During my big cross-country tour, I had the great opportunity to chew the fat with several of my friends. As is only obvious, we talked about a gazillion things, but in the midst of all that was a friend who asked me how to get one of my special edition books. He had seen the Kickstarter for it, but just didn’t want to deal with the platform.
Which makes sense, I suppose.
That’s part of what makes every platform its own island. The Kickstarter audience is a self-selecting and probably unique group, as is the Amazon KU reader, as is the Barnes and Noble reader, ot the Kobo or Apple/iBooks gang. Throw in GooglePlay, and more—all the wide groups. This segmentation is part of the joy of being an indie (he says half joking and half not). We get to try to hit all the bases, and if we want to draw a lot of readers, we actually need to do that and do that well.
I’m thinking about this today because, as I’ve noted elsewhere, I’m a week out from launching my next project—1101 Digital Stories in an Analog World, a short story collection—as a Kickstarter (get notified of launch here!). That said, though, I’m also getting ready to see the wide launch of my last one, the 10th Anniversary Edition of Saga of the God-Touched Mage, to all those big platforms I mentioned above (you can still preorder them here). So, yes, it’s hectic. But that’s the process for now.
Today, this is my process: Kickstarter > Wide.
But Why Kickstarter? And Why Kickstarter First?
The idea in my mind is that Kickstarter audiences are looking for cool projects that they can get their hands on before anyone else. So, if possible, my books go there first because I want to hit those reader expectation. It’s fun to be first, right? Or (as in the special edition hardcovers for SGTM), exclusive.
As a reader, I find I enjoy scanning Kickstarter for interesting-looking projects. One I’m thinking of in particular this moment is Assassin. Mink. Blade. By Emily McCosh. It caught my eye because the cover is striking, and because it’s a high-end product built around a novella. McCosh (who I don’t know) is a graphical designer, too, and it shows. This is the kind of project I love to see, because in what other market would a novella draw a (currently) $11.5K revenue stream, before expenses, naturally. With a day left on the project, that number is likely to rise.
I don’t know what she plans to do with it next, but the bottom line is that she already has a direct connection with 200+ readers lined up. Hence the power of Kickstarter.
Check it out here:
As a writer, I view people who follow my newsletter and Patreon page to be my most interested readers, and I view Kickstarter as the place they can get a leg up on the world. Kickstarter lets readers support me directly in that much more of their money goes to me rather than the Amazons and the other middlefolk out there. Then I view those wide platforms as the places to attract new readers from wide sources.
It all kind of works.
So, What About That Soft Announcement?
Anyway, my main point today is that I’m doing about a million things to get ready to push my own project, but even more thinking on the “what comes next” thing. What I told my friend who asked about the special edition is that the plan is to put it on my own store. I’m thinking that because a reader like that needs a place to support me directly, but without the overhead of dealing with another platform.
Of course, today that store does not exist (yes, I am behind the Indie times). If things work out, though, that will soon change.
Yes, you heard it here first.
Now that things are truly settling, now that I’m getting my feet underneath me, I’m expecting to have Skyfox Publishing up and running soon.
Hehe!
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