Kickstarter Case Studies and Q&A Livestream

Hey everyone, I'm assuming it'll take a few minutes, few seconds at least for us to go live everywhere, so probably you won't hear this. All right, it looks like we are live in at least a few places. I see 6 people joining us, so welcome. So this day is just kind of a fun celebratory day for us. We get to talk to all of our friends about Kickstarter, so we're super excited. Everybody that we're talking to today is from our community, the Kickstarter Accelerator, and they have all done some pretty stellar projects. Some of them, they had— it was their first project that they had done. So it'll be really exciting to talk to everybody and get their best tips and tricks. They've, you know, all the people who are on here, they're very savvy business people and marketing people and also very savvy at Kickstarter.

So yeah, and what's best is like, you know, a lot of people, I think, uh, even though I don't think that it's, uh, accurate that they should be, are a little bit intimidated by me and you, uh, because you've just done a lot of stuff. We've had a lot of careers. And like, I mean, I know I am intimidating. People have told me that for years. I, I try not to be, but like, I have like a just, I don't know, authoritative— like, maybe I give off like tough dad vibes. I don't know. I don't think that's accurate. But the disciplinarian, you know, I've done 20 projects, you've launched so many books that it's like, okay, can this work for me?

Who, like a regular?

Yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, we have— maybe we should talk a little bit about who's coming and I can just show projects really quickly. So let's—

so, yeah, and I'll give the schedule. So So the first person is— sorry, I'm also in charge of— I'm in charge of things. So, oh, sorry, did I make you live?

No, no, you got it. So, okay, so first we have Sandy Williams, Shadow Reader, which is a really cool— was a really cool project, raised $5,000. This is her first Kickstarter campaign.

Yeah, she was one of the people in our group who She didn't. So she was in the January cohort, but she launched in April. And so Russell and I have talked about this before, but we noticed that people who kind of just watched the first round of people launch, they seem to do— I don't want to say better, but they seem to have a higher fundraise. And we think it's just like just being able to watch people do it and kind of follow along in the group. Also having more prep time for your own Kickstarter project. So that is good information if you've been thinking about Kickstarter Accelerator, but you're like, I don't— I'm not going to do mine until November or next year or whatever. This could be a good way to at least start to prep for it.

Yeah, absolutely. And then we have my good friend Jack Holder. So I've been mentoring Jack years, and he's in, uh, he's in the group, and he's done a bunch of projects actually. Jack does a lot of cool stuff because, um, he's a theology master's degree, so he does a lot of stuff with like religion, like, uh, religion and Christianity. And he did, uh, these, uh, these, uh, anthologies which were about like just spirituality and all. And a lot of this stuff have a very, uh, theological bent on it. And I know a lot of people ask me like, is Christian fiction work on Kickstarter and all of these things? Like, he's done comics and novels and just all of this stuff. And he also has this big just overall fantasy series called Legend of the Realm, which he's been trying to get off the ground for a while. And it's, it's really cool to watch him sort of grow the campaign. And, you know, he— what's great about this is he does everything. So like he has done, like I said, anthologies, he's done comics, he's done novels. He's done, he's done just about all of the things that you can do in a book except for nonfiction, and it's all worked for him. But his, his, his books are not raising like $50 grand, right? But like he's able to fund all of his stuff pretty consistently with Kickstarter. And these are like very off brand for what you would normally think would work on Kickstarter.

So does he— he also launches projects like pretty regularly, right? So this is somebody who uses Kickstarter as certainly as a first income stream, but also I don't want to say exclusively, but is he mostly a Kickstarter person?

Yeah, he does a lot of stuff on Kickstarter. Kickstarter is his first thing as far as I know. He actually has one launching now for the end of his series. But this is the one he did, like, when we—

at the beginning of the January. Yeah, because he was, he was, like, in the January cohort, but he already knew all— like, he already knew how to do Kickstarter, but he launched in January and it did really well. It hit $5K, almost over $5K. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's got one going now, which is like, it's a much niche book. So, like, this is a book that is very His— this book is a little more Kickstarter friendly. This one is very like religious overtones and straight, like straight religious kind of book. Yeah. And so, and it's like slowly been like kind of going this way. So I think it's probably going to be the last one that he does of this one. I'm not sure, but he's able to still, even after 4 volumes of this, still fund, you know, at a couple grand. But this is the one I've like he's been asking a lot about like how to design a series. And so this is the one he, he like, this is the one he launched first and this is the one that he's doing now. So you can kind of see how each, each book is like building on each other also. So if you have multiple series, you can also launch them all on Kickstarter.

Yeah. So it'll be cool to talk to him. So that's so Sandy's first at— well, I only have the Central Times. So let me try to—

10:30, 12:30, 1:30, right?

Yeah, at the half hour. So in about a half hour, 25 minutes, and then Jack will be next. And then the third person, Jennifer.

We talk about Jennifer quite a bit. We do our thing. Jennifer is one who asked us a million questions about everything. She actually was the inspiration for many, many, many, many, many, many, many of the videos that I put in the course because I was like, that's a good question. I haven't covered that yet. Here's this. So I probably made 10 or 15 videos based on her questions. Again, another person who didn't launch in January when we started the launch, she launched in, like, I think February or March and made $6 grand.

Yeah, because she was with Brandon Sanderson. So, I mean, here's what I'll say about that. Imagine launching on March 1st because, like, not only was it a Tuesday, it was also the first of the month. And then, like, also Brandon Sanderson launched. So I do think it ended up helping people's campaigns just because there were so many people on it. But I mean, it could have gone either way, in my opinion, right?

Well, you know, I think that people often talk about, uh, Brandon Sanderson or something like pulling these big campaigns, pulling from Kickstarter. But to me, I want the legitimacy. Like, I want the legitimacy of these big creators using it. I mean, so many people, uh, that we would never have thought about Kickstarter, like, messaged us privately during that thing. We're like, well, if Brandon Sanderson can do it And when you're talking to, you know, potential readers, you're like, well, Brandon Sanderson did it and we use it for this super— like, just like he did, to like to, to, uh, give all of these extra things to our super fans. And so like, if you have a plan and you have Brandon Sanderson and Will Wight and Kevin J. Anderson and all of these people who have long distinguished careers using it, Michael Sullivan— and because like, you know, Michael Sullivan and Wes— and, um, and, uh, um Wesley Dean Smith, like, have used it forever.

Yeah, I think it's Dean Wesley Smith.

Yeah, Dean Wesley Smith.

Sorry.

Yeah, Dean Wesley Smith has a huge audience too.

Well, he's used it forever, so it's not like a thing that, like, they don't count even though they've had 30-year careers. Yeah, for other people. But like, now it's like, well, you know, even if you don't care that Dean Wesley Smith and Michael Sullivan raised tens of thousands of dollars per book, like Brandon Sanderson, And like, there's all of these touchpoints and like, that only helps. And I can tell you, like, not, not— I'm very sure that at least a couple of people joined the accelerator because of Brandon Sanderson, because they see it as a legitimate way. And I can tell you tons out of the 200,000 people that backed that campaign, there's a lot of new people who are going to know about Kickstarter and start figuring it out.

Oh, for sure.

Yeah.

Okay. And then right before lunch, I believe we have our friends at Impulsive Walrus Press, Esther and Frog Jones.

Yeah, this is— so they launched in January. They were some of the first— one of the campaigns that, like, launched at the beginning of January. And so they were one of the very first campaigns that went through. I think they raised, like, $4,500. Well, it's on the screen. $4,500. Yeah, yeah. I was to say $4,500 was my guess. And so What they did, I mean, I think they were also the ones who had their campaign like done. Like I remember them being like the, like either the first or like one of the very first people that we reviewed their campaigns. And I think they also, well, they did the Make 100, so that helped. But I think they also have a strong events presence.

Yeah, they do a lot of stuff at events and you know, they had over 100 backers, which is great. And they are very good at like conventions and and building their superfans. And, and yeah, I mean, I remember, I think they said this publicly, but they said, you know, Frog was like, you know, we now have a publishing company because we have a way to like, we, I feel like we're finally a business now because like we now know how to break even on our books. And like, honestly, like that's to me, that's the magic. Like if you can just say anything out of my brain, like I can, I can at least break even, like That's the key to publishing, you know. Publishing is a war of attrition, and all you— for the most part, what you're trying to do is live to fight another day so that you can make another book and find another hit, and then live to fight another day to fund your weird projects and try and find another hit.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. There was a story. I don't remember what the guy's name was who was talking about this. He was, like, a popular comic— or not comic, but, like, cartoonist. Um, but he was pointing out how like Harrison Ford makes the blockbuster and then he does like the indie films, and it's kind of the same for all creators. So yeah, they're, they're really cool because if you do events, if you do that type of thing, if you do the convention circuit, um, Kickstarter's kind of like conventions but online. So there's a lot of good stuff that translates. And I think what's cool about their project is that they have a lot of backers.

So yeah, they had a lot of backers, over 100. Yeah, that's a really good number, right? Okay. And then after we get back from lunch, you know, a lot of people ask us about kids' books. And I can say that I can say 25% of the books on Kickstarter on the publishing platform are children's books. So like it's the biggest singular part of the publishing platform. But we actually have somebody that went through, through with a kids' book., and, you know, she raised $2,500. Another person who was very early in the process raised $2,500 on her series, which is amazing. Um, uh, it's, uh, uh, yeah, so it's— it teaches, uh, children, uh, ASL. So it— and yeah, successful project as well.

Yeah, I actually— so I backed this one for my son, and, um, something that was interesting about this project is, you know, Kelly had posted about it in the group, and I remember there was like this light bulb moment where Russell was just I was like, your campaign is about ASL. Like, ASL needs to be front and center. And she switched it around, and it, it was just like, it just made the page flow like so strongly. Um, because I think before it was just like, it wasn't like quite coming together. Um, you know, it was, it was good, but there was like, there's just like sometimes there's just a, like a heart piece missing to it.

Or yeah, it was like a kids book camp. It was a kids book campaign that was very generic, and it didn't have that like special hook where I was like, wait, because we met at 20 Books last year. I was like, wait, I, I came to your table and I was like, oh my God, these are all ASL books. Like, that is the amazing thing. And meanwhile, it was like very much buried on her page. Um, and so we like revamped it. And that's a lot of what we do in the group is we're like, well, what's the why? Like, what's the special hook? Like, what's the unique thing here? And a campaign that could like do okay ends up doing quite a bit better because we tease out the hook. And I just did a video— I'm doing several videos about like what's wrong with my campaign? And it's almost always like, what is the unique hook that is here? Whether it's a nonfiction or a fiction or fantasy or whatever the thing is, like, there's always a unique hook to that series that, like, makes it resonate with fans.

Yeah, for sure. All right.

And then you want another one? We got 2 more left.

We got 2 more.

Okay, so we're going to go into people who have done campaigns before. So Sarah has done several campaigns in her past. And a lot of people say, ask like, well, what is, how will this help our campaign? And you can see 31, 32 backers. This is over double the backers for someone who, you know, our goal is to stress test this and say like, I'm not like, you see $1,000, you see $2,000, $3,000, which is very good.

Yeah.

And that was her, that was her good campaign, like her best campaign that before she joined the thing, before she joined Kickstarter Accelerator.

And this was double, but this was still double. Oh yeah, it was double and almost double the money. So like it was a significant, even if you're in, even if you're doing Kickstarter, even if you're doing Kickstarter well, like there's probably some stuff you will pick up. And that's why we're going to be able to finish out by talking with Sarah and the next person that we'll talk about and just like, hey, what is it like to like do this with— and we really, we welcome your questions. Like, right, I would love nothing more than to be stumped today on something because I'm not sure. Like, I, like, I want to be like, oh, will this work for this? Will this work for that? And like not have an answer because it will make me go back to my notes and try and find better stuff. But I really want to show you all a range of projects that you could do on Kickstarter. So we want to do—

so going back to Sarah, she also, I believe she posted in the group and said, this is my first Projects We Love badge. Yeah. So I think that, that, like, little things like that are really important. And we talked about this yesterday on our webinar too. But we think that probably 75% of people, like, for sure, 50% of people who have launched with us, get the Projects We Love badge, but we think it's probably closer to 75%. We haven't done the numbers, but we just see that. And then we've also had several people get Project of the Day. I think, um, I think Sarah was one of them. Oh, Sarah might be one of them. And Esther and Frog, I thought, got Project of the Day. And then, um, Karpov can raid, but, um, I think she got it. And she, she's like a romance author. And had a romance project bookboxed. So yeah, so that is a really cool— I mean, it's a cool benefit. I think there are a couple of things to say about that. One is like, we talk about how to do that in the book. So like, if you just want— so that answer is in the book, like, how do you get projects we love? But I think the bigger thing is, how do you get your project into a format that people who are picking for projects we love are really into. And so I think that's the thing that we can provide. So yes, the answer is in the book and part of the answer, the harder part of the answer is in Kickstarter Accelerator. And so I think that's where—

How do you make a page that the people at Kickstarter like and fans respond to?

Right, totally.

All right, last one. Craig Price, we also talk about a bunch in his Dragonia series, which Craig also has done several books including in this series.

And I think he's mostly been— oh, oh, I didn't even see that self-publishing book.

Yeah, so he has a— he had 18 backers last time. He had a couple that were unsuccessful., and several that were unsuccessful.

Well, what's interesting is it's the same, the same series.

Yeah, like this series, like last time he launched it, launched at a couple hundred dollars, I think launched at $500. So then he took the book, and this is his words, not our words, it's what he said. He took the book and with just the book he went from $500 to like $2,000. Then he joined the accelerator and went from $2,000 to like $3,000 in a couple of days and ended up at almost $6,000 and like 4 times the backer number. And I know we, if you were on the webinar yesterday, you know, we often talk about like 10x-ing your campaign and like this is literally what we're talking about. Like, yeah, probably gonna, if you make, if you do a $20,000 campaign, you're not gonna 10x your campaign. We would love to do that. I would love to do that myself, but most people that are coming into the accelerator, or a lot of them are like $5,600, $5,000, this is $565, right? And this is like $5,600. It's literally, I mean, it's literally almost to the dot 10x.

Well, I think what's useful here too is just some pretty basic math, which is that You know, if you up the average spend per backer, which is fairly easy to do, to up it significantly, that could be like, that could double your campaign by itself. So if you go from like, oh, somebody's spending like $10 to somebody spending $25 to somebody spending $50, like those are really big differences. And those are like fairly like basic optimizations that we just teach, like not, I mean, in the book too, but like really in the accelerator. But then the other thing is doubling your backers will also increase that a lot.

And if you can—

4x the backers, right? Yeah. You can just like getting a ton more backers. So yeah, doubling it, 4xing it, whatever, that increases your amount just so much. So if you just focus on those two metrics, you can 10x your campaign. It's very obvious mathematically how you do that. Whereas if you are working on retailers, like, you could have 500 pre-orders and double to 1,000 pre-orders, and you're making like $3,000 or $4,000 more. Like, it's just not— it's not like— and there's nothing wrong with that. That's a great amount, but it's not like 10, 15, you know, it's not like these huge numbers that we talk about with Kickstarter because the average spend on a book is like $3 or $4 probably, or the average, I guess, profit or royalty, I'll say. I won't say profit. The average royalties is only like $3 or $4 where, you know, on Kickstarter, the average per backer is like, you know, I think it's like $25 to $50.

