Crowdfunding Your Self-Published Book
Biff Barnes
Self-publishing a book costs money.
It’s a business venture. Hiring professionals to edit the manuscript, layout the interior, design the cover, and assist with publicity and marketing can constitute a significant investment. Savvy authors understand that it’s an investment worth making if they are to give their book its best chance of success.
Increasingly seeking pre-publication crowdfunding is emerging as a way to underwrite the cost of producing a professional quality self-published book.
The most well-known crowdfunding site is Kickstarter, which bills itself as “…a new way to fund creative projects.” It was founded in 2009 and has attracted 5.5 million people who have pledged $959 million to support a variety of projects, books among them.
Authors would do well to take a look at Pubslush, refocused and re-launched in 2012 as well. It is a niche player in the funding arena as a “…crowdfunding and analytics platform only for books.” It has currently funded 40 books with 10,000 contributors.
Pubslush offers some features not available on Kickstarter. One is the option to set both a maximum and a minimum funding target. With Kickstarter you set a target figure. If you fail to reach it your project is not funded. With Pubslush partial funding is possible.
Pubslush V.P.Amanda Barbara told The Next Web “It’s not like other crowdfunding sites, where if you don’t raise, say, $10,000 you can’t go-ahead. A lot of the authors using Pubslush are using it as a supplement – they’re ready to go ahead with their book, they’re trying to mitigate some of their own risk, gain some momentum.”
A second interesting feature is its goal of creating a community which will include not only authors, but agents and publishers as well to “…facilitate a more successful, informed publishing process. It also increases brand engagement through a direct connection with readers. By using Pubslush's proprietary technology, publishers will be able to gauge market viability with advanced analytics, raise funds to tangibly measure demand and mitigate financial risk for new book ideas.”
Both crowdfunders charge similar fees with Kickstarter at 5% and Pubslush at 4%.
If you are thinking about self-publishing a book you owe it to yourself to consider your crowdfunding options.
If you've tried crowdfunding tell us about your results.