By Justine Schofield of Pubslush
Crowdfunding. Ever heard of it? If not, let me introduce you.
Crowdfunding is a means for artists and entrepreneurs to mitigate financial risk by raising funds for their projects. Think of it like Kickstarter for books.
And now you may be wondering…
How Can Crowdfunding Be Used By Writers?
If you’re a writer who’s thinking about self-publishing, crowdfunding is an option you will definitely want to consider.
Rather than incurring out-of-pocket expenses, a successful crowdfunding campaign will provide you with funds—pre-publication—to lessen the financial burden of self-publishing.
Crowdfunding is a great way to raise the funds for your next book project, but don’t think it can happen without some hard work.
In order to run a successful campaign, you need to have a marketing plan and be prepared to aggressively implement that plan. This is the single most important fact to realize upon committing yourself to a crowdfunding effort.
If you’re thinking about crowdfunding your book, here are a few tips to get you started:
Devise A Plan Pre-Campaign
Typically, crowdfunding campaigns run from 30-60 days. In order to maximize your efforts it’s vital you have a viable marketing plan before you launch your campaign.
Breaking your marketing plan down into weekly increments will help you better manage your time, and gauge your short-term vs. long-term goals of the campaign.
Do Your Research
Publishing a book has a lot of variables, so it’s important to know the goal of your crowdfunding campaign. A full-scale publishing effort will require much more money than someone who wants to raise funds just to hire an awesome editor.
You need to research the costs of your goals in order to properly plan your campaign.
Utilize Your Network
A majority of your supporters will come from your own network and this should be the first step to your outreach efforts. Sending personalized e-mails to the people in your network may be time consuming, but it’s essential.
E-mail them about the launch of your campaign and ask for their support. Be sure to provide the link to your campaign to make it as easy as possible for them to support you.
Also, it’s a good idea to include an e-mail template and ask them to share the news of your campaign with their own network as well.
Again, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to support you and spread the word.
Target Your Audience
When reaching out to people outside of your network it’s best to target your specific audience. All books have an audience and you can bet that audience is on the Internet, so search for blogs that pertain to your genre or niche and search relevant hashtags on Twitter to find your audience.
A targeted outreach effort will yield much better results than simply reaching out to anyone who has “books” listed in their Twitter bio.
Stay Committed
It’s very easy to start out your campaign strong only to peter out a few weeks in. If you lose interest in your campaign then there’s no hope for your audience.
You need to be as enthusiastic and committed on the last day as you were on the first day.
Also, once you gain support from someone, don’t forget about them! Continue to keep them updated throughout and after your campaign. After all, your supporters are financially backing you and it’s your responsibility to ensure they’ve made a sound investment.
These are just the basics if you’re thinking about crowdfunding for your book. Pubslush offers an abundance of information about how to run a successful campaign, what comes next after your campaign is finished, the publishing process and more.
Check out Pubslush 101 for more information.
Have you ever tried crowdfunding your writing project?
About the Author: Justine Schofield is the communications coordinator of Pubslush, a global, crowdsourcing publishing platform for authors to raise funds and gauge the initial audience for new book ideas. Pubslush also operates an independent imprint that acquires books from the platform, and for every book sold, donates a children’s book to a child in need.
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