Yeah.

Yeah.

For a publishing project.

Yeah, it's a lot and it's a lot more and just doing things like, like making the rewards clearer. So like when you think about like who someone who comes to your page, like if they get confused at any point in the page, they're going to jump off. You know, if it's, it could be in the video, it could be in the text, it could be that there's not congruency, it could be that the reward tiers are like weirdly named or not clear, but at any point in there you could have a problem which would massively destroy your, like, your conversion rate. So what we do in the accelerator is we're like, okay, so like if we can make, if we can double the efficiency of your video and like make your text double as just clear, all of those things mean that you're going to be optimized for having someone who likes your page go through your pages. Very similar to, you know, when you're doing when you're, when you see, when you have a 5 or 6 book series, your book 3 like has a drastic drop-off in read-through to 4. Like, you can be like, oh well, if I fix this and I double the amount of people that, that stay on, I'm going to be able to, to make more money in 4, 5, and 6 and all of the other campaigns. So, you know, what we do, a lot of it is like, I, we, I did this with a person that if you join the accelerator you can go in and see, which was like I went to her page and I spent 20 minutes on it. And afterwards I was like, I have literally no idea what this book is about. I spent 20 minutes and I've backed so many books and like, I don't know. I kind of think I know what this book is about, but like, I've been here 20 minutes and I only kind of think I know what this is about and what I'm backing. And like, it's not to call her out because there's hundreds of projects that are like that, that just like are unclear. And so if all we give you is clarity, it's going to massively increase not just the amount of money that you make— well, the amount of money that you make, but also, but mostly, especially the beginning, it's like, just, hey, if 20 backers becomes 80 backers, that's 4 times more money.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. So that is our schedule, and we are, you know, we are happy to take questions now. We've got about 8 minutes. Before we have our first person on. So please, if you have questions about Kickstarter, drop something in the comments. We would love to chat with you. And I do agree with Russell, like, try to stump us because it would be fun.

Yeah.

So yeah, go ahead. Just, we want the hardest questions because this is what this is here for. Like, we're, we're here to answer questions, even if you're not going to join us in this accelerator. So we have one.

Hey, hi Tina.

Hi Tina. Does Kickstarter work well with novellas? And I guess we have someone in our, in our, in our, in our group that's doing an omnibus of multiple novellas. So I guess let's take it from like, Monica, would it work for one novella and would it work for a series of novellas being bound up as one?

Thing. Yeah, I have been seeing— I mean, I think it would work better for the series of novellas, like, just to be real. And we see a lot of, like, omnibus editions as a result. For a novella, though, I think it can work. You, you know, I think the challenge with that is that, you know, people don't expect to pay, like, $25 for a novella paperback. When it doesn't really improve your cost that much. So it's like you would be, you know, you might be pricing it at, like, if it's just a standalone novella, you might be pricing it at like $15 or $20 in paperback. Like $20 to me, I'd be like, eh, like, I don't know if I would pay that much. That feels high. But I think you would still have to price at like $20 to really, um, build a profit from that. So yeah, I just see— I see omnibuses doing better. Um, I've also seen some short story, uh, omnibus, or like, like a collection of like 10 short stories, or, you know, things like that as an omnibus. And I feel like those do okay. Like, like, it's kind of like on retailers, like, people like novels better for the most part, you know, but I did this more popular.

What, like 120 pages. I sold it for $18 on Kickstarter. I did 2 of them, so I also did this one, which was 70 pages. It's a comic that I drew, both of these, and they were each, I think, $18, or both for $32. They cost me $2 or $3 to make. I'm just gonna make a pile because I have a feeling there's just gonna be a hunt, like the whole books are gonna be there at the end. Um, it cost me $2 to print, it cost me like a few bucks to ship. And then I also sold like drawings and doodles and I had a pin and all of those things together made us make like $3,500 on a book that cost me like $700, $800 to make. I think that what you're going— the advantage of that is like, I don't know if you've read Emperor's Soul. Have you read Emperor's Soul, Brandon Sanderson's book? Okay, so this is like my favorite book, one of my favorite books of all time. Like, I don't read a lot of Brandon Sanderson, but like, this book is one of my favorite books of all time. And I think it's a book that's made for super fans. And if you're making an— and it's short. If you're making a novella for super fans, you're not gonna be running a bunch of ads to. It's gonna be maybe a standalone in your universe or a different universe. Like, I think that Kickstarter is made for standalone things because it, is you can charge more. You can charge a premium for a work that is only for your superfans. Most people are not going to come in and start at Emperor's Soul. They're going to start at Way of the King or one of the other Brandon Sanderson stories. So in that way, yeah, I think that it's— I have a short story that I just ended that was a metaphysical book, which was 30,000 words about an angel that comes down and tells a guy he's only got one life his last life in the universe, and he's going to die in a week, basically. And like, I'm like, nobody's going to buy it. There's no way that anyone outside of my superfans will ever buy this book. But Kickstarter allows me to write that book. Kickstarter allowed me to write Marked Ones, Invasion, Worst Thing in the Universe, Void Calls Us Home, which is the first thing that Monica saw of me, 4 standalone books. And yeah, I do think that it can be really, really, really, really effective for one novella or one thing, as long as your expectations are low and as long as you have superfans. Another thing, before hopefully Sandy's going to be on in a couple of minutes, but another thing, the final thing is, like, usually a novella is either vastly different than the thing that you wrote or tied into your universe as, like, a standalone character or a standalone story or the backstory of some minor character. And for the— if something as a novella relates to your other series, but it's a standalone, again, I think that it would do really well on Kickstarter. But I think generally, if you just have a series of novellas, like, you probably are better off doing an omnibus unless you're in romance, because most things that are— that, like, a 40,000-word book that, like, is in romance is a novel might be considered a novella in epic fantasy. But, like, yeah, you could go and make a 40,000-word book and a book. I think it's— I think that 30,000-word book is a book, but like, depending on what your category is, there are also expectations of what a novel is versus a novella. Yeah, that's a lot of word salad to say yes.

Oh, I just realized I can show these, so let me— I'll start doing that. So thank you, Tina, for your question. So I think we're— Sandy, we might just bring you on a few minutes early. Are you good with that? Yep, she's good. So let's bring on Sandy. Hello, Sandy, welcome! How are you guys? Good, thank you so much for joining us today. So we, we wanted to, um, we, we shared a little bit about your project earlier. I know you were kind of, um, in the background at that time, um, so we're gonna pull up the project again though just to both just take catch people up. And we have a couple more people who have joined us on the live stream, so let's pull it up and we can talk about it. Yeah, it's ready, Monica. Awesome. Oh, sorry. Yeah, I'm, I'm the worst, the worst person to be in charge of this. Um, okay, so it's The Shadow Reader, which is the book that, um, was originally traditionally published, and you were able to— 10 years old. Yeah, 10-year-old book. You've gotten your rights back to it for an and you've had your rights back for many years. You're a WIDE author as well. So that's how I know you is from the WIDE for the Win group. So tell us a little bit more about the project then.

All right, so it's for my urban fantasy that was published in 2011. It's a trilogy. And I first started looking at Kickstarter because I wanted to make an audiobook. And I learned that audiobooks don't do really well on Kickstarter, so I had to kind of pivot and go for a hardcover and audiobook. And I think the hardcover is the thing that people are most interested in. I didn't have a whole lot of people are like, oh yay, finally the, the audiobook. But my goal was funding the audiobook, and I had very low expectations. Like, I was in the cohort since the beginning, and I was like almost ready the whole entire time, but there was just that complete indecision of like, is this really done or should I change this? Like my indecision made me launch, I think it was in, yeah, April, like it was ended 2 weeks ago. Um, and so I did a 17-day campaign with low expectations and I really went way past the expectations. Like, I had several people buy my complete collection, which is 7 paperback books, for $200. And every time that happened, I was just like, is this a mistake? You could just pay $200 for my books. Like, that's crazy to me. Um, so that was surprising.

Um, it's like making me emotional right now. It is, it is like that. No, like, that's not possible on a retailer, right? Exactly. So it's like you see it happen for the first time for you on like a project like this, and you're like, how? Like, right, somebody actually— like, you know, it's just like a big sum of money all at once.

So yeah, it is. And it's— I mean, I've been around for 10 years, and I had about 4 years in there where I wasn't publishing. And so I know I had people like drop off and not know who I was. And so I've been trying to kind rebuild after that break. And just going into this, it seems like most of the people came from probably my email list. I think there's numbers in there somewhere, which I love the numbers that you get from, from Kickstarter, like where people come from. Like, that's incredibly helpful. But I knew most of them were coming from my email list, and I'm like, they already have the book and they've already read the book. Why would they spend more money on the book? And they did. So it was, it was surprising. My, I think my average was like $70 for a box.

I was like, okay, that's a lot. That's incredible. Yeah, it's so funny because, um, for so long we thought, you know, Russell does his, that they're like, it's typically $25 to $40, I think closer to the $40 range on like novel campaigns. But you're not the first person who said like, my average was like like $65 or more, you know. And, and I think, I think like you said, it is the hardcover, um, edition that's probably bumping it up there, right?

Well, and I think it's really important to remember, like, I want to— like, this is a book that has been out for 10 years. Yeah, this is, this is a book. And when people ask me about audiobooks, like, this is what I tell them. I said, do an anniversary hardcover and then sneakily fund it into the audiobook. Just like we are all— like, every, every publisher is using this release to pay for the next release. So I think that it was really smart that you did that. And I love that it's the 10th anniversary hardcover. It's very much that first Brandon Sanderson campaign model also, where it's like, here's a 10th anniversary of Way of the King and it makes $7 million.

And you're like, oh no, there's real money here. Right? Like, that's crazy that like a book just like has, has a birthday. And like, I mean, like, I don't make like $5,000 on my birthday, but like a book can make 5 grand on its birthday. I think that's nuts. But yeah, it's very crazy. Very cool. So what do you think worked really well with your campaign? I know you've mentioned a couple of things, but if you had to nail down like the thing that was like, you know, it like this is the reason the campaign succeeded, or maybe the top 3 things, what would they be?

Having the expensive tiers really helped. Like I kind of just put them in there because y'all told me to, thinking that nobody would touch them. Um, but that's where the majority— obviously the majority of the money came from. I had a Tuckerization, um, tour, which is someone's name in my next book. And it's not the next book that I'm writing, is not even the series, it's still an urban fantasy, but it's my new— the second book in my new— newer series. So I've had 7 people do that.

And wow, that's a lot.

I limit that more. Yeah, $150. And now I have like 7 female name characters that I have to put in this next book. And I'm like, I could do that. Like, I could do it. But it's—

I'm glad I don't have more.

Yeah, it would be great, but I'm really glad I don't have more. Um, and that's like straight money. Like, I'm not having to send something to those people that are doing that. I think some of them include the hardcover, but still, um, I was very surprised by that. Very surprised. Uh, and I I think the top tiers is what the biggest thing was. The second biggest thing is actually doing it. Like, I am a bad procrastinator and there's so many questions I had and so many like uncertainties, like, is this gonna work? Is that gonna work? And so I kept putting it off and finally I'm just like, I just have to do it. I have to look at it as a learning experience and, you know, I'll, I'm definitely doing it again so I can kind of figure out what I did. That I liked in this campaign and what I can do better and do it again. But yeah, you have to actually push the button to launch it.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I was talking about this on the webinar last night. I was like, one of the things the accelerator does is just like, you paid money for this thing, so like, you gotta do it or you're gonna, you know, you're gonna—

so, um, I, I'm gonna be sad that you didn't.

Yeah, yeah. And, uh, I do want to ask about like, what do you think you're going to do better for the time?

Um, I think I'm going to charge more for tech-erization. Um, I'm going to— it's the public, I guess, the publicity part, the marketing part of it that I don't think I did well at all with. I have a newsletter, but it's— I mean, it's a relatively small newsletter, like under 2,000, and like less than 50% open rate. Like I get opens from like the same people, but it's not a super engaged list. So I need to build that up and build up my social media Facebook presence a little bit. I didn't do any backer swaps until like right at the end of the campaign because I really didn't understand how to do them. But I created a like one of those unique codes and gave it to the people I was swapping with. So I know I have 4 people that came from just backer swaps. So I like having that evidence that, hey, people do look at this and do click. So I will do like a lot more of those next time, but I need to get better at the marketing part of it.

Well, and I'm sure also Monica and me only had a couple of days to launch because people weren't like sure how good it was going to go. And then you're like, oh, I did $5,000 with almost like no effort.

What could I do with a bunch of it? Right? Yeah. No, I definitely saw that on our campaign as well because like at first, well, it was like medium effort, I would say. But now I'm like, man, if I just did like really good effort, we could have done so much better. But yeah, I do think that that first project is like just to get your feet wet.

So I think it's important to do just to get the experience.

Yeah, yeah. I think like your next campaign, um, I'd be curious, you know, what— are you planning another campaign? I know you kind of said you want to. Um, yeah, I, I kind of—

I think I'm planning to incorporate Kickstarter into my normal release schedule. I'm a slow writer, so like my goal in life is to release 2 books a year, and so I'm thinking 2 Kickstarters a year would be great. And so my next one, I've got to finish the book I'm working on, which I'm way behind on, but The next book, the third book in the series, I would like to do a Kickstarter for it and give the book early to people that back in the Kickstarter I wasn't able to do that. Obviously this book's been out 10 years, but I think that will help is having that next book ready to go to them 1, 2, 3 months early. I think that'll get a lot of people because they're waiting on the books.

Yeah, and you can do the whole trilogy, so it could be, you know, since it's— you said it's the third book in the series, so you can have that. Because I, I mean, what I think is impressive about this campaign is that it was a single book, basically, though I know you did sell your other books, but like, effectively it's a single book campaign and it's like non-exclusive. Like, it's just been out for a long time already and it's not really over to Amazon and get it immediately. Yeah, yeah. So, um, You know, I think the special edition hardcover, I think it was exclusive, but, um, I haven't— I never said it was exclusive.

I don't know if I'll make it exclusive or not, but, um, I never said that in the campaign.

Well, I just mean like ahead. Yeah, like, I mean like exclusive because like to me there's, there's like exclusive like it's never going to be anywhere else, and then there's also exclusive like it's early. Yeah, um, that's how I kind of think about it. So maybe, maybe I'm Wrong. Russell, tell me.

