Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Crowd funding-raising funds for your book part II

Hi,

Hopefully by now you have created your database as best you can, and have reached out to your family and close friends for financial support to get your book project off the ground.

CROWD FUNDING is a great platform to get your message and details of your book out to a much larger pool of people than you might normally reach.  Not to mention that people from all over the world have the chance to learn about your book and become a "backer" and donate to your project. I posted Pug Story on a the crowd funding site:  www.kickstarter.com to kick off my campaign and raise funds.


www.kickstarter.com, and others like it, are a great tool for people like us who want to make, create, or further an existing project.  These crowd funding platforms connect us with generous and philanthropic people who want to support us.

It is not like taking in an equity investor or anything like that. You are not selling a part of your company but rather rewarding your "backer" with something to thank them for their donation.  You set the denominations like $5, $25, $50, $100 and so on.  For example, depending on how much they donated I offered a reward like a signed copy of my book or a rendering of their child or pet from my illustrator, even an in person reading of my book.   Get creative but don't break the bank.  Make sure your cash flow can sustain the rewards...it would be terrible if the donations came in and went right back out, so really think about what you can afford to offer.

Kickstarter is an ALL OR NOTHING type of funding platform so please take the time to go through the kickstarter school to learn about how best to post your project and do's and dont's. Google other crowd funding sites to learn about how their platforms work and what kinds of projects they might seem to hi-light.  I did not hit my goal BUT....I maintained my database of backers, continued to reach out to them and update them and raised over $3,000 by doing that.  My tenacity and conviction to continue the project after not reaching my goal gave people confidence that I would complete the task and make the book, and some people even increased their donation.  Put yourself out there and start letting people know about you and your project.  YOU CAN DO IT!

And don't forget to WRITE, WRITE, WRITE!

JACI