already heard. Um, and one of the, um, one of the amazing things about talking to Russell is like, this is kind of just still scratching the surface. Like, I, I promise you, because we've had so many conversations about this, this is still scratching the surface. So there's so much more to learn about Kickstarter. Russell has so much more to share about it, even though he's shared like so much just in this video. Um, definitely come, come over to kickstartyournovel.com, um, come back the campaign. I promise you this book is going to deliver beyond your like wildest expectations. There is so much to cover and it's just really good. It's a really, really good book.

I, I agree. And you know, one thing that I will say to final this, I was like I always think of my courses and my books as like me pitching a perfect game. You know, it's like you didn't miss anything. You like said the right thing. Like you didn't stumble like I did a bunch of times here. Like you get to take your time and like really indulge in every moment. And so, um, and so yeah, I think that we've given— if you liked this, like you're going to love—

you will love this book so much.

I mean, I mean, I really think you should do like I never in my whole rest of my career intend to do a like sprint and actually do all of this with you. And then I, well, Monica did mention, I'm gonna launch with you. Like I'm gonna launch a book during this thing with you. And Monica is also going to launch a thing with you. So like we are actually going to go through, and while this may be so monumentally successful that we do it again, like I have no plans to ever do this again. So if you can, Like I highly recommend checking out at that level or at least the $50 level where you get the VIP invite.

Yeah. Yeah. The VIP call is gonna be cool. The sprint is like, in my opinion, I mean, you can have like 2 hours with Russell or you can have like 2 months with Russell basically. Um, and I just, I don't think it's like even a question, like it's, it's a $100 one-click, like in my opinion, but You can be the judge of that. But yeah, we would love for you to back us. We think, and I don't think we're ever going to do anything like this again. We won't say never, like Russell said, but I can't imagine us doing anything like this again.

And this is really a celebration of the whole series too. Like, it's one book, but it's really 16 books, and we can't wait to show you more over the next month.