No, I think exclusive window is like a thing that you can have before, like a beta window before other people get it. But yeah, I mean, I did a campaign for a book that was, I'd just done a Kickstarter for like a year before, but it was a hardcover and people still like bought it. Like I think there's a segment of audiences that are just like, if you give me the ability, if you give me a good reason to give you money. I will do it. Like, I, I have the book, like, whatever. I just want to give you more money. And Kickstarter is a great way to be like, well, if you want to give me the most money, you could just— here you go. I actually had an email from somebody who— we finished our Cthulhu Is Hard to Spell campaign, and they bought the book on Indiegogo, which is, um, like what I always do. Like, when it's a big campaign, I'll like put the book on Indiegogo, um, afterwards. So someone bought it and then 2 weeks later they bought it again. I was like, oh, I upgraded you to like the 2 book tier. She's like, oh, I bought this before. And I was like, yeah. She's like, I was like, you want me to refund it? She's like, no, I'll just find someone to buy it off me or whatever. And so you have that, like those people that just like really want to support you. And it's wonderful to see not having a graph on Amazon. You can't really see like, oh, 'Look at how supportive these people are.' But like when you get a Kickstarter, it's like, 'Oh look, I reckon.' And when you do a bunch of them, you're like, 'Oh, I recognize this name again and again and again and again and again.' Right, right.

I feel like definitely more connected to the people on Kickstarter. Like after anyone backs, I send them an email thanking them and more than half of them probably responded back. So I could have like a conversation that felt like real people instead of some random sale on Amazon.

Right.

I noticed the question down below.

Um, I—

my sales on Amazon have been pretty much steady. Like, they haven't gone up, haven't gone down. Um, I did set the price of my— like, I used to have perma-freeze for my first book, and I made sure I had everything set at like $4.99 for the first books, and sequels are at $7.99 now. Um, but I'm not doing anything promotion-wise with that, and it's still kind of just steady. I mean, a little less sales, but kind of same amount of money as before. I was experimenting with the price points too, so I'm not sure if I'll keep that price point or not. But I did make sure, like, they couldn't get this book free. But for the most part, it's been steady, not an impact.

Yeah, cool. And, uh, yeah, I don't know if you weren't here yesterday, Monica, you want to talk about the book that we did and the sales of it compared to the Kickstarter?

Oh, sure. So I, I just wanted, just in case, um, because we will probably put this, um, we might put this on audio at some point. Um, so I just wanted to include, you know, let people know what the question was. So Dory was asking, did you see an uptick in Amazon sales relative to, um, the Kickstarter campaign? And so, um, Sandy's already given her answer. And for us, um, we had a campaign back in, uh, October, November, and we did, you know, we sold about— we sold a little over 500 copies. It was a nonfiction campaign for Get Your Book Selling on Kickstarter. We sold a little over 500 copies. And then when we released the book, it's, you know, it did— it's done well. So it's, I think it sells somewhere because it's nonfiction, so the numbers are not high. I think it definitely in the first month it had over 100 sales from not a ton of, you know, marketing or anything. It did coincide with Brandon Sanderson launching his campaign. So there was that, like, gave us a quite a boost because everybody was talking about Kickstarter for like 5 days. And there's like— I don't want to say there's only one Kickstarter book for authors, but it's pretty much one Kickstarter book for authors. Yeah, it's pretty much like one that's like really heavily aimed at authors that 500 people knew about. I have it.

It's like a heavy book. I'm like, this is the heaviest nonfiction book I've had.

There's so much in here. Yeah, it kind of became like a Frankenstein book of all the things that we wanted to add. Yeah. So a lot of people had that book and then when Kickstarter kind of blew up, people were talking about, they're like talking about Kickstarter and of course everybody's recommending the book. So the book sales have kind of continued and it did do better. But that said, Nonfiction is kind of a different beast than fiction can be on retailers.

So, and I would imagine that the people that bought the 10th anniversary book probably already had it on Amazon, or, and/or like went to be like, I'm just gonna go get this on Amazon. Because that's one of those things that happens with Kickstarter is people are like, I'm just gonna wait till this comes out on Amazon because I don't care about Kickstarter. But it gives you like 2 weeks of just marketing the book and being like, look how cool it is. People like, that is cool, I can't wait until I can buy it not on Kickstarter, right?

Yeah, for sure. So if you had any advice for somebody launching their first campaign, what would, what would it be?

It would be to know what you're doing beforehand, either with the book or the class. Like, the book I read after the class as a reference, just to— sometimes I do better when I read than when I watch something, and so it helped me a lot remembering the things from, you know, all this time, the last 3, 4 months, however long it's been. So if I had done this on my own, I am pretty sure I would have done really badly. I probably would have done what I expected to do, which was not very well. Um, but yeah, I, I would just study some campaigns and make sure you know what you're doing.

So I think I should, because I have a specific personality type that people often relate me to of like being kind of intimidating to be around the group specifically, especially when we're so like, Monica and I are so present in the group. Could you just talk a little bit about how you feel?

And like, you hate it. How do you feel about Russell?

Like, how do you feel though? How was the group experience? Like getting feedback from on things? Posting stuff, like, not about me, just like generally, like, supportive otherwise, right?

I mean, there's a lot of people in there that are very supportive and will answer and share their experiences. So just the experiences of people, you can learn a lot from. And like, every question I've ever asked, every question I've seen asked, like, y'all have answered, like, really quickly. Like, how do y'all still get things done when you're answering the questions in the group all the time?

We don't.

Yes. Yeah, it's, it's very supportive and the questions you have get asked or have already been asked and the experience of the people and there's getting people with more and more experience like that is like really valuable. Um, because they've been there, they've done that, they've seen how things impacted their campaign or not impacted their campaign. Um, so that, that's, that's really helpful.

Yeah. One thing that I really enjoy, thank you for that. One of the things that I really like on the group also is there's starting to be— there was always some very successful authors in there, not outside of Amazon, yourself and others included, but there's becoming like a cabal— not a cabal, like a group of people who like answer the questions as if like, oh, this is how it works on Amazon. Like, this is how you would take that to like Amazon, or like, these are things that work this way. And some people are like, I don't understand why this doesn't work this way. It works this way on Amazon. And so it's helping people to be like, oh, like these are the connective tissue that you need to understand.

Yeah, I do agree with that. I think that the group just, you know, it like just seeing it, it really is like, um, somebody once told me that teaching is like you tell somebody what to do, you show somebody what to do, and then you get them to do it themselves. And I feel like I think the show has really leveled up a lot of people where just seeing somebody else do their campaign, it seems to help others raise more money. And I just see the group really progressing toward— our goal in our ideal world is basically everybody who launches the campaign from the group is able to hit $10K or more. Like, that, that's like what we— that's what we would love to hit. That's like our goal for the group. Um, and I can see, like, you know, it started out like a couple grand and like it's progressing to like $4,000, $5,000, $6,000, $7,000. Um, and so we're starting to see that go up. But, um, what's surprising me is just that it's been like, like less than 6 or 6 months, I guess I would call that. So maybe a little less than 6 months, right? Um, so what other questions do we have, Russell?

We have a couple of questions, uh, for us, but we can bring— I think we can bring this up for other people because Serena asks, um, can you get away with only a PDF as the digital-only tier? Yeah. Um, I'm gonna throw this to you too because I have strong feelings about it, but like, uh, what do you think, Sandy?

Oh, to Sandy.

Good.

I don't think so.

I think people are going want the EPUB format of books or the audio. I don't, I don't do personally a whole lot of reading on PDFs, and I could be abnormal, but I would be annoyed personally if an EPUB wasn't offered.

What do you think, Monica? Yeah, I mean, I think so. What I found with our Kickstarter is that the people who are— came through, came to us through Kickstarter. They wanted the PDF download, like just a direct download. Do not go through the funnel. Yeah, like there was like a very— like I got a number of emails that were like, how dare you make me sign up for this other thing? Like, and like, that's cool. Like, I, I didn't know. So I was like, all right, like, I guess we'll start offering the PDF of all this stuff. Um, and so some people were loving that. And then And then, like, people, you know, people who are authors especially. So, like, a lot of, like, novelists, like, indie author. So there was, like, kind of, like, the comics community and then the author community. I felt like the author community was like, where's the book funnel? Like, they were like, do not, do not dare send me a PDF. Like, I got a lot of complaints about that too. So, yeah, I, what I would recommend to everybody is, like, like do a PDF, do like an EPUB, just, just make everybody happy. People can download it in there in what they want and you can put the PDF in the BookFunnel download thing as well. But I, I had a lot of people who were like, I like, I don't want book, I don't want anything to do with BookFunnel. So I would just also send the PDF as like a direct link that, you know, like from through like Dropbox, like even as like, I think Russell, sometimes you send them as just like attachments.

Um, yeah, I said the most is through BackerKit now. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's the easiest way for me to do it. But yeah, I mean, BookFunnel, um, Thorina, you— I know you're doing an art book, but I still think that you're not doing a comic. If you were doing comics, I would say the comic thing is to send a CBZ and a PDF. So you don't even want to send only a PDF when you are, um, doing comics because there are people that read on comic readers and they want the highest resolution possible. And without— and there's no way to really encrypt a high-quality art book download without it being like a gigabyte big. So I would say those two. But you— if I was doing— if I was not doing that, I would still do an EPUB, a MOBI, and probably not a MOBI because even like Amazon is admitting that like MOBIs are no longer a thing, but an EPUB and a PDF. Version of even an art book, just like any, because people are going to look at it on different readers. You may even want to do a CBZ or something that is like, just can they can zoom in quite a bit more because they're going to want to see that detail. But yeah, I mean, I would imagine for an art book, people would, would be cool with a PDF. I don't know that community enough to say if you can only do a PDF, but I would imagine there is some way to look at an art book through some sort of reader that people would want access to where there's not artifacting, which you're going to get even in the— except for all but the highest quality PDFs. And then the— like when I do something like that, it's like 3 gigabytes.

So I think she— so a couple of things. One is if we have Sandy on for a few more minutes, so if anybody would like to ask Sandy questions about her campaign, then please post them so that we can ask her while she's still on as we like, uh, you know, transition to our next person. Um, but then also, Tarina, she had a clarification on the question, which is that she, she's really asking, um, can the PD— can like the book version, whatever, the digital book version, whatever file it's in, can that be the only digital tier? So sure, I'd love to. You do. Sandy, do you have thoughts on it?

Um, the PDF being the only digital tier?

I'm not sure. Like, it's like the only digital tier is just like a digital book, digital PDF, as opposed to like a digital—

as opposed to like doing digital things.

Yeah, yeah, as opposed to having like— so can you have only one tier that's digital only, essentially, is what, what I'm taking from it. But, um, she says she's focusing on physical tiers.

Okay, yeah, I, I mean, probably you could have one digital, like, digital only tier. I have just the JPEG wallpaper as like the dollar donation, and I give— send it to everybody, but it's like, I don't think anyone cares about that with this, this project. But, um, I had multiple digital tiers, just adding more onto it.

Yeah, I don't know why you would only have one digital tier. You can, you can have no digital tiers. Like, people in KU could just have, you know, the, the, the paperback. Like, I think that's probably a bad idea, uh, because one of the ways you justify higher-priced physical goods is to include more digital goods. And I will, please, Serena, watch all of the videos because I know you're in the group. Like, we talk about how to build a premium reward tier, and part of that is to combine your physical good with digital goods that are pure profit.

Yeah, that would be my answer is that it's pretty hard to make a profit off of the physical tiers. Um, your profit's going to be a lot smaller because you obviously have to print and pack and ship, um, rewards out to people. Um, so to me it's like, why— yeah, why wouldn't you? Because, um, not only does it help bolster the value of your higher tiers, but it also— you know, there are lots of backers who would be digital only. I would say like like, for, for ours, it was a nonfiction campaign. It was authors who are pretty digitally savvy already. But I would say, like, our international bigger backers— international backers were almost entirely digital tiers, um, to the point where we took some of our tiers that did include the paperback and we created digital-only versions of them, um, just so that international people didn't have to pay for shipping. Um, so yeah, I would say it's going to It could limit your campaign. I mean, you could do it, but you're probably not going to make as much money. And we saw that with Brandon Sanderson's campaign, really. Like we were talking about, like, wow, he had, you know, he had like 4, like the lowest tier was like $40 for the ebooks because his lowest tier was the 4 books. But we were like, well, if he had done like, you know, you can buy 1 of the books, you can buy 2 of the books, you can buy 3 of the books. Books that could have added to his campaign so much in terms of funding.

And on the other hand, there was $140, and I think you got the ebook and the thing, so it even bolstered in all of that stuff. So, uh, Sandy, it's so lovely to have you on here. Um, do you want to give, uh, final thoughts, where we can find you, and then we'll say goodbye?

Uh, yeah, you can find me on, I guess, the internet, sandy-williams.com. Um, and I plan on doing another launch probably in October or November, hopefully.

Yay!

That has been a great experience, better than I expected.

It's been wonderful. Awesome. Yay! Thank you so much for stopping by.

No problem.

Thank you.

All right, so yeah, while we're— we have a couple of minutes, there's a couple of questions that I just— I don't know what— there was one question that was like I have a contemporary romance series. Yes, that one. Yeah, that's one I don't— I didn't know how Sandy would be able to answer that question, uh, specifically. Um, do you want to take this first, or do you want me to hand, uh, to chime in?

Um, okay, so the question is from Monica. It's, I have a contemporary romance series I'd like to launch, but I have no following in that genre yet. Is that a major hurdle in a Kickstarter campaign? She's established in fantasy romance right now, not in contemporary romance. I would say that, you know, some of— so first of all, they're both romance, but of course, you know, people either— they effectively either like magic or they don't. So yeah, there's— there could be some crossover from that. I don't think it hurts to try to, you know, reach out to your fantasy romance readers and just let them know about your contemporary romance series. I know for me, I read both, so like I'd be happy to cross over, um, as a reader of your, you know, like, well, I'm not a reader of your work, but if I were a reader of your work, like, I happen to like both. Um, so I do think that you actually do have more of a base than you think. Um, and I think what I would do is I'd probably, um, create, you know, a separate list, which you're probably going to do anyway, and just basically try to take your fantasy romance list and qualify some of, you know, whatever percentage of those readers that are willing to cross over to contemporary romance, and then I'd launch it to that list. Other than that, I mean, we see people who have no audience, it's like their first book, and they raise thousands of dollars on Kickstarter. We had, well, we had a guy with poetry So we're not going to be hearing from him today, but we had a guy with poetry who raised like over $2,000 on his campaign.

And I would say that while we wait for Jack to come on, that Amazon trains authors that people do not cross over from one genre to another. And that is blatantly false. It is absolutely 100% not accurate. Does everyone crossover? No. I pretty much will read anything fantasy. I don't so much like reality, but I sometimes read books set in reality or sci-fi or other stuff as well. I have other varied interests. And so like, I think you're going to not get as much, but what— but if you're not established in fantasy and contemporary romance and you launch a book and 75 people, 50 people, 200 people sign up. Like, you'll know just how much effort you're going to be able to put into your contemporary romance pen name and what to expect from your main list. You do not have that same ability with Amazon. You can track clicks, but you can't track buys. So you can actually literally see, oh, look, these, these, if you have a reader, like a a prequel reader magnet, you can just, uh, uh, put that up, have 300 people sign up for that prequel magnet, and 45 people buy your book. Like, there becomes your funnel of what you can expect from fantasy romance. Like, if you're starting a new pen name and you haven't started it yet, like, Kickstarter is 100%, like, the best marketing and the best market research you're going to get because you'll be able to see what the crossover is and literally track it one-to-one.

