Looking back on this whole Kickstarter experience, it is a little hard to believe that it has only been a week since the campaign ended. This whole journey really started back last October when I had an in-person sit down with the folks at Instafreebie (conveniently located in Cambridge) to learn about their platform a little more and the crowdfunding course they would soon be offering. At the time, I did not have a book ready for launch yet. So, I ended up being a street team member for another author (who happily fully funded her campaign, too).
I watched and learned a lot by helping out this other author with her campaign and I got to vicariously live through her at the time. And, me being me, I started to set my page up really early. Like four months before I launched. I will admit I was not expecting it to be such a time suck or to be so involved. Admittedly, part of the time suck aspect is probably the perfectionist in me. But I worked a LOT on it (my husband compared my effort in planning this campaign with planning our wedding and honeymoon and he wasn’t wrong) and ultimately, I am pleased with how the campaign page itself turned out.
Running the campaign itself was somewhat stressful and much like when I did the Kindle Scout program, the middle part of the month was horrible. I was convinced I wasn’t going to get funded and I’d be horribly disappointed (Spoiler alert: that didn’t’ happen). I also was sort of disappointed with the people who didn’t end up pledging. Though, they did warn us about that in the course. In the end, 56 generous folks got me to 101% funded. The money will cover the final production costs for Spring’s Calling as well as some other production costs for upcoming releases and some funds promotional pushes for Spring’s Calling release. Hooray!
So, given all of the work and time I put into the campaign, would I do it again? Honestly, no. The effort was more than I got back as a return. I had a grand total of one person on my mailing list pledge the campaign and they are the people who should have really been there grabbing up their early copies with bonus content. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure some of them will buy the book when it is released in November (or at least, I hope they do) but it would have been nice to see them order it ahead of time. I’m glad I did it and I learned from the experience (filming videos is hard stuff guys). I also made some really great new author friends who I can support (and get theirs in return) going forward. So hey, I get to cover the costs of publishing this book and I’ve got some good contacts for the future. Not bad at all.
