Crowdfunding your WIP

Twistedlemon

Twistedlemon

The American
Joined
Jul 14, 2015
Messages
212
So long story short I have been trying to build an audience because I found a Kickstarter for authors. It's called publishizer.com.

It etsy you get pre-orders on your book idea and keep everything you make. Even contacts publishers in your genre when you get to certain pre-order milestones!

I was curious about everyone's thoughts on this.
 
Looks like a great place for predators.

No big publisher is likely to be interested in such a system - you'll need a heck of a lot more than 250 pre-orders to get any serious company's interest - which means IMO it can only attract the bottom feeders.

Too many writers are too fixated on getting a "publisher" without being discerning as to who that publisher is and what they can do for them.

We've seen it before on chrons, where members have been happy to go with "any publisher", only to find themselves getting scammed or hit with seriously unfair contracts.

I wouldn't trust it - if you really want a publisher, research and submit.

(I also notice there are no set-up fees, but publishizer does take 17.4% of any money you might make on there. So they're acting a little like a literary agency, but only in terms of being an introducer, and with none of the protections.)
 
I'd also ask how you hope to "build an audience" and find enough subscribers. I did a sponsored walk for a community group a few years back and I used the same kind of idea to find sponsors online. Despite the group having quite a high level of presence on social media (and that itself took years to achieve) all the sponsors that I got already knew me or the community group in real life (or from here.) Now you expect complete strangers to fund your project on the basis of what? Unless you are already famous this will never happen. It is different if you have some kind of cause that you can get people to believe in, such as making London a National City Park, but that guy also spends his whole life promoting that in real life too. He is absolutely everywhere, and yet he still hasn't got any traction. It is different if you are... well say you were Joss Weedon and you wanted to fund more Firefly, but I'm sorry, I just don't know you from Adam. Maybe you already have an audience - from writing groups, your local community, your Blog, your sports team - maybe you have a huge number of friends, if so, then I wish you luck, I just think trying to "build an audience" is actually harder work than self-publishing a really excellent novel and letting that speak for itself. I also suspect that when crowdfunding does work, even for people who have lifesaving operations funded or other worthy causes, then it is one major donor (and anyone else joins because of the influence of that donor.) For everyone successful there must be thousands that you don't hear about but are not.
 
A final question - what does this give you that self publishing won't? Sure, you'd have an initial outlay - but it need not be ruinously high (cover, editing - the two things not to take short cuts on, all the rest you can do or learn to do yourself) but then you keep all the money.

From a recent thread I had on crowdfunding the concensus seemed to be it would be a lot of work for nothing guaranteed.
 
A major publisher is only going to be impressed by significant sales numbers, as in tens of thousands. And the small independent publishers which seem to be the vast majority on the sight can be as small as a guy with a laptop on a kitchen table. So I agree with others. Best to research agents and publishers to be sure you want to be in business with them. And getting a publishing deal does not mean you've won the lottery. Many small publishers do what you could do yourself and don't invest anything in marketing.
 
RichardH said:
Many small publishers do what you could do yourself and don't invest anything in marketing.
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Seems to be too often true for most authors with a big six publisher, who only do the whole enchilada if they think you are in the top 0.1% And often the trad publishers want unreasonable terms.
 
The only crowd funding I've seen work is when an established web comic (that's been giving panels away every week and has a large audience) decides to put them together into a book form and wants to find out how many people would pay for a paper edition.

This way they can set up tiers:

X# and we can publish it @ 19.99 to those interested
XX# and we can do it for 15.99
Any thing past XXX# and we can get the price to 12.99.

This way they can get it published--make profit--maybe even inventory a number to sell at whole price through the website.
 
Thank you guys for your feedback. It's true I didn't clarify how I'm building an audience. It's small and may not be that many people but I do have a loyal hub of a dozen or two. Peanuts compared to what I need or you deem impressive I understand. We shall see if I can grow that. In terms of publishers. It's very true I did not think about the quality of publisher. They could very well be bottom feeders. It comes down to reasearch and if I accept their offer on there. If I may ask two separate questions.

What if I use this to attract an agent. Saying yes I'm unproven but I do have some sales.

Two, would it be better than to use Kickstarter or other larger crowdfunding sites for a book? Just for the purpose of taking the bite out of publishing costs?
 
Publish costs of a book are now zero. CreateSpace, Amazon, Smashwords.

Unless you are unusual, the only costs are Editor and Cover. Some people can maybe do that themselves. Those costs are not much for most people. A pay TV sub for a year might cost more.
 