This person's from my list, this is their email, this is how much they spent, right? Yeah. So on retailers, you would actively try not to get your fantasy romance people to cross over because it'll just mess with the algorithms, versus Kickstarter where you want— like, you actually have a base. And so I agree with Russell, it's probably the best way to launch your contemporary romance pen name.

Yeah. And again, like, you'll have people who you're like, when it's an Amazon, you'd say, "No, no, don't go. You're a fantasy romance person. Don't go buy this other thing. Don't go buy my book." As opposed to on Kickstarter, you want all of those people to come in. The algorithm functions better the more backers that you have.

Hi, Jack.

Hey, Jack.

Hey, Russell.

Hi, Monica.

How are you today? Good. So glad to have you on. Do you want to introduce yourself, give yourself give the little spiel about yourself.

Yeah. So I've actually had the opportunity to just have this going on in the background on YouTube. Got to see— I feel like Russell gave me one of the better introductions at the top of the last hour that I can usually get.

Well, some people weren't on that hour, Jack. So let's pull up the things ready to go. Talk about your campaign. And you've done a lot of these. Precisely.

So, uh, for those who don't know, my name's, uh, Jack Holder. I write, uh, faith and fantasy comics and prose. And, uh, I've been a Kickstarter veteran for like the last 5 years. Uh, we are now into double digits on Kickstarter. But with Russell and Monica and the Kickstarter Accelerator, The Floated Dream was really able to accelerate and hit some of the highest points I've actually ever gotten to hit.

That's the most backers you've had, right?

Easily. Like the previous record was for the anthology that you were a part of, Russell, and I think we almost beat that by 100.

Yeah, that's, it's, it's really cool. And like, so one of the things that I've been doing with Jack for a long time is trying to figure out like how to make a book that is both like relevant to religious humans and relevant to agnostic humans. Would you say that's accurate?

Jack?

Absolutely.

Or to put it more bluntly, to figure out how to make your interests commercially viable and actually sell your stuff and not just keep finding more and more ways to experience debt.

Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about your journey from there? Because, like, I'm looking at the first pro— like, we met on this on the Unfortunately Human campaign that was unfortunately unsuccessful, but I still enjoy that book. And I've known you for so long of you constantly pinging like Kickstarter, trying to figure it out. Can you just talk a little bit about how you use Kickstarter to try and like figure out how to, how to like get something to resonate?

Yeah. So that very first project that Russell was talking about, I'm Unfortunately Human. Uh, he and I actually met through, uh, it said artist, and I think he and I like to say that was the best thing that came out of said artist.

Well, the book is really pretty. I like the book a lot. But, um, yeah, it's— there were issues, um, but we got a good friendship out of it. And then you came back to do a book, a novel novel, which is very, very different than the um, than the, than the, um, comic. Exactly.

Like, uh, it, it didn't turn out the way that I wanted. I was really turned off from comics at that point, going, there's no way I can take on this amount of risk, so I'm gonna go back towards, uh, my own prose work. And, uh, the journey that you've seen is It's really me trying to figure out, okay, what's working for me, period. I put out a couple of prose books and then I went into my first comic, which was more religious. And I tried to see if I could supercharge the following casework as well while putting out more prose works. And each time it was one new experiment after another trying to figure out what is working and what isn't. Like this, and this current year, I've talked with Russell about it right now, is a lot of it's about endings and beginnings because I'm starting up some new projects while closing the loop on some books that haven't been as successful, but there are still some dedicated fans. And you always want to make sure you want to give your fans an actual ending to your stories and give them an opportunity to actually have a finished series and not just go, okay, this didn't work, bye.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you've done that a bunch of times. And I mean, I know that just for like the— it's very hard on Amazon to like know what's working and what's not working because so much of it is like the general audience. But for your stuff, like you actually can see what stuff is resonating with the people you literally want to serve in it. Because every book shows like, this is how many of my email lists like this and this and this. And you can see, uh, because when we were doing books with you, uh, when you were doing books before, it was always like, well, I don't know if this is, if like people like you or this series, like, we don't know. And so, but now I can see like, oh, Legends of Realms, that Legend of the Realm, that was a $6,000 200-person project and like this following casework is like clearly not the thing that they're resonating with and it's such a stark thing. Can you talk a little bit about that process?

Absolutely.

So with Legends of the Realm, it was actually one of my earliest comic scripts that I'd actually ever done. I had done it all the way back in 2015. Like that first book, Torn Soul. And Russell had seen that around the time of like after Unfortunately Human. And I think I recall you saying this is a really great concept, but you, you need to raise quite a bit of money to make this a reality, and you need to find the right artist. And that took such a a long time to actually find that right artist. But it was an epic fantasy. It allows me to dive into some faith issues without being explicitly religious. Contrast that with The Following Case Work. Everyone knows that this is a religious book.

It's—

that's point blank, uh, what it is. It's about what does faith look like in the modern world, uh, and that's so much harder to, uh, promote on Kickstarter, uh, and the book itself is very different. It's not— it's— if I were to do something that was a bit more young adult friendly with this and talk about the faith issues from a more growing up perspective instead of the characters that are going on, I think it would be a lot more engaging. But The Following Case Work right now is just mishmashy enough that people are interested but they're not excited. I, I think that's an accurate description.

Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, and if you have questions for Jack about comics or books or Kickstarter, like, please put them in here because we've got about 20 minutes left, left for him. Uh, so I know Jack pretty well. Uh, Monica, uh, only met you, uh, when you joined the, uh, the accelerator. So Monica, do you have any questions for Jack or Yeah, I was curious.

I was really curious because I feel like there has been kind of a big, you know, I know that the Legends series, that is an epic fantasy. And so, you know, it's more, it's more, I don't know, it just is simpler to kind of market on Kickstarter because Kickstarter likes fantasy. So, but I was curious because I had seen like like, you know, there were some variances in your fundraising. So I was just curious, like, what do you think, you know, what was different really besides the genre?

So with Legends of the Realm, there were a few things that had changed quite a bit. I've taken a lot of courses with Russell, and for me, some of the things just weren't clicking. Like, you know how it is, there are certain skills that you're like, I really, I know this is valuable. I know I want this to work. And yet for some reason, it just isn't. So I ended up hiring a marketing team for, for this, which really helped. It gave me a lot less stress because at that point, my kid was 5 months old. So I was starting a new series and my bandwidth was already shrinking considerably. But there were a few things that I think really supercharged Legends of the Realm in terms of marketing perspectives. For one, Kickstarter had just really started releasing that add-on feature, which was such an— I cannot stress how big a game changer the add-on feature is. Before that, you had to Russell and I would go tier by tier by tier and being like, oh, and this would add just this one book, or, and just this one book, you'd have to spend a couple hundred bucks on BackerKit to make it a lot more viable, and then your margins start shrinking down. I was looking over beforehand the just the fulfillment page, which is another beta for Kickstarter that was really helpful. And I could actually see, oh, I had over 130 items added to just on add-ons. And that helped jump up the amount that people were actually pledging, they're like, oh yeah, now I can actually get this digital collection of your flash fiction. I can get this digital stuff. I can get this print book that I had missing from your collection. So that really helped bring more people and more funds to the campaign.

Yeah. So something I noticed about add-ons— so for those who don't know what the add-ons are, it's basically you can put a bunch of items, almost like building a store kind of behind the wall of the actual Kickstarter campaign, where people who have pledged already to the Kickstarter or who have backed the Kickstarter campaign already, they are able to add things on. So, you know, you'll, you'll see, well, when you run a Kickstarter, you see like these random numbers, you're like, where it's like $57 and you're like, I don't have a $57 tier. And it took me, and I say that because it took me literally 3 weeks into our campaign to be like, oh, these people aren't just like, they're not just giving me extra money. They're adding on these things in BackerKit that's raising our funding. And I didn't realize that, or not in BackerKit, sorry, on Kickstarter itself because Kickstarter did I think it was in the last year and a half that they added that add-ons feature. So I do think that it's really important to get your add-ons into Kickstarter itself. And I know in our campaign we had so many people, like most of our add-ons were sold during the campaign. There are definitely people who also love to add on in BackerKit, but there are also people who are like, yeah, I, and I'm one of of these people who are like, yeah, I already picked like everything I wanted. Like I'm just ready to check out now. Like I'm not looking at the add-ons or anything in BackerKit. So we do, you know, we do talk to people and we see people who don't do the add-ons and it's like so much lost money. I think until you see the numbers on it, you don't realize that like you're losing so much money by not doing add-ons and by not doing like, I mean, I wouldn't say like your whole, whole catalog, but by not doing at least like your, the catalog for that pen name, if you have multiple pen names in the add-on section.

So that's a really good tip to me. Just to show you guys what she means. So like this is the reward, this is the back end, this is the one we're building right now or built already. Like here's your reward tiers, but then here are add-ons, which means if someone picks if someone, um, I don't know, picked this one, they could add on anything digital or physical to the book. If you— if— but if they pick a physical tier, that'll give them physical. So if you pick a digital tier, you only get digital add-ons. If you have picked a physical tier, you get digital and physical add-ons. But add-ons are all right here. I, I spend so much time— it's so, um, spend so much time on this. Because there's so many, there's so many options that I have in my catalog and some come in physical and some are only digital. But like, so like all of this leads to in our last campaign, my, my, my, what I've learned in the past couple of weeks is that my, my old computer, which works really well for everything that I need it for except to this kind of thing where it's very, very slow. So here are— so here's the add-ons that people actually bought. So like 10 people added on this book, so that's $100. There's $80 here, there's $50 here, and you have all of this stuff. So these are all people who added on pins and, and, and books and art and All of this stuff is just like little incremental bits of money. And then you also have things like BackerKit, which you can then add even more money onto it. So there's really like 3, it's really like 3 bites at the apple. You get the original pledge, the add-ons, and then the BackerKit. So I see a question, you wanna take it?

Yeah, so I was gonna throw it to Jack. So Monica asks, is there a sweet spot on the number of tiers and add-ons, and how much is too much?

So Monica, I would say the— there's no hard and fast with here with the number of tiers and add-ons. It really depends on you and your own personal catalog, I'd say you don't want to have a— you don't want more tiers and add-ons than you personally can manage. Like Monica was saying, you should be putting most of your personal library in your add-ons and items because You never know who's going to come on and they're going to take the opportunity to just fill up their own library of you. And if you don't have it as an option, they can't buy it. When it comes to the tiers themselves, you want to have a certain range of prices and with both digital and print tiers, and you want to get up to even what you think are ridiculous levels of money in there. Monica's looking at that going, yeah, like I have tiers usually in every campaign that people don't have. That they don't back, but I put them in there like, "Hey, get drawn into the next book," or, "Hi, I'm going to do this for you for, like, $1,000." And the reason I have that is to make the second highest tier seem more palatable and enjoyable. Reasonable. But for add-ons, the only thing is when it comes to too much is if it's too much for you personally to handle.

Yeah, so my answer to that question, I agree with everything that Jack said. And then I'd also say like for reward tiers, you know what I like to see is a theme. So I think of it as like, here's the front of the house and here's like everything that's in the front. You know, these are the bundles we're trying to direct you to and each one of them is a reward tier. And then I see like, and you can also like after you get in line for that, there's like, you know, an aisle that you get to go down that the line goes through that you can pick anything else off the shelf. And it's not available to people who haven't decided to buy something at the store. So I kind of think like for rewards tiers, you really want to focus on like what is the through line? What is the narrative of my campaign? So maybe, you know, for, you know, 'cause you asked a question earlier, your question was that you're doing contemporary romance and you want to launch that and you already have fantasy romance as a pen name. So I would say, you know, your through line for that story is like, hey, I'm launching a contemporary romance series or whatever. So maybe it's the first book, you know. We often recommend if you have like the first several books, it could be, which you might because you're, you're about to launch. But yeah, I would do like either the first book or maybe the first couple books as like that is your campaign.. So for me, I would put like maybe one fantasy romance tier on the main page, you know, just to say like, like maybe, and like maybe it's like, you know, my whole romance catalog or something is one of your tiers. So that has your contemporary romance, it also has all your fantasy romance in there, and then I would put the individual books in the add-ons. I wouldn't put, I wouldn't say like like, okay, at $25 you can get like the first book of this series, the contemporary romance series, and then like at $26 you can get the first book of the fantasy romance series. So, I would, I would probably not do that. I'd keep the main page focused on the, the main narrative and then I'd tell my fantasy readers like, hey, there's a way that you can get all of my stuff, you know, and if it were me, I would also say like, well, I already have I have this fantasy audience and I would like them to, I would like to give them something during this campaign to help them get excited about crossing over. So I would personally maybe write like a short story or a novella or something, you know, your fantasy audience would like. And maybe that would be, maybe it would be like you have to back this campaign at least the dollar level and then you get access to the secret backend special on my fantasy romance novella that is exclusive to this, to this campaign. It's not going to be on retailers for 6 months or something like that. So I would think of doing something like that too, just to like mobilize your, you know, mobilize your current audience, mobilize the people that you have.

Yeah, I would. I mean, I generally will have— I tell people you need a $1 reward, a $10, $5 to $10, which is your digital. A $25, which is your core, and then a couple of like high-end ones that you're driving people towards, then everything goes around there. So if you have one book, it would be a paperback, it would be a, probably a $1, I don't know, short story or outline, $5 to $10 digital book, maybe a $5 bare bones and a $10 like with some upgrade stuff, ebooks, short stories or something. $25 for the book, um, $40 paperback, $40 for the hardcover, and then like some upgrade for all of your books. So like those are the— usually I do like $50 for a special thanks, $75 to $100 for a Tuckerization or something like that. Um, add-ons, I don't think there's an upper limit on. I have— yeah, I had like $75 my last campaign. There's always somebody that wants a thing, and it's very easy to just duplicate once you're— once you're in there. It takes Kicks, you know, it takes me an hour or so to duplicate everything because Kickstarter doesn't have just the transfer over function. I also then will have an all-in digital, a fantasy, because people— fantasy is my biggest genre. So just my fantasy novels, which is a little bit— and then each series I often will have is like, get all the books for this series and get all the books for this series as reward tiers, just in case someone just wants to get the Obsidian Spindle Saga for some reason, or one of the Godsverse Chronicles. So we'll have a tier for just those. But then I will do just like everything together just because I want to like, hey man, if 4 people want to get the Obsidian Spindle Saga on this campaign, cool. I don't care. Like they can do that. Like whatever. It's money is money. And then I'll have everything split out on the back end of the campaign. You just wanna make sure that you have your tiers very well delineated from like digital, physical merch tiers and things like that so people can easily find what they want. I would say like on a table, 6 to 10 things is usually good without overwhelming. So like that's what I would normally shoot for, a $1, a $5 to $10, a $25, a $50, $75, $100, $100 and then like $250, $500 kind of tiers.

