About Kickstarter
by thisnorthernboy
I’m currently working on my Innsmouth story, and debating what form the final ‘thing’ may take. It’s being written directly to twitter, and also catalogued here in a regularly updated blog post. I do want it to be a physical product at some point. My initial thoughts were that I’d publish each chapter in a little book. Nothing fancy, just an A5, stapled, two colour book, printed on uncoated stock. Maybe collect all the chapters together in a slipcase at some point along with some prints or postcards. Sounds pretty nice I think? As I’ve been writing more and more of the story, I’m also thinking that perhaps, maybe, it’s becoming and actual book. The kind of thing I’d approach publishers about. That’s maybe a bit further down the line though.
You can follow the Innsmouth story on Twitter, or here on the blog.
In the meantime, while thinking about how or what to produce, I got to thinking about Kickstarter as a funding avenue for it, and it struck me that I’d never shared the stats from my last project. My Weird Field World book, surpassed all my wildest predictions. I set the funding goal high enough to cover all my costs if I sold 150 books. In the end I sold 800 exactly through Kickstarter, while having enough funds to order a couple of hundred extra copies that I sold through my store. I really enjoyed the process of crowdfunding, and Kickstarter was a pretty simple but powerful platform for it.
So here are some stats about the campaign. Nothing particularly scientific, but interesting – particularly if you have any thoughts about running a campaign of your own.
Original funding goal – £2500
Final total – £32102
Backers 900 (ten withdrew after the campaign ended)
Initial goal reached in just 36 minutes.
527% funded in 24 hours.
Average pledge – £35.67
34% of backers came from Twitter.
Just 4.5% from Instagram and 2.4% from Facebook.
8.5% organically through Kickstarter.
8% of backers went for a digital download of the book
57% went for just the physical book
33% went for book plus other rewards
36% of backers were from the UK
28% from the USA
4.25% from France
3.6% from Canada
2% from Germany, Australia and the Netherlands.
Furthest a book travelled – 11,659 miles to New Zealand
And least travelled – less than a mile.
US states with most orders – California 41, Texas 23, Washington 19, New York 15, Illinois 13.
US states with zero orders – Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, N Dakota, Rhode Island, S Carolina, S Dakota, W Virginia, Wyoming.
If you’re thinking of running a Kickstarter I would highly recommend it, and if you have any questions – feel free to ask.
Rob
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You can find prints of my work here
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this northern boy 
I’m always thinking about this Kickstarter thing. Tried looking into it, but the people that talk about it either go on and on about stuff I’m not understanding, or they are mysterious and vague. I want to do it, but feel like I need a bigger stalwart following of people before I can do anything like that.
And did you have to look around and figure out how to get your book bound and everything like that before putting it on Kickstarter, or does the site have tools to help with that?
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