Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding

Not every author has available financial reserves to self-publish a book. What can you do if this describes your situation?

One way that authors frequently raise money to pay for their book production is to pre-sell as many copies, prior to production, as possible through an organized crowdfunding program.  If you need to raise funds to proceed with your book, Satiama Writers Resource can assist you with a crowdfunding program through Indiegogo.com.  We recommend Indiegogo over other crowdfunding platforms because you need not hit your financial goal to obtain your sales and contributions, unlike Kickstarter, and is a recognized crowdfunding program with a fine reputation and great website traffic.

Crowdfunding is one of the strongest and most effective presales methodologies on the planet and used by some of the biggest brands in the world. We encourage all authors to run a crowdfunding program, even when they already have the funds to print and market their book, as it essentially launches the title to your own crowd, allowing them to pre-purchase a signed copy of the book as well as other available perks that might be a part of your campaign.

Even those outside your own crowd can find the campaign on Indiegogo.com; it is the beginning of “brand awareness” for your title.  It begins the marketing buzz around a book or product and begins to create a need or interest in your book so that at final arrival your book is much more likely to be purchased by members of your own crowd’s crowd.

Crowdfunding is both an art and science and requires experience and expertise, but can provide some or all of the funding you need to move forward.

At Satiama Writers Resource, we consider crowdfunding a core step in bringing out any new title, one that has relatively no risk and can yield great reward. It is also a way to ‘softly’ test-drive your title and the marketing language and slant that positions your book, can pre-test a price point or even to obtain feedback on your cover design or a couple of illustrations.

To help you raise as much money as possible for your publishing project, Satiama Writers Resource can assist in the following:

  1. Provide all launch preparation, including helping you to identify the “crowd” to which you will present your campaign.
  2. Work with you to set up all social media posts and show you how to maximize their use during the crowdfunding campaign.  We can even provide messaging and communication content that you will need to present to your “crowd,” and manage your social media during the campaign.
  3. Assist with the ‘look-and-feel’ of the crowdfunding campaign, including identifying or creating incentives for donors that are meaningful and attractive.
  4. Create the storyline of a 2-minute video that you will film with a friend to use in the crowdfunding campaign. This can be done an using a smartphone unless you have access to video equipment.
  5. Present your campaign through Satiama newsletters, on our website and in all Satiama social media for the duration of the campaign.

Crowdfunding is nearly a full time job while a campaign is running and takes daily energy, time, and experience.  Unlike other crowdfunding consultants, we do not charge a percentage of the money raised.

Not included:

  • Any fees associated with Indiegogo. Sign-up and use of the platform is free, and fees are assessed at different rates depending on whether or not you hit your goal.
  • The cost of any third party crowdfunding support services.
  • The cost of any advertising or marketing of the Indiegogo campaign. Generally, mass marketing through display advertising is inefficient for crowdfunding programs. We generally don’t recommend this expense.
  • The cost of video production, but many crowdfunding videos are simple affairs, even made using an iPhone.
  • The cost of producing any graphics for use in the campaign, but likely those will already be present through the illustration files.
  • Any other costs not specifically detailed in our proposals.

In general, the success of crowdfunding is specifically and directly tied to both the size of an author’s crowd (which consists of customers, clients, friends, neighbors, colleagues, family, social or business organization members) to which the author might belong, the size of an author’s social media presence and most of all the number of crowdfunding champions within a social circle – those persons who are willing to help promote the campaign to their own ‘crowd.’

Give us a call today at 719-487-0424 to discuss our services and how they can support you toward your future success as a published author.