Cool. So those are all the questions that are showing up. So if you have questions for Jack, like, definitely drop them below. Jack, is there anything else you want to share? What are, you know, what are kind of your top tips for somebody coming into Kickstarter fresh? Like, what would you— what do you wish you had done differently? What do you recommend they do?

So here's the advice I usually give, one professional, one personal, that is also professional. You want to start small with self-contained projects. Every Kickstarter as you're starting out should be contained within itself. You shouldn't be going out, uh, you shouldn't be going out in comics starting off anyways, but especially in Kickstarter, you should be starting with that project that's, uh, only going to be, uh, it's going to be complete after this, uh, campaign is over. You shouldn't be trying to bite off more than you can chew, especially at this earliest stage because you will screw up. Even with Russell and Monica's help, I can guarantee you that you will screw up. You'll screw up a lot less with Russell and Monica's help, but you will screw up. But the personal thing that Russell always promotes me on this one, so I like to actually say it. Be nice. Honestly, just be nice and kind and compassionate to everyone, because Kickstarter, the Kickstarter world, the indie writer world, the indie comics worlds, these are so small and so interconnected. I can mention Russell's name here on the East Coast at a small one-day convention and people will go, "Oh yeah, I know Russell. He's great. He's got all these fantastic books going on." It's being nice gets you an awesome reputation that gets you honest-to-God perks and benefits that you don't think you're going to get. But that, and on the flip side, if you start developing that sort of reputation of being an a-hole, you're going to find that the Kickstarter well dries up pretty flippin' fast.

Yeah.

Awesome. Awesome, Jack. Where can we find you online?

You can find me on my website, www.arcaneinkdustries.com, uh, with a K. I love it. Uh, find me on Facebook, uh, with Arcane Ink Industries, where you can find me on Twitter at Jack Holder AI. Uh, thank you guys so much for having me on.

Thank you for coming. And, uh, yeah, go check out also his, uh, follow Casework series on Kickstarter now.

Awesome. All right, thanks so much, Jack.

Thank you. All right, 1 hour down. 1 hour down. Yeah, I guess an hour and a half down.

Yeah, it has been. Yeah, hour and a half.

So, um, so next up we have, uh, Jenny Frontera.

Uh, hi.

Hi, Jen. Hi, can you guys hear me okay?

We can hear you great.

Awesome.

All right, let me get your page pulled up.

Do you want to introduce yourself? Uh, sure. Yeah, uh, I am JR— well, Ginny, but I write as JR Frontera. Um, I primarily write, uh, flavors of science fiction and fantasy. Um, I started indie publishing in 2015, but I've only just started really rolling with it in 2019. But I write kind of off-the-wall books. I definitely do not follow what seems to sell the best even remotely. You know, if I, if I enjoyed writing that kind of stuff, I would, but I don't really. So it's been a little hard to find an audience for my books, and I also realized that I much prefer Um, I much prefer, I guess, forming like actual relationships with my readers versus, you know, just having them be numbers on a dashboard. Um, so I've kind of been over the last few years trying to figure out how I can, um, you know, interact with readers more directly or find a better way to reach them than through Amazon, etc. So, um, when I heard about your all's book about Kickstarter, my ears kind of perked up and I was like, wait, what? Uh, yeah. And then, you know, we were at 20 Books Vegas and I went to your panels on the, on the matter and joined the, the first sprint group. And, um, yeah, Russell, you kind of talked me into it. I was a little bit skeptical, but, uh, yeah, I remember in Vegas you're like, no, no, I think, I think your books could do 2 do well on Kickstarter. And I was like, well, you know, it's worth a try. So I thought I'd just at least run one campaign for an experiment, and it—

yeah, you told me was like, you have— well, you told me that, uh, you had readers who were going to— were coming to Vegas to go horseback riding with you. And I was like, yo, anyone who has readers that are devoted enough to come to Vegas and then spend the day horse riding. Like, that's something that, like, they gotta be good at building, like, a fandom. Like, there's gotta be enough fandoms that, like, someone's willing to, like, drop big money and, like, like this book. So, like, it's just, like, that's the number one thing that I look for. And the number one thing that you said was, like, yeah, I have some super fans.

Yes.

Yeah, I do have a few. It's, it's not a lot, but, you know, I mean, they're, they're worth a million casual readers, that's for sure. So, um, but I do— I, I mean, I, I love them. I would consider those, those people that came out to horseback ride with me in Vegas, like, I mean, I would consider them like my friends. Like, I genuinely love hanging out with them. We had a blast in Vegas together. We're actually planning like more trips together now.

So nice.

All right, so that's really cool. So yeah, it's been a fun time. But yeah, it all happened through the books. I mean, that's how we started talking and all that.

So it's fun. Yeah. Okay, so you asked 7 million questions in this Facebook, in this group. So I got to ask, what are the best things that you learned from your million questions that you asked?

Oh gosh, I think that the million questions were to sort of like I don't know, make my, my doubts, like, quiet my doubts, I guess. Like, you know, I mean, when you— and I mean, other people who've tried Kickstarter and had success there, and we've, you know, you guys have talked about it today too, the contrast between the Amazon way of thinking as an author and the Kickstarter way of thinking is, um, it's quite drastic. Because I think me asking all those questions was essentially you guys helping me break down my Amazon way of thinking, uh, because I kept being like, but this doesn't work on Amazon, but this doesn't work on Amazon, but this doesn't work. And they're like, who cares about Amazon?

Just stop.

Just stop thinking like that. Like, this is a whole different thing, you know. And changing that mindset after, you know, you've been learning all these things that are essentially all focused around Amazon since, you know, 2015 or whatever. And it took a while to sort of change the mindset. And then, um, but you're all's answers helped me, yeah, get past the hump and then start thinking in a whole different way. And then I think I finally started getting it. And then once you sort of, you know, it's like, it's like your mind expands, you're out of the box, and it's— the possibilities are endless. And then you get real excited about it.

Yeah, I remember one thing I don't know if this was like the moment, but for me the moment was like we were talking about pins, like a lot about pins. And she's like, I don't understand pins. I was like, I love— and I, I just, I, and like, then you like, we're like, wait, I can do pins on top of books? And like, it's not just different things and different merch. I can like bundle them together. Um, so I just wanted to, because like I love this pin, I wanted to show it. It's the whole way I stopped.

You have like the best merch in my opinion.

Yeah.

Oh yeah. So can you talk I gotta ask you to like, uh, dig out a little bit deeper on like what, like what things are different, like what things don't, like didn't work, like what was the, what were the big breaks and changes that you saw between Amazon and, uh, and, and Kickstarter?

Um, well, I think being able to really tell people, uh, like get into your why, that was, I mean, my personal favorite thing was that Kickstarter gives you the space to like really dig into, you know, why did you write this book, why do you love this book, why do you think other people are going to love this book, and to tell people exactly like, if you like these kind of things, then you will like, you know, this book here, which you can do to a very limited extent, I guess, on Amazon. Like, you can say, you know, comp titles or whatever, but like you don't have that space to like really get into the, to the nitty-gritty. And I feel like for me personally too, like as a backer on Kickstarter, when I see the projects where those— where people, the creators, do spend the time to say this is why that project means— this project means so much to me, like I'm almost like immediately just back. Like I don't have to— I don't care about the rest of it. Like I'm ready to support them, you know, because I know I can feel their passion for it. And that definitely does not come across on the Amazon product description page. You know, you just get the blurb, maybe a comp title or two, and that's it. And you know, you can spend time going through the reviews, but—

so what I learned is you can't do that with comp titles on Amazon.

Like, that is against terms of service because what, to the little thing at the bottom, like if you love so and so. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you can't do that.

You're not supposed to do that. You can't do— well, yeah, I guess you can.

People get away with it.

People get away with it. But yeah, anything, it's like, is, is if you get caught. So I think this is interesting. Daniel has an interesting question.

Um, unless you have one, Monica. No, it's okay. Let's do Daniel's first.

So Daniel asked, how much did your experience selling in-person at cons help, if at all, with your Kickstarter?

Um, I actually feel like the Kickstarter helped me sell at cons, to be honest. Um, because I think selling at cons helped, um, and helped my business partners too. But what we learned the most from selling in person was how drastically your cover matters. Um, a lot. It matters a lot. And like your display setup and the look. So I guess that kind of actually did impact Kickstarter, is that— but Russell, pretty much I followed your, your layout of your campaigns because I, I like your Dragon Strife one. Essentially, I studied hardcore because I personally really like the layout of that, and I know it's essentially the layout that you suggest. But I guess that sort of is a crossover there because The images are huge, you know, the quality of your images. Um, and yeah, as a backer, again, I've seen a lot of campaigns that have images, but the images are not good. They're bad, and they do not help at all if they're bad. So having like a good aesthetic, a good, uh, look, you know, you break up the text with pictures so it's a nice reading flow. So I guess that kind of did cross over, you know, you have really good covers, you a really good flow to your space, you have a really good appearance. But I think Kickstarter actually helped me sell better at in-person events because then I knew the why behind my books, which I had never actually concretely thought about before. So now, um, when we did our last con, which was just a few weeks ago, uh, I actually had a lady come by who said, I don't want to know about the story, I want to know about the feeling behind the book. And I was like, well, that— I've literally never had anyone say that to me before. But because I just run the campaign and I had all that stuff fresh in mind, I was able to say, okay, well, let me tell you about this. And I gave her the spiel, and she had already bought other books from us and was like walking away when I was telling her this. And she's like, well, now I have to get my card back out. So she pulled out her wallet and bought book 1 of my Weird Western series.

So that's awesome, you know, they can kind of like feed off each other, I feel like. Yeah, yeah, I feel like it— I feel like you kind of hit on something really important. Like, one of the reasons that I think events, um, like Kickstarter is kind of like the online version of like conferences, you know, conventions and that whole, you know, that whole sales process. I think it is because of the different elements, like, which, like, for the Kickstarter, if you're a writer, which we all are, you can process your thoughts on that much more easily, like writing copy. So I'm finding that for my own, my upcoming project, like, I'm, I'm like coming up with things and it's just easier for me to write it out as like an email sequence and like portions of my campaign page than it would be for me to talk about it on the spot. And so I feel like that has helped me to where it's like, yeah, if I had to go sell books at events, which I've never ever done before, and I don't have a ton of plans to do at the moment, but if I had to do that, I know what I would say because I have already like had a chance to process that through writing.

So I don't know, Russell, you've done both, so well, you two are clearly introverts.

I'm an extrovert.

I'm actually an extrovert too. I had the opposite experience where the thing that helps you at cons for me was I saw people's eyes light up when you say certain words and phrases. And a big convention is a great way to test 100 different kinds of things, 100 different kinds of ways, and find the one that lights you up. And like, after 3 days of talking to thousands of people, like, you can very quickly be like, okay, here are the 5 things that people really like. And then you can bring that into— instead of having to do, you know, split testing. Like, I've never done split testing of ads or anything because, like, I will split test at a show, be like, wow, when I said these 4 things these 3 things, they led to $4,000 of sales. So when I said these 3 things, they led to no sales. And so by— you end up being able to optimize in that way so that hopefully by the time you come to your Kickstarter campaign, you will be like, well, this is what I have to say because like this. And the live events and being at in Vegas and talking with people in the Facebook group also definitely helps my sales. I'm assuming it helps Monica's sales too. Like when you talk about this course because you're like, oh, well, we were on a webinar and we said these 4 things and like 20 people bought the webinar and we went on, I went over here and said these 6 things and nothing worked over here. And so you end up being able to like very viscerally say these things are working to my intended audience. And you also, like, I was at LA Festival of Books the other week and there was a woman walking past with tattoos on her arm and purple hair and I was like, hey, hi, could you come over here? I need to show you a book. Because I was like, I knew, I just knew that like the kinds of tattoos that they had, it was very like Invader Zimmy cartoonish kind of like the kind of stuff that I have. She was an editor at, um, at Oni or somewhere like that. She bought a book because I was like, I just knew that like that was my psychographic data. I think that Facebook is very good at like demographic data and some, and like it can tell you what's working, but like it can't be like, oh yeah, like all of my fans are like rebellious, like X, X, like X, or or current theater kids. Like, okay, that's just the vibe that I give off. And so that's, to me, that's how in-person and Kickstarter work because they very much vibe with the same kind of way of selling.

So is that true about the ex, the rebellious theater kid? Yeah. For you? Oh, I didn't know that. I was a theater kid, but not rebellious. I was like the goody two shoes theater kid. I was like Glee, the Glee version of theater.

Yeah, or like art, or like art kids too. Like, yeah, yeah, like theater, like art people. Like, I have a whole— the whole psychographic profile is basically like Melissa. If you just like— I have a whole thing when we made her of like what it means. And like, if someone goes at a convention, oh, that's cool, I'm like, well, do I have a bunch of books to show you?

Right, that's us. Yeah, I do love, I do love the in-person stuff because I agree it can, it can teach you a lot of stuff very easily and quickly. Like, you can learn, I feel like, so much by doing an in-person event that would take you much longer to learn online in various ways.

Yeah. And, uh, Monica, I, I'm very good at judging buyer intent from conventions too because I was talking about an upcoming event that we are planning next year, like an upcoming maybe addition to this course. And I pitched, I mean, I pitched Jenny on it both times. And like the first time I was like, I was like, she said she's interested and like that she'd probably get it, but like, it doesn't feel, this doesn't feel like a, like it's good. And then I went back and I redesigned it and I was like, what if it was this? And you're like, no, that's That's like— I was like, yeah, that's, that's a real buyer intent. Like, this is, this is a— I'm trying to be polite because I very much like you and like maybe I'm interested, but like, I was interested.

He's interested but not sold, I think.

Yeah, yeah, that's it.

Yeah, interested.

But yeah, you're right, the second one was a much stronger like, oh yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Yeah. And, and what you said about Seeing people's eyes light up is very true as well, um, because yeah, we've had that experience too. Like when we do our local con, there's certain words and I can't even think of it right now actually. Of course it's totally slipping my mind, but there was one phrase that I used, um, for the Weird Western series on the lady who was talking about like, I want the feeling behind this book, and I said something and she was just like, oh, like, I mean, it's very visible visible reaction, like, oh, that's it, that's the one that landed with her. So yeah, I'm gonna have to go back now because clearly I need to remember that one. But it was something that I had used before as well, so I know I'm on the right track.

Yeah. So I wanted to know, um, about your future plans. So we— because you were— I think you were, um, KU exclusive actually. Um, yeah. So I wanted to— and then you did the Kickstarter I, you know, I'm assuming— I think you pulled your books out, right? I did, just, just for temporarily during the Kickstarter and during fulfillment. And, um, but I am curious, like, what is your, you know, what is your plan going forward? I know you're super— I mean, you've got two. So we think of direct sales as like selling from your website, selling on like a fan-based platform like Kickstarter or Patreon or whatever, um, And then selling in person. So we kind of think of those as like the 3 pillars of direct sales. And it sounds like you have at least 2 of them. So what are your plans for the future? Like, how has Kickstarter changed your author career and how you view your author career?

