Review in Practice: Get Your Book Selling on Kickstarter

With $300,000 in fundraising across 20+ Kickstarter projects, Russell Nohelty knows a thing or two about running publishing campaigns for novels, nonfiction, anthologies, comics, audio dramas, and more. He tested his system with 70+ authors with great results, and is now generously sharing everything he knows about the platform for authors with an audience of zero as well as those with a fanbase.

In this book you’ll find:

Why using crowdfunding is an important avenue for authors and how authors are currently using itChoosing the right project for Kickstarter and designing your campaignBudgeting your campaign for profitability (and why it’s critical for your success!)The types of messages you should send to your audience vs. cold trafficDelivering your rewards for your Kickstarter projectKeeping momentum going after Kickstarter

Hailed as one of the most comprehensive books on Kickstarter for Publishing projects, this book is a must-have if you’re Kickstarter-curious or planning your campaign.

Purchase Link: https://www.amazon.com/Your-Book-Selling-Kickstarter-Profitability-ebook/dp/B09TQ4G5S6

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I’m not a big name author, and when I first started hearing talk of using Kickstarter to sell books in 2022, I scoffed, thinking it was just another way to beg for money in an official capacity. Then Bryan Sanderson came along and ran a campaign that funded and made $4 million on the opening day, making authors everywhere sit up and take notice. You can find out more about how Sanderson’s campaign helped to pave the way for authors in this article by Dean Wesley Smith: https://deanwesleysmith.com/brandon-sanderson-kickstarter/.

Even after watching Sanderson’s success, I was skeptical. Just because it worked for him, he’s a big name author, and that doesn’t mean it will work for me. Then Kevin J. Anderson took his publishing students through a campaign set-up step-by-step, showing us how to do one properly, with his Dragon Business campaign. When his campaign funded on the first day, and by the end had raised $42,000, I decided this was a method of direct selling that I wanted to employ.

Getting Your Book Selling With Kickstarter, by Russell P. Nohelty and Monica Leonelle is a helpful book if you are thinking about using Kickstarter as a method of direct selling for your author business. This book helped me to decide on my projects, figure out my budget for the campaigns, choose my rewards, and set my funding goals. As a successful campaigner, Nohelty offers ideas for rewards, backer perks, stretch goals and add-ons, taking into consideration ease of production, ease of delivery, storage and tracking, and appeal to your audience. He offers advice on how to set reward tiers, adding digital items to physical ones to add value and build excitement in your backers. Plus so much more. He shares his proven system for running a successful Kickstarter campaign.

To date, I have done two campaigns for my own books, and I have two more planned for 2024. I’m practicing a business model similar to that of author Joanna Penn, although I don’t have my own store yet. Her model is to offer books direhctly first, through Kickstarter, and then through her own store on her site. Eventually, she makes her books available through distributors, but authors gets to keep more of their royalties when they sell direct, so going the direct route first makes sense. (You can learn more about Joanna Penn’s business model in her interview with Mark Leslie Lefabvre on the Stark Reflections podcast, episode #327: https://starkreflections.ca/2023/10/10/episode-writing-the-shadow-with-joanna-penn/

I’m an unknown author with a small independent press, so I needed to start small. My first campaign for Delilah and the Women in the West adventure series offered mostly digital rewards. The only physical item offered was the signed print copy of the book. For my top tier, I offered my backers a chance to name a character in book two, which I thought was pretty cool. At least two backers thought it was pretty cool, too.

Nohelty mentions steps in preparation for a campaign which hadn’t crossed my mind, such as promoting through my email list, which is a great idea. He suggests breaking down email lists so you can reach out to the readers in your target audience specifically. This is important, because once you send out all of your intensive promotions for your Kickstarter campaign, people may be tired of hearing from you. You don’t want folks to get annoyed and unsubcribe because you’ve been annoying in your promotions. The idea is to tailor your promotions to different specific lists, so no one is totally bombarded. Nohelty also suggests reposting all of your email content on social media, as well. Also, probably a good idea if strategically placed. But, I have to tell you-one of the really cool thing about Kickstarter is the built in email list, which keeps the lines open and goes out to all of the backers of the campaign, even long after the campaign has ended, so you have an open line of communication with all of your Kickstarter fans.

Emailings are something that I haven’t worked a whole lot with. That may change as my own mailing list grows. My marketing has always gone through this blog, Writing to be Read, which I then broadcast across my social media channels. This works fairly well, but I realized that I wasn’t targeting my specific audiences in this way. This made me realize that Nohelty’s email marketing might be more effective for more specific targeting. As I prepare for my third Kickstarter campaign, for Sarah, Book 2 in the Women in the West Adventure series, I may look closer at ways in which I might utilize email marketing to my advantage. I’m still a little hesitant though, as Nohelty recommends send frequent emails, (more than one a day). That really seems a bit much to me, but Nohelty stands behind his system.

