Kickstarter: behind the scenes

Treat this story as you will, a cautionary tale, an insight into crowdfunding or proof that if you persevere you’ll get there in the end. Whichever way you choose to look at it, here’s my experience of running and fulfilling a Kickstarter campaign.

The backstory:

I’m one of those people who rants about Disney films, and has done for years. (Seriously, if I have to hear one more story about a beautiful, feeble princess who gets rescued by a clever, handsome prince — I’m going to scream). I truly believe that children’s literature is not representative of the diverse world that we live in, and I wanted to make some steps towards changing that. That’s why, when I was on my honeymoon around two years ago I came up with an idea — I’d write and publish a children’s picture book that would feature non-traditional gender roles, diverse characters and alternative family structures.

I’d just got involved in the world of publishing, and thought that this was a valid way of making a change, whilst potentially starting a new business. Any other business venture I’d been involved in until this point had been a partnership, but I wanted to do something on my own — this was it.

The campaign:

I spent a week writing the story for the book, wrote the content for the Kickstarter page, worked out some reward structures and roughly calculated my costings. When I returned to the UK, I filmed the video that appears on the Kickstarter page. I knew about the importance of having a video, but if I’d realised it would get as many views as it did, I may have put a bit more effort in.

After my video was completed I calculated my three-month delivery timing and pressed submit… that was it, the Kickstarter was live!

The campaign went as many Kickstarter campaigns go, a peak in the beginning, a few days of horrifying nothingness while it plateaus in the middle and then a sudden surge at the end. I made the total with only a few hours to spare and was over the moon, grateful, excited and incredibly motivated.

Kickstarter is great at providing stats, and when delving deeper into my backer data I can see that almost all my pledges came from Twitter traffic. I was incredibly fortunate that a few people with large Twitter followings campaigned on my behalf, clearly without this traffic my campaign wouldn’t have succeeded. What’s especially interesting is that the project appeared as a ‘staff pick’ on Kickstarter, but that publicity didn’t result in a single pledge.

The aftermath

My initial high from completing the campaign lasted as long as it took to receive the first email from Kickstarter. They emailed me letting me know when the money would be transferred. I had raised £6559 in Kickstarter funds, and was expecting to receive somewhere around £6000 after deductions, what I actually received was £4,762.77

The breakdown:

Dropped pledges — £1215 (i.e. declined credit & debit cards)

Kickstarter fee−£267.20

Payment processing fee−£217.16

Value Added Tax (VAT)−£96.87

This came as a huge shock to me, I knew about the fees but had never considered for a moment that the amount could be this low. Though it was an unwelcome surprise, I thought the project was still doable. I’d have to raid my savings, and make some sacrifices on the