It made me feel almost like legit in a way, which sounds horrible, I know, but I feel like there's stages. Kind of, of being an indie author. Like, because at first you're just sort of flailing around trying to figure out what's going on, then you kind of flail around trying to figure out, well, what is like my voice? What is my brand? What are the kind of books that I love to write? You know, what are the things that when people pick up a book from me they're gonna find? You know, you always hear like the, the very established indie authors are— can always tell you, well, when people read my books, they Hey, get this, this, this. But I mean, sometimes it took me a long— quite a long time to figure out what are those things. Like, what are the things that are probably gonna always come back around in my stuff? Um, but I feel like even though I knew that, like, I knew kind of like— I still felt like maybe nobody else wants any of that, you know, because it was hard to find readers on Amazon. Uh, you know, I had been trying a whole lot of the things that everyone tells you to do in the general indie author community, and they never would work for my books. And so after you do that for long enough, you start getting super discouraged, right? And that's sort of one of the reasons why I just decided to focus on reader relationships, because I'm like, well, all this other stuff's not working, so I'm just gonna work on just— I'm just gonna find people who do like my books and it's super slow, you know, and my readership is still pretty small. But then when I ran the Kickstarter campaign and like a whole bunch of other people came in that had not read my books before, they weren't family and friends, you know, and I, I did not use the custom URLs this round because I was just too like, ah, trying to manage everything else. But in my surveys I did include a question that said, how did you find my campaign? And I have been shocked at how many people are like, oh well, I was just a Kickstarter search, it was Kickstarter recommended, uh, you know. I actually had one person said they found it through Brandon Sanderson's campaign, so yay. Um, but you know, like, I was like, holy cow, like this— a lot more people than I had expected just happened to find it and be interested and actually give me money, and a lot of money. Uh, yeah, I think my average was like like $67 a backer. So, um, I was just really shocked, but it was very encouraging because it made me realize it's not that nobody likes what I'm writing, it's that I can't reach them on Amazon because of the way that Amazon is set up. Um, and so yeah, so I'm very excited as far as, um, going forward with it because I mean Honestly, I would not mind just sticking with Kickstarter forever and exclusively.

I don't—

yeah, at this point I'm like, I don't give a crap about Amazon personally. Oh yeah, I probably won't entirely do that. I'll probably, um, launch first on Kickstarter and then put the books on up on different retailers. Um, but for now I'm just probably gonna do one campaign a year until I kind of get into a groove with it, because I am also a slow writer. So I, I publish maybe 1 or 2 books a year, like 2 max. So, um, but yeah, I'm gonna try to finish out my current series. I'm gonna do hardbacks for the whole thing, uh, and then after that I'm gonna see how far I am into my next series, and then I might do the whole series all at once depending on where I'm at on Kickstarter, or I'll just do probably 1 book at a time and do Kickstarter first and then retailers.

Yeah. Yeah, I do think I totally agree with you about retailers. And I don't remember if we were talking about it this hour or the last one, but basically retailers, like when you look at data from retailers, I was just talking to actually Dan Wood from Draft2Digital about this. But when you look at data from retailers, it's like so specific. It's like if you're like a cozy reader, cozy mystery reader, that person is like also just reading only cozy mysteries. So like if you, if you look at just the retailer data, it's like, yeah, you think like, oh, like people only read in like this tiny like crazy niche genre and like they're only reading in that. And it's not true at all. It's actually that, um, the way retailers are designed is to, um send, you know, like, that is how, that is how the algorithms are designed, is like, oh, you bought a cozy mystery, I'm going to show you another cozy mystery and show you another thing from this author. Right. The retailers have gone, which is great, but like, that is not the old— that is not like the truth of how people read. It's the truth of how retailers sell, um, right now. And so I do think that the data, like, the majority of the data is coming from retailers So the data is showing something, and it's actually this, like, completely false narrative about indie authorship as a whole. So I think that you just touched on something so important that people need to hear, because there are so many pathways to success right now, and there's, like, this one indie author blueprint type of thing that is just shoved down your throat. Like over and over and over again in every single course. And I, sorry to be so passionate about this message, but I'm just saying.

No, but it's not even indie authors. It's not even indie authors because I think like I was in a bookstore the other day and like there was just a woman walking between sections being like, oh, she picked up like a Madeline Miller book. She picked up like other books and she's like, you know, I mostly picked up fantasy books, but then I walked up to YA and like, I think I mostly read fantasy books at this point, but like I did just finish a very good sci-fi novel and some contemporary stuff as well. So like, I think that it's just, there is a certain, I think someone that goes to Amazon and does all their reading on Amazon, like what they're getting is the books that they read on Amazon.

Amazon.

And like, not the books they read, because some people go to the bookstore and get something else, and they'll go to like, they'll go to a book fair and get something else, but like, they're there to read on Amazon, like, whatever the— or draft, whatever the thing is, like, they're there to read that kind of book.

Oh yeah, that's me. I agree with that too. Absolutely. I think people are getting books from all sorts of places, not necessarily Amazon. But yeah, their Amazon data is showing like the thing that they get on Amazon for sure. Yeah. All right, true.

So yeah, go ahead. I was just gonna say, do we have any final questions for Jenny while she's here?

Let's see if someone said hello. Hello.

Hello.

I saw a few people say hi when I—

Yeah, you got like You got so much love from— I got Monica saying hello, so that is very exciting.

I will say one more thing about Jenny, which I did after I got home. Like, I read her book, and like, I read the book and I messaged her and was like, this is a really good book. Like, like, I mean, it's not in the genre that I generally read, but like, this is a very good book that like I, I felt I viscerally had a reaction to, which means there's always, like, there's always a fandom for that. Because some people will write a book and, like, it will be— and this is, again, no, there's nothing against people that write like this, but it will feel like every other book that I've read 100 times. And that's how pulps were successful for 50 years. Yeah, it is like Pulp Fiction. Yeah, you know, so a lot of times people that write in a very distinctive voice have a hard time finding an audience because it doesn't feel like the other books that are popular on Amazon because it combines a bunch of stuff. But that doesn't mean their books are bad. It just means the platform is not set up for them. It doesn't mean Amazon's bad either. It just means like the platform's not set up in the way that will, that will make them successful, right?

And that's honestly, um, I mean, and I talk about this, and that's kind of another reason why I went to trying almost like, okay, well, I'm gonna go find the readers myself. Because, uh, for me personally, I really like books that have— that you can like sink your teeth into, I guess is how you would say it. Like they have some meat to them, you know, depth, like where you feel things. Um, and it's been hard for several years now to find books that feel that way to me. Like, a lot of times I'll start reading a book and it, it feels to me very surface level, which I think a lot of people do like those books because, you know, you can get through them fast. It's not a lot of emotional investment. So like, if you're already exhausted from like your life, you know, you may not want to read a book that exhausts you, you know, kind of a thing. But I've always kind of liked those kind of stories, so those are the kind of books that I write, and they aren't for everyone. But I do feel like when people find my books because they are like that, they do appreciate it because they do feel like it's harder to find. I think especially now, maybe just because there's, there's so many books, so many books available everywhere.

Yeah, I mean, I will say also, like, I read a lot of Amazon books at the gym, on the bike, because like, I don't want something to— I just, I need something to be fleeting and easy on the bike, but I can, in a different context, I could do something else. And frankly, like, there's a lot of books that probably shouldn't be on Kickstarter because like there is not a strong why, or the why is sirens are hot this month. And I, and again, this is nothing against writers who do that. Like I have a lot of friends who do this, but like, you know, a lot of people that are like, I don't care. Like this is the book that's hot. So I wrote the book that's hot and yeah, it's probably not going to be very successful on Kickstarter because there's no why behind that. It's just, I wrote it because it was popular. And so those books, don't put those on Kickstarter. They're not going to be— or write them if you want because like there's a big market for that. Yeah, but they'll do fine on Amazon, so you don't have to worry about it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay, um, how about we do, uh, last thoughts, where we can find you, and then we'll say goodbye.

Cool.

Um, yeah, so you can find me at my website is www.jrfrontera.com. Uh, Instagram is the same, @jrfrontera. And then, um, Facebook is Jennifer, uh, R. Frontera is my main page that I'm mostly active on. I have an author page too, J.R. Frontera, but kind of hit or miss there. So, but those are the 3 main places you can find me.

Awesome. Any final thoughts for people before we let you go?

Um, I never—

maybe.

Oh gosh. Um, geez, I don't know. Just, uh, if you're—

yeah.

Oh gosh. Um, do better at the pre-launch marketing than I did. Uh, and, um, if you are interested in Kickstarter, definitely listen to Russell and Monica because I had like a million people contact me after my campaign. Uh, like, how, how did you do this? What did you do? Tell me everything. And I was just like, um, just go bother Russell and Monica because I just did what they want me to do.

And I'll be like, just bother Russell. I just do it, Russell. We all just do what Russell tells us to do.

Go see them, don't talk to me, it's not interesting. So yes, all I did was listen to them, read their books, book. Yeah, join the group, do what they say, and, uh, do your best. Yeah, find your why, that really helps a lot.

And awesome. Have fun. Thanks, thanks so much, Jenny.

Thanks for stopping by. Yeah, thanks for having me. Have fun.

Bye.

All right, so our next guests are Frog and Esther Jones.

Hi guys!

Hey, we're here! Yeah, you've been hanging out for a little bit watching behind the scenes.

So, okay, really excited to have you. I'm gonna pull up your campaign. Why don't you guys introduce yourself and, uh, okay, we'll start.

Go for it, hon. All right, well, I'm Esther Jones, uh, that's Rob Jones. We write, uh, an urban fantasy series together. That's our main series. We also run Impulsive Walrus Books. And through Impulsive Walrus Books, we put out anthologies, and we have a novella series, uh, set in the Neverwin universe. This was our very first Kickstarter, and it actually was a test run. Um, I wanted to learn Kickstarter because we want to do an anthology Kickstarter later this year, and so this one that Russell just put on the screen was my let's let's try this out and dip our toe in the water and see if we can make it work and see what it's like before we, you know, put the anthology out.

Well, I've learned a lot about these two because I've been— I've done some work for them. But so I'm going to put this to Monica because I don't want to—

because you're in that anthology that we're keeping.

Because I'm like, because I'm like, I I feel like I'll be a little bit biased because like I know a little bit about the anthology and that Neverland series.

Well, now I would love to know about the anthology.

So what's going on with that? Okay, well, uh, we can start there. Uh, so that's gonna be— there is a hotel in Oregon, um, where they, they host a con, and I don't want to call the hotel out directly, but The design of this hotel makes no sense whatsoever. I mean, it's, it's a maze. What you do is you go and you check into the front desk, you walk half a mile, then you go up the stairs, then you walk another quarter mile, and then you're at your room, right?

It just, it makes no sense. They also have an elevator right by the front desk that only goes to the basement, not to any of the rooms.

Not to any of the rooms. The elevator does not connect to rooms. Nice. So at that con, there was kind of this running joke. Uh, it's also situated right on the Columbia River, and so you've got this hotel that was built of madness, and you look out the window and there's this big dark mass of water flowing by you. And so we, we all agreed, like, all the authors that were at this convention agreed that the hotel was actually an Altar of Madness to the Dark God in the Water. And that became a running joke for like years at this convention.

That was—

there was 3 or 4 years of us making fun of this hotel in this way, uh, until finally I was like, I should just do an anthology. Um, you know, we'd started doing anthologies. We'd gotten It's Your Cow out, we'd gotten Corntales out. I'd kind of gotten a feel for how that— how to edit and put together an antho. Um, and so we're like, we're gonna, we're gonna do an anthology about this, right? So it's a science fiction fantasy convention that's being held in a hotel that is also an altar of madness to a dark god in the water, right? Um, and the name of the anthology is Cthulhu Facon.

All right, Russell's like lighting up over here.

Well, I did—

well, I mean, I wrote a story for it. And like, he told me the thing, I was like, I've been to that convention. Not the convention, but like, we've all been to that convention. So we talked in the last hour about like how conventions and Kickstarter kind of like go hand in hand.

And, uh, I— yeah, we've been, we've been selling in person at conventions for what, 7 years now?

At least.

Yeah, at least 7 years.

Yeah.

So how, how did those skills transfer over to the Kickstarter?

Really, really well. Honestly, like that was one of the best pieces of advice that you gave me, that both of you gave me. It's just imagine you're at a convention and you're talking to somebody at a convention. What would you tell them? Put that on your Kickstarter page. That was so useful. It really is that relationship that you develop with people going past your table. You're just converting it to text and video.

And then putting it on a website. Yeah, we've been— I mean, we know, like, if your eyes go to this area of the table, here is what I am going to say. Like, that's, that's where we are in terms of our table sales, right? Like, we, we know how to follow the eye line and we know how to respond given, like, just what they're looking at. Um, and so I, I think translating that, uh, and knowing that this is how you give a pitch. Well, they're only going to be looking at one thing, so we know we just have to give the pitch for that one thing and then we're golden.

Yeah, that's interesting because on Kickstarter you have like, you kind of have, I mean, it's kind of, it is similar in that you have like, like the page is maybe like your table, um, and, and maybe like a more thematic table. It's not, you know, it's not like a smorgasbord like a maybe a regular convention table might be. Um, but it's, you know, you've got a theme, you've got like your main pitch, but then you also, you know, you have these different offers.

Let's be clear, when we're setting up a table, we set up the table, you know, kind of with malice of forethought in terms of which books we want to focus on. Like, a table is not just a— if you just have a blank table with just flat books on it and like there's book stands and each book looks the same and each book is arranged the same you're not going to catch anyone's eye. And so we, whenever we set up a table, we set it up to draw people's eye to certain books.

Um, because we had a very interesting conversation at LostCon. This is before they ever launched their— the— I knew— I only knew them from being part of the, the accelerator. And then, uh, like, I saw them at LostCon last Thanksgiving, and she had a very— guys had a very interesting discussion with like how you think about conventions and just basically like book design. You said something about the It's a Cow, and it's like that is just the convention book that like makes people laugh. And like if you laugh at it, you're going to buy it probably. And like everything kind of felt like it had a purpose on your table, which is the great thing about the Kickstarter as well. Yeah.

Well, Well, It's Your Cow is— that was our first anthology. And that thing, that thing sells off a table like nothing else. Like, that was a $50 cover, and it has, it has, like, it has paid for itself so many times over.

Um, but you're absolutely right that we designed that book to sell on a table.

Yeah, that was, that was the entire goal, was to let's see if we can make a book that just flies off a table, and, and we did.

Yeah. So I was, when I was like, make the Kickstarter book like a book that will, is designed to sell on Kickstarter, like, I feel like you guys like ran with it. Some people are just like, but this sells on Amazon. I'm like, yeah, but it's different. It's the same, but it's also different, uh, just like a convention table.