I set the goal at $500 for both campaigns, because I felt it was a reasonable reach for little old me, who is not a bestselling, or even a known author. Nohelty backs up the advice given on the Six Figure Authors podcast, episode #048 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SvQ5hJ1i0Q). They recommended that you set a goal that is reachable and still brings in enough to cover your expenses and see the project through. A good point made in the podcast was that if you set your goal too high and you don’t fund, then you walk away with nothing, so a lower goal may be better than no money at all. They also pointed out that once your campaign funds, anything else you bring in above and beyond that is just icing on the cake. Kevin J. Anderson’s goal for his Dragon Business Kickstarter campaign was $10,000, because that is a reasonable goal for a bestselling author to shoot for, but he brought in $42,000. Nohelty recommends consideration for the size of your mailing list when setting funding goals.I think $500 is a reasonable goal since my email list is still pretty short and I’m an unknown author.

When I ran my second campaign for The Rock Star & The Outlaw offered more physical rewards because I hadn’t finished writing the book at the time that I set it up, and I didn’t realize there would be potential for a second book. (Yes, the ending surprised me, too.) So, for the top tier on this one, I offered a goodie bag with the WordCrafter logo with a poster and a signed print copy of the book, as well as the early digital copy which all backers above the $5 received.

Nohelty recommends using more digital rewards, because they are easy and cost you less to fulfill. The physical rewards surely made the cost of the second campaign higher. And if you do offer physical rewards, be sure you figure the shipping costs in to the cost of fulfillment. Since I set the same goal for both campaigns, I didn’t make as much from the second one. Definitely something to think about.

He also offers advice on setting your tier levels. He recommends $1, $10, $25, $50, and $250 tiers. I’ve backed a few campaigns now, and from what I’ve seen, each one handles setting the tier levels differently. Mine each had three tier levels, the first two being $5 and $25. For my first campaign, the top tier was $50. For my second campaign, I raised the top tier to $75, because it was mostly physical rewards which would need to be delivered via snail mail.

Another good piece of advice Nohelty offers involves offering merchandise for rewards. Physical items require you to calculate shipping into the overall cost for the fulfillment of each reward. Print books can be shipped media mail, which is less expensive, but as soon as you add any type of merchandise, that is no longer an option. So, when deciding on rewards, add-ons, stretch and flash goals, the cost of shipping must be figured in so you don’t overextend yourself and cut deeply into your profits.

Nohelty explains early bird perks-setting rewards to be available only to early backers with a point at which it is no longer available. I haven’t done this yet, but this strategy appeals to me and has me thinking about what I could offer as incentive to jump into the campaign on Day 1. This idea might be helpful, since I am an unknown author and my campaigns so far haven’t funded until near the end. It looks like Nohelty offers perks for backers and perks for Week 1 backers, so if you back on Day 1, you would receive both rewards, which is pretty cool. In fact, Nohelty offers different perks every week, which means that you can get extras if you back his campaign at any point. He suggests a perk for backing in the first 48 hours, and a perk a week for the duration of the campaign.

Stretch goals are offered when you hit a certain level of funding to keep the money climbing, and I’ve seen the bigger authors use them. They are usually added after funding, and since my campaigns didn’t fund until near the end, there wasn’t really a chance for me to use them. The second campaign funded three days before the end of the campaign, so I offered a stretch goal reward if we reached an additional $100, bringing our total to total $600. We didn’t make it, and thus ended my brief experience with stretch goals.

Flash goals were something I had heard of, but didn’t really understand what they are. According to Nohelty, they are perks given to ‘recharge momentum’ on the campaign. They are brief opportunities, i.e. “Anyone who backs the campaign in the next twenty-four hours gets a bonus.” They are designed to intice those following your campaign into taking the plunge and becoming a backer, thus keeping your totals rising toward your goal, or if fortune is with you, past it and even higher.

I have to say, Russel Nohelty’s Get Your Book Selling on Kickstarter has been extremely helpful as I look forward to future campaigns. In addition to that discussed above, he offers advice on how to set-up your Kickstarter and appeal to your audience, some of the challenges you might run into, how to keep your campaign’s momentum going, and more.

Other resources

WMG Publishing offers a free course from Dean Wesley Smith, Kickstarter Best Practices for Fiction Writers here: https://wmg-publishing-workshops-and-lectures.teachable.com/courses/

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For Kaye Lynne Booth, writing is a passion. Kaye Lynne is an author with published short fiction and poetry, both online and in print, including her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction; and her paranormal mystery novella, Hidden Secrets; Book 1 of her Women in the West adventure series, Delilah, and her Time-Travel Adventure novel, The Rock Star & The Outlaw. Kaye holds a dual M.F.A. degree in Creative Writing with emphasis in genre fiction and screenwriting, and an M.A. in publishing. Kaye Lynne is the founder of WordCrafter Quality Writing & Author Services and WordCrafter Press. She also maintains an authors’ blog and website, Writing to be Read, where she publishes content of interest in the literary world.

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