RichardH said:
A major publisher is only going to be impressed by significant sales numbers, as in tens of thousands. And the small independent publishers which seem to be the vast majority on the sight can be as small as a guy with a laptop on a kitchen table. So I agree with others. Best to research agents and publishers to be sure you want to be in business with them. And getting a publishing deal does not mean you've won the lottery. Many small publishers do what you could do yourself and don't invest anything in marketing.
Click to expand...

Quite true - and welcome to the chrons forums, RichardH. :)
 
Twistedlemon said:
What if I use this to attract an agent.
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I would have thought very little. And if you use Publishizer + agent you've already lost 37.5% of all future earnings. That's a huge chunk.

Twistedlemon said:
Two, would it be better than to use Kickstarter or other larger crowdfunding sites for a book? Just for the purpose of taking the bite out of publishing costs?
Click to expand...

IF you're going to self-publish, I would have thought it makes little sense to invest thousands in physical copies without proven demand. Put up the ebook, distribute a paperback through a POD such as Createspace. If the sales numbers demonstrate that you can develop a viable business by producing and distributing everything yourself, then by all means, make a business decision on that.

Until then, there's is absolutely no reason to invest in big costs + big risk when there are cheaper alternatives that are very accessible, and allow you room to test your market.

In which case your biggest cost is probably editing - but you can start small by asking for the first 3 chapters to be edited, and that could give you an idea of what sort of work + costs may be involved in editing the full manuscript.
 
The only issue I have about self publishing is I don't know how to promote myself yet. Which is why I was hoping for a publisher and or agent. It is their world. I have some experience self publishing, I do have a short story I published and put on amazon. But I want sales.
 
Twistedlemon said:
The only issue I have about self publishing is I don't know how to promote myself yet. Which is why I was hoping for a publisher and or agent. It is their world. I have some experience self publishing, I do have a short story I published and put on amazon. But I want sales.
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But you will have to promote yourself anyway. The crowdfunder will not bring many to you - you will. If you go with a big publisher you will be expected to self promote. Look at the big authors and see how much work they put into it - there is no free ride out there. a dozen or two will not make a crowdfunder work - unless they're a very rich dozen, in which case why not ask them to sponsor you anyway? But they are the kernel - from there others learn about you. But it takes hundreds, and more, to breakthrough.

In terms of it getting you an agent - it would more likely harm your chances than improve them, especially if the project fails.

The only way to crack this is to write, keep writing, get stuff out however you do it, and write again. And while you're doing that, interact, support others, gain support. It's hard - but it's the reality.
 
Thanks Jo. It's true I know I have to self promote. It's part of the territory. The only thing I have against going indie is that what if. What if I don't promote enough. Or promote the right way and my book gets squeezed between similar titles. I don't even know where to start after I self publish promoting wise.
 
Congrats guys you've converted me. I'm going to use the crowdfunding site to get pre orders and use the funds to self publish. Y'all rock.
 
Twistedlemon said:
Thanks Jo. It's true I know I have to self promote. It's part of the territory. The only thing I have against going indie is that what if. What if I don't promote enough. Or promote the right way and my book gets squeezed between similar titles. I don't even know where to start after I self publish promoting wise.
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What if you go with a publisher who shafts you? What if they don't know how to promote?*

Here's the thing - there is no difference whatsoever between promoting a published book and a self published. You do exactly the same thing. I contacted some reviewers who came up on a facebook group last week and asked if they'd like to see either of my books - one chose one, one the other. You contact sffworld and ask if they'll do an interview, you make connections with us here. You call us out, and when yours comes out you have goodwill in the bag.

From the Chronners this week I've had - about ten twitter call outs, a callout in Fantasy faction - thanks @chopper - a review, many post shares, a call out in a thread on here. All from this forum. All unasked for. Why? Because I'm a great writer? Sadly, I doubt it. It's because when Chopper got a Gemmell nom (go, him!) I shared it around. When someone asks for some funny fantasy, I recommend Thaddeus. When someone wants a horror collection - Woodbridge press gets a call out. For some good harder sf, @ralphkern . Etc. Etc. Start small. Get to know us here - really well. Get onto facebook and join the groups like fantasy faction. Get onto twitter and follow as many of us as you can find. That's how you promote a book - whether published or self published.

* a friend of mine has her first book out. She has great support and good reviews. Her publisher does not do kindle promotions, or believe in bookbub and the like. The book is dying on its feet.
 
Bookbub looks amazing. What are other similar places to it? It's a shame she's locked into that..
 
I've always wanted to go trad because of the stigma and the idea there's a team who wants me to do well and will promote me. But. I do know we have been in a cultural shift toward self publishing becoming more common and easier.
 
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