Yeah, Amazon sales are, are not our forte at all. Um, like, we, we can get a good launch on Amazon and get some traction, but we've never— like, we've never been hot on Amazon. It's, it's just not whatever marketing needs to be done there, we're not good at it.

But, uh, but you're— but they're also— your books are also like very cross-genre and like, it's like their own thing. Whereas, you know, me and Monica talk all the time about like this book on— that's working on Amazon, like it's a contemporary romance that has like a royal couple in it, like, and that's the thing that it is, and that's what it works. And again, I'm not— this is not a negative for those people. Like, it's just like, it is that one thing. Whereas I think, like, my stuff, your stuff, most people's stuff that does really well on Kickstarter is like, it's not one thing, it's 100 things that kind of like uses one genre as a shell to tell a bunch of a very weird story.

Yeah.

And I mean, our urban fantasy is an urban fantasy, except it's not a romance. It's a master and student thing. And the number— we've had a lot of people buy it on Amazon and then get like irritated that it wasn't a romance, right? Like that it's a master student. Um, but, and our characters are like, there's a 20-year age gap and one of them's an underage teenager. And it's like, it would be weird if this was a romance.

Okay.

It would not be okay.

But everyone, you know, they hear urban fantasy and they think romance, and it's not right. Well, especially because urban fantasy and paranormal romance have become so interchangeable as genres. Um, we've had several book lists like put us on their listings under romance, and I have to like email them and be like, oh no, no, no, no, take us out from there, that's bad.

Very little romance involved in those books. And you know, you could really upset some people if they're going for a specific category and you aren't that category, that ends up looking really deceptive, even if we didn't try to put it in that category.

But, you know, for example, for weird stuff we have in that book that is not an urban fantasy, we essentially have an Ent as one of our favorite fan characters. People are always telling us that they love the tree. Yeah, we basically just took Tolkien-esque, and it also has some wind powers, and put it in our urban fantasy. And that's, that's one of the favorite characters in there, right?

I mean, there are definitely elements of high fantasy, and there's a bunch of stuff blended up. And that doesn't even touch on like the anthologies, which are hugely mishmash, right? Like, while it's your cow, the only thing that ties those stories together is that the first line is the same. Um, and the response to the first line is— so the first line is, uh, so do we think this is a good idea? And the answer to that question is, of course, well, it's your cow.

That's it.

That's the only thing that ties those stories together. Everything else is just the author takes that and go where they want.

It's entirely prompt-based. Yeah, and Cthulhu is the same way. We said, you know, the hotel is an altar to the dark god. What happens there?

Right?

And then the author can do whatever they want.

And we have had some— I mean, if you give authors that kind of freedom, I— it's my belief you get a better anthology out of it, right? You get authors that are like, oh, I'm really inspired, and since I've— I'm totally free to do whatever I want in this setting, I'm gonna do something. Like, we've got, um, I mean Peter Wax submitted a story that is actually like this kung fu showdown between Cthulhu and the other elder gods in the middle of a convention where they're turning people into what their costumes are, and it's a huge battle thing, and it's, it's crazy, right? And I would never have thought of that. I'm really happy he did. We've got, um, there's a free version of it up as our magnet right now, uh That's Room Party Fit for an Elder God. Uh, Liz Guisetti did this story that is simultaneously horrific and hilarious, uh, about a cult that likes to host room parties at this hotel because there's an elder god in the water, and, and this is how they gain following for their cult and also occasionally sacrifice some people, you know.

But they also have cupcakes.

But they also have really good cupcakes. And so it's It's this weird balance, um, and she just hit it really well. And it became this— it became a story that was really representative of the anthology because it was both horror and comedy, um, and so it just intertwined really, really well. And we're using that as our magnet right now, so people can get that story for free if they sign up for our newsletter, um, and that is starting to generate some things for the newsletter.

Cool.

Awesome, awesome. Um, so what are some of the things that you learned about Kickstarter? So what if you had just a couple tips to give about Kickstarter, what would you say?

And also, if you guys have questions, don't forget, uh, we've got about 15 more minutes with Frog and Esther, so, uh, please, uh, put them out.

I have a question. Try to front load as much content as you possibly can. Um, you know, that first accelerator sprint was so compressed because it was from November to January, and so I was really, really good at planning all the way up through the first 2 days of launch, and then I was like, the rest will probably— I, I can, I can wing the rest of it and, and don't, don't do that. Don't wing the rest of it. It made it so much more stressful. So, so much better if you can have your, your, at least the majority of your content planned out, like your emails that you're gonna send out, the posts that you're gonna make on social media, those things. Um, because I was constantly having to be like, oh no, I didn't post anything, let me fix that really quick.

Yeah, it does really help to schedule like stuff in advance. I had the same thing with our campaign. I just, I could not get ahead of it like in any way. I was just always behind on it. But yeah, I think definitely scheduling like social and email ahead of time can be super helpful.

Yeah, well, Russell was so helpful because he's so calm, you know, and he's asking how everybody's doing. And I'll just always remember I posted the IT Crowd GIF with the everything's on fire Oh man. So I would say that panic is normal. As long as you're getting stuff done, don't, don't, don't stop doing stuff. Just be like, it'll be fine. I'm gonna keep working on this and wrapping it up.

Well, Monica said something really interesting yesterday. Someone said something interesting yesterday.

Maybe it was—

I'll take credit for it.

Yeah. But it was about how doing—

I don't I don't even know what you're— it was about how like just doing stuff like eases the tension. And sometimes we do these things like, oh yeah, yeah, I thought it was you because I was like, who else would say? We were the only two people who were speaking. That's true. But, but yeah, it was like sometimes just having the plan and being like, I don't know how much, I don't know how much money is going to come from this, but like if I just I'll just do a post. My anxiety will at least be like, I did a thing today and it's going to have to do what it is.

Yeah. I think one of my secrets to marketing is like, yeah, I have a task list, but then also like if you did, like it's better to do something than nothing. Like it doesn't even matter if it works. At least you like did something and then you can at least say like, I gave it, you know, I gave it my best. Like you can always do better, but you could at least say, like, I did something, like, I tried. And I feel like that's always soothing to me, like, to just not worry about the result. But yeah, I don't know if that suits other people, but for me, that's how I always get through it. Because I do think there is a big fear element to doing a Kickstarter. Like, it's very exposed. You have the money at the top. So, like, we all have, like, these money traumas anyway. So then, like, there's that to deal with. There's like marketing and promotion and visibility to deal with. And so it's like all these things that are really tough for people, um, kind of all mixed in one before Kickstarter.

Yeah, well, I'm sure somebody else has said it today, but the newsletter was key, right? Like the social media posting helped and everything, but every single time I sent out a newsletter, I saw a bump, you know. And you're never quite sure if that's because it really is the newsletter or somebody else was doing something, but every single time I sent out a newsletter, I saw a bump in the—

yeah. And so we've been, we've been really focused here in the interim about finding different ways to build that mailing list up, because we only had a mailing list of what, 500 people when— yeah, you were sending out. So it wasn't a big mailing list, um, and we're trying to build that up and ramp that up. That's why we've got the Cthulhu story out there as a magnet. Um, I've got some other crazy promotional stunts that I'm going to be doing here in a couple of weeks.

Is there anything you can tell us about that stuff?

Because I know a lot of people are there, like, what kind of, like, yeah, um, yeah, we We are taking inspiration from, from the great Harlan Ellison, um, and we've kind of reworked it a little bit. But what we're doing is we're calling it the Extreme Author Challenge, uh, and it's— we are currently collecting, uh, random first line prompts from people, um, and all they have to do is sign up for the newsletter and they get to submit a first line. Those first lines are all going to go into a hat, and at our next public event, which is going to be a market up, up north here in a little bit, I will have— Esther will put them all in the hat. I won't look at them. I will draw one of them out of the hat, and whatever that is, while we are there at the market, I will have to write a short story based on on a typewriter.

Oh, and it's cool, like a live stream element, or—

well, it won't be— I won't be able to do live stream because there's no internet. But, um, what will happen is every time a page comes off the typewriter, we will scan it and post it, and then we'll actually physically post it next to us.

Yeah. And eventually there will be a live stream.

I don't know for this We, we're a fan of testing things, so I don't know, or like putting them out to everyone. And so the market, if they'll be alive, sorry.

Well, our Patreon subscribers will be able to access the scans of it, and our, um, anyone that's physically present at the event, which is where we will be selling books, uh, can use this as kind of an attraction to the table to sell books. And because we're collecting the suggestions through the magnet for an email list generator, we get to add to our, our mailing list. And so it's a draw for our Patreon, it's a draw for our mailing list, and it's a draw for our physical table.

That's awesome. Yeah, so I would like to— and, and any of the three of you can answer because you have better ideas than me on this— but I am curious, like, what are, um, like, what makes it— what makes something a stunt or like whatever you like, what makes something good for like visibility? What are some of the elements of that? Because I think that's a place where, like, I like for— I have an upcoming Kickstarter, but it's like, I know that, and I know I'll do like a livestream or whatever, you know, like, but it's like, what, how could I like add to that or just interactivity, embarrassment? Oh yeah, I remember you. Do you want to talk about that, Russell, that you—

oh, I was adding, like he said, I was gonna say what, what Frog said, but then like he said it, and so I was like, okay, interactivity. Yeah, so I think they both work together. So like when I did a campaign that was like, I did the ice bucket challenge one week, I ate like an onion one week, I like did a bunch of like kind of humiliating things that people wouldn't see. And just like, I, I was, I was very, uh, I, I was able to like make light of myself and like do that as part of a, a, a, a, I guess, stunt to like get people to like get behind and do, uh, you know, fight, go through this journey with me.

Yeah, that really is the key. Get people to feel like they're invested, right, in what you're doing. And whether that's because they're laughing, right? You're giving them joy of some kind, even if it's through embarrassment or whatever.

Um, yeah, yeah. I mean, you have a lot of like royal stuff, so like that's the kind of— I don't know, like how can you— you know, like we're gonna go— I don't know, I know there's not like a big royal like thing, but like if there was a big royal thing, be like, hey, come to a live stream where we're gonna do this this, like, we're gonna go and— there's probably a channel for Royals somewhere that just is like a Royal, like, I don't know, the Royal Flush channel. Like, we're just gonna go and do whatever thing. Like, you do a lot of art, so like live drawings of like stuff.

Like, yeah, that's a good idea. Like, live drawing would be good for me.

I'm gonna get a pen real quick.

Yeah, I was trying to think of a lottery, but then I would have to think of a lottery prize, right?

Like, well, then you would have to spin on a drawing. Go foul of some other— of like the lottery organizations in your state. So like, but well, that's true. Um, I would say for virality, one thing that we used to do at shows is I would go to, to vendors who were very popular and I would say, what is your most successful— what is your best-selling thing? And they would— and I would buy it and then I would be like, hey, someone's gonna win. I'd go to like 10 vendors and I'd put like a thing and be like, someone's gonna win this, sign up for my mailing Guess if you want a chance to win this. And like, it was the same thing online where it's like, yeah, we're like Court of Thorns and Roses or like whatever other stuff, like things that break through. The problem is so many people when they're doing try to have virality, like either put their own stuff or like middling things that not are not great but are not like popular enough to like break through. So So part of it is really like, what is going to be popular enough? Like if there was a royal wedding or a royal birth or a court, like that would be a thing that like everyone cuts through enough that you could work off of.

Yeah. Yeah, that's— those are all really good tips. I was just curious because, you know, I would say like most of the authors that we work with, they don't have the same convention experience. That the three of you do. So that makes Kickstarter a little confusing, like the marketing, the launch and the marketing stuff on Kickstarter a little bit more confusing. Because I know when you did your campaign, I think you did like a— I don't know if it was a 24-hour livestream or like an 8—

like it was something like that.

It was like a 12-hour livestream. Yeah, it was a long one.

Well, and we kept having people come on into it, like, much like you're doing here, right? Like, sure. Yeah, yeah. Um, and we didn't have it scheduled out, we just had a, like, a drop-in and, and say hi anytime you want to. And yeah, we, we sat there and hung out. But, you know, I, I've— I would go to conventions, and I still do, um, and, you know, on the programming, like, are there any hours where you don't— you can't— aren't available for programming? Be like, I dare you to try and break me, right? I would, um, get really forward about it. And so there were two, uh, programming people, uh, Tim Martin from SpokeOn and Liz Van Clark from any number of cons, uh, got into a competition with each other to see who could break Frog. And in doing so, ended up giving me like 16 panels at a convention, or—

yeah, right. And then we tried to give him the weird stuff. So like at one point he was doing a dancing class with some, some person.

Yeah, I'm 400 pounds, like, and yep, my fat butt spent an hour dancing with people because that's what the panel was.

Uh, that's fun.

That's great. That's the thing, and that's sort of of willingness to get out there and do things that aren't like comfortable for you and let people, like Russell was saying about embarrassment, like if they can see you being uncomfortable and just being really genuine, yeah, that's the connection and it builds a readership.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the authenticity, I was thinking they do all these Babe events. Yeah. Yeah. Like you could do a virtual, I mean, I love virtual conferences. Like they're kind of like a thing that is a staple. Of, I'm in my jammies now, I'm hanging out with my friends, like talking about books. Like it's very low, low, low like stress level even though it's a long time. Like those are the kinds of things that I think about of like how can we leverage like a group of people that are all maybe like launching a thing together or like we'll be launching in a group and how can we like make this thing. I'm always trying to find out how to be part of an ecosystem. We were talking about this, Monica, a couple of days ago with like just course ecosystem, but like, how can I be a good steward for the other people who I work with or who like have a book that is Cthulhu? I'm doing this thing with this, this company's doing like a coffee Kickstarter with Cthulhu and they were like, can we use your books? And I was like, you can use the brand, just put it on a thing of coffee if you want. Like, I don't care. Like, that seems like good branding. Thing for me. And like all of the stuff that you can do to just get like— be a good steward and like fit— like where do you fit into the overall industry of royalty or angels or demons or like whatever that thing is, you know? I tell people all the time, like, you make a book, so like go and find someone who makes a candle and like a tiara, like a jewelry, and like all of you do like giveaway together because you probably have already come in contact with all of the hardcore romance readers in your circle. But I guarantee you there's a ton of romance readers who also like candles and also like jewelry or like the Cthulhu thing, who also like board games and also like movies. And if you can make a— like be a part of an ecosystem, you're going to be able to find people that are outside of the 1,000 or 2,000 people that you find all of the time that go to shows or yada yada, running the same circles.

We actually, at LostCon, uh, we ran into a gal there that was making custom bars of soap, and she had an Elder God Madness soap. Yeah. And so one of our, our add-ons on our Kickstarter is going to to be this— these bars of soap, right, that are really— they smell really amazing. Um, yeah, right, really good soaps. And we're custom tagging them with the Cthulhu Faucon label, uh, which we're hoping— we haven't pulled it off yet, but we're hoping to get a logo designed that is like the Red Lion logo except with Cthulhu instead of a lion. And put that soap as though it was the bar of soap from the hotel. If you've ever—

the focus of the anthology. That's awesome. If you've never seen the Naughty Fairies Comic-Con Kickstarter, you should definitely look it up because they basically have a virtual convention. It's like they have a program book and a badge, and like they make like $30 grand a book every time they do it. And like they have a little artist alley map and sell stuff to people. Oh man, the way they do it is like a really cool like thing that you could probably use. And we're running up on time. I have to say one thing before we go though, which is like y'all made me cry. Because you guys, when you were done, I think it was you, Frog, who said something, posted something like, today is the day we finally are publishing company because we understand how to like make— we now have a a repeatable process that can like get us to equal out on books.

Yeah.

And like, I literally went there. Yeah, yeah.

So, um, I'm really glad it's working. It was— it's really the moment it went from being kind of a hobby to an actual business, right? Like, we made a profit on Graceless, and that is the first time I can— we can say that a book is profitable, right? On launch, right? We were prof— yeah. Still profitable because it's weird. Um, we did strange things with Cow when we were setting it up because—

and I would— we didn't know what we were doing. It's the first one we did.

Yeah, well, it's on purpose. Well, what it is is like all of our authors are getting royalties of online and digital sales, but the physical sales is very much eat what you kill. Um, and so all of our authors can buy that book at cost. Like, we make no profit off of it, um, and we don't grant royalties on our sales. And it's just like everyone has the chance to sell this book and everyone has a chance to make money off it. Go!

Sure.

There's one guy who, uh, Tonkondolphi, wrote a 900-word piece of flash fiction um, who has sold over 150 copies at, you know, $9 profit a copy. And if you do the math, he's ended up making like $2.50 per word off his story.

It's going pretty good. That's really good. So do you want to tell us, um, where people can find you? And yeah, pulsaphorusbooks.com.

Um, awesome.

We're also on Facebook.

And honestly, Impulsive Horrors is a weird enough name that if you Google it, we'll come up. It's true, you don't even need the link. Did you want to say something?

Oh, I'm okay.

Okay, cool.

Um, well, thank you guys so much for coming on. Um, I really, really appreciate it, and we can't wait to see what your next project is, and, uh, I think I'll be hearing from you a lot. Uh, I just wrote chapter 1, just so you guys know.

Oh, nice!

Of the number 1 stuff?

Yeah, that's awesome. Awesome. Yeah, I just, I just want to thank you for your tips. I think I have some good ideas now for ways to excite people about my campaign. So hopefully it was helpful to everyone else too. So thank you so much for being on.

Awesome.

Anyone who's watching, come give me a first line.

There you go. Bye. All right, so you— yeah, that was, that was a good one. Um, they were all good, so thank you. If any— if y'all, y'all are still watching, thank you.

Thank you all so much. Well, I think what that last one did is really show the benefit of being in the accelerator because there's a group of— Monica is an expert marketer, but like, still is asking questions about how to, like, sell her own book, and you had 3 people and literally dozens, over 100 others who are also successful, who are all on the same path, to give that same kind of feedback.

Yeah, no, I agree with that. I think just everybody who's in the group, and you talk about this all the time, but, like, it is so important to talk to authors that are not taking, you know, maybe a traditional indie author path as it's described online in many, like, very successful groups. Because, you know, there are people killing it in, like, all these other areas that have incredible insight in an area that you don't know that it could be really beneficial to you in your career or could be, like, the thing that helps you break out. Kind of, like, Jenny was saying, like Kickstarter, I mean, so far is kind of like the thing that helped her break out at this point and she's just going to keep building it from there. And she tried a lot of stuff that didn't work and it took her confidence down a notch or two and it's very easy to sink into that. So I think it's really cool. We have such a cross of people who are in, you know, comics and graphic novels and who are in conventions and who are on retailers and, you know, who are Y, who are KU, who are— yeah, yeah, exactly, who are in children's books. Like, hey, like, there's stuff in children's books that could work for your books too, even if you're not writing children's books. So I do think there's just so much value to the group and like how we've, you know, the two of us are— we have different communities, so how we've like pulled together. I mean, we have crossover communities, do, but how we have pulled together, um, just like bringing like lots of different people into the mix to this group. So it's a very cool group, um, in that sense.

Yeah, and it's, it's like, it's weird because certain things, things are siloed in different industries and different parts of the industry. And like, you listen to like a kids book author and you're like, oh my God, I didn't even know I could do that. And they're like, well, that's just just my Tuesday, right? And like, same thing will happen when I talk to Monica. Like, she'll be like, oh, we just— I'll be like, I don't know what to say. She's like, just do these 3 things. And I'm like, how do you know that? She's like, well, like, I have an MBA and like, I was in corporate America and this is what we do. And like, to have— I very strongly believe that the way to break out in like an industry is like to take things from other industries or other parts of the industry. That is like so obvious to them and then just do it.

Yeah.

You know, do it in this other, like, I remember just like doing a mailing list and having an autoresponder sequence, like listening to Russell Brunson and Frank Kern and all of those people and Amy Porterfield and just be like, well, no one has this here. What if I just had it? Right. And then you're, I wouldn't even say it was good for the first 2 years.

It's probably not even good now, but like just having it and it's like, oh, oh yeah. No, that is— yeah, I do think that's like the— I mean, it's a huge marketing secret. It's like if you overthink it, you're not gonna do it, and so then you get nothing. But if you just do a very, very bad job at something that is a marketing thing, which is kind of like— it's kind of the narrative, you know, like I won't say we did a very bad job, but we, you know, we did like an okay job at, you know, some of our stuff.

Stuff.

But like, if you just like actually do something, like something is likely to work. I think people really hold themselves back by just like not doing things or doing the same thing that everybody else is doing. Yeah, I mean, you're gonna have trouble breaking out.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we heard from Sandy first and she was like, oh well, it was my own insecurity that got me and she finally did it and she went from like no money on Kickstarter, right, to 2 weeks later making $5,000 on Kickstarter. And the thing that was stopping her, I mean, I'm sure she tweaked certain things over the period of time, but then she said there were months where she just, the only thing stopping her was actually just hitting the launch button. So like the literal only thing between you and like money is hitting the launch button because even if you make $1, even if you make $0, you'll have data there. You'll have to be like, oh, well, I can't do it this way. Way. I don't know how to do it, but like, I can't do it this way on this platform. So like, you know, I talked to somebody last night who emailed me after a webinar and was like, I don't know, I'm having a tough time like coming up with— I've spent so much money on this thing, like, should I? And I told them, I was like, I mean, I run a literal group on Kickstarter. I'm not going to tell you no, that you can't use this to like make your money back because that's how I've made most of the money in my career. But like, there are some serious things that you have to consider. And like, here is some data for comp titles that you said don't exist here. I did search, here's some stuff. Like, here's what we do, we walk you through every step of the way, but like, we don't guarantee that you're going to have a 10x return. Like, every time that someone comes back and they launch and that day they make $2,000, I'm like, Oh, thank God. Thank you that it didn't blow up in my face.

Right. But I mean, it is the person. You could take every course in the world, you could hire every coach in the world, the best of the best. Tony Robbins could be your coach and you're only going to get results if you get results.

You're still responsible for your results. Yeah. I mean, so in our— so come back with a something for us is like we both tried to launch courses before and they did not work very well for either of us that well.

Yeah. I mean, we sold like a couple, like I would say we each sold like maybe a couple hundred max. Yeah. Like I think I've made for like years and years and years.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I had some, maybe I made like $20 grand over courses over 5 years or something like that.

But there was no, maybe like $40 or $50 grand and it wasn't, but it was over like 4 or 5 year.

Yeah, it was like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not like how we've done that in like 6 months, but like something just clicked when we did this thing. Like, and we, we were originally not going to do the accelerator, but we stopped after the— after we did the first thing and it was working for everyone, we were like, so we got to do this again. It's like working, it's like working, we have to at least try to do it again. And now it worked a second time, we're like, okay, now we move to the— but you know, a lot of times that, that said, like, we have both taken probably every course from every guru there and tried it every perfect way. And it never hit until this time. So sometimes it's just like, well, I took the course, I tried it this way. That didn't work. That didn't work. That didn't work. And then like 3 years later, maybe it's this course. Maybe it's another course. You're like, oh, because the thing that did work is me and Monica knew everything.

Like, we'd already taken the course.

We know it. Like, yeah, and we had the same basis of thing. And even as we were going through this launch, we were like, okay, this is what they say is gonna happen. And then we do it and we'd be like, no, yep, that is what happened. And like, and like, even this end, we were like, okay, this is the percentage that they say you're gonna make at the end of the thing. And we're like halfway or like 2/3 of the way there right now, depending on— so like, we already had all of the information. It just hadn't clicked. Like, all of the pieces hadn't clicked into place in the right thing. And I'm not saying that it will always fall into place for this launch, but in this launch, all of the things that we learned fell into place. Yeah, I agree with that. Um, all right, so we're going to be back at 1. 1 o'clock Pacific, 4 o'clock Eastern.

And it's a different feed. It is. This stream is complete. So you will go to the 5-day challenge Facebook group. It's like Kickstart Your Novel 5-day challenge, I think is what it's called. So you can search for that on Facebook. You can go to my YouTube channel. You have to search for it. It's called The World Needs Your We will be live again in 20 minutes on our next feed, and we have 3 more people, Kelly, Sarah, and Craig, that we're going to talk to. And also, if you want to get in on the Kickstarter accelerator, you can go to kickstartyournovel.com/accelerator.

Oh yeah, I guess I should, like, at least show this thing. I have to have it up. So, like, while we're— Monica can go eat. I will, uh, I'll talk about this for a second, but, like, I guess she has to unlive the thing. So like this is the accelerator page. We have a ton of awesome, you know, we've Brian Cohen is one of our, is one of our clients. We saw Esther. We have a ton of bonuses. So we'll just talk about the bonuses for a second. Like you're gonna get my, so if you're at zero, if you're at starting at zero right now, our first bonus is how to build an audience from scratch, which is my course on how to go from zero to a community of fans who are excited if you have nothing yet. You'll also get our Kickstarter budget template. The second thing that people ask is, how do I make sure I don't go in the red? Well, we have a budget template which you're going to get on top of all of the videos. This is on top of the 50 or so videos that we have and all the other stuff. You're also going to get a digital copy of Get Your Book Selling on Kickstarter. Starter if you don't have it. If you pay in full, this is where things get really cool. So you're gonna get both of the audiobooks and ebooks for both of my nonfiction books, How to Build Your Creative Career, How to Become a Successful Author. They're dope.

That's— they're really good. Yeah, I've really— I'll talk about them so that you're not just saying how awesome your books are. I really— so I've read them multiple times. And I think it just really shows, like, Russell's career, but also, like, his approach to marketing and sales. And he's just got an incredible background in sales. So even if you're great at marketing your books, I would read it. It was, you know, like, that was, like, a part of, like, why we wanted to work together. It was just his incredible knowledge of sales, that piece that I knew that I didn't have, even though, you know, I consider myself a good marketer and, like, a good business person. But, um, yeah, Russell's— he— I, I just think they're worth a read. So he talks— because, because, like, and he'll— he talks about Kickstarter, he talks about events and signings, um, and we now have separate books for that, but he talks about a lot of that in here too. He talks about advertising, um, but he also just has, like, these incredible essays that are all about, you know, just how to approach business in general and how to be a creative in business. And I think it's really good and really honest.

So those are really great books. Thank you.

It means a lot to me.

Yeah.

It does. It really does.

We have a little moment here.

It's just a nice moment.

I was like, okay, how— I've never talked about—

have I never said this to you before? Not the last part. Not the last part about the essays. About being a creative life. And that's really what like, hopefully people get out of it. So I'm very glad to have resonated in the right way with you. And you never know whether— I was like, I know that the sales stuff is good. Cause like, it's very easy to track sales stuff. Like, did this make you money? Yes. No. So that was really nice to hear. Thank you. And now back to the final things we can go eat. All right. Page 2 bonus. You're gonna get my copy vault, which is The last two campaigns, about 90 pages of emails that I sent, all push, uh, uh, giving you examples with templates that Monica is going to do. It's going to be awesome. Yeah. Um, we have not done that yet.

People have asked in the group. People, people want it now. It's just going to take, it's going to take some time to organize it, but we're working on that. We're kind of trying to finish up the launch and then, um, we'll be focused on the group for fully for like until like October when we launch again. So we're a little bogged down by some of the launch stuff that we've been doing. But our next step is just like, let's just give love to all the people in the group and just get them going on their Kickstarters and through their Kickstarters.

So we're excited about that. And June is the month for doing all the pre-marketing stuff. So I'm sure it will come before June when we actually go through all of this stuff. The bonus call that we unlock is, uh, uh, the mentorship call, a live Q&A mentorship call, which is going to happen like soon after this ends. Um, if we have 100 people join up, which we're about 20 or so away, um, I'm going to, to do that marketing call every month for 6 months until the next, uh, so it's a lot to— well, yeah, until October basically. Yeah. Plus we're gonna do some videos on what— as we try fix Monica's campaign or make sure it's optimized for her launch. But the most important bonus is this is going away on Sunday. Like, you will not be able to join the accelerator until October. So people have asked me like, oh, can I get the discount? Or like, what is the thing? And it's like, the thing is you will be unable to join and it will be more expensive in October. October. Like, that is the only difference between now and then. If you have— if you're, um, coming, um, if you're like, I'm not going to start until October, like, I'm telling you, join now because it's A, going to be cheaper, and B, you're going to learn so much that by the time you're ready to launch, you're going to know all of the information instead of having to mainline me for 12 hours and Monica. And like, I will listen to Monica for 10 hours. I'm telling you, you do not want to listen to me on, on blast at double speed for 10 hours in order to get all this information. It's just a lot. Like, go at your own pace. Join, meet Frog and all the other people. Um, and yeah, I mean, we're not— I'm not kidding about this— we have to get all of the people through successful campaigns. We were going to originally launch, I think, in, on, in August, and talk yesterday, we were like, no, we need all of that time to get people through and get them successful. Like, we're— we want to give 100% of our time to that end.

And that means, like, until most of the people are through, we're confident with that, we just— yeah, yeah. So October is our next launch period, but keep in mind that means, like, you won't— you can't— I mean, you can do a campaign, but you can't do a campaign through our system, um, until, like, December, January next year. So even though the launch is October, November, you know, it's like now's— if you're doing a campaign in 2022, like, you want to get in now.

Yeah.

And then just a little bit about what's in here. Here are the tasks that we've done. The 5-day challenge is in here. Introductory challenge, planning your campaign, marketing your campaign, fulfilling your campaign, launch things, And this is only like half of the stuff that we've uploaded to this. We're having upload issues. Yeah, but yeah, so like, we're gonna go eat now unless you have money.

Nope, nope.

Okay, we need to eat. Kickstartyournovel.com/accelerator, and we'll be back in about 15 minutes. Check, uh, for your, um, correct link.

All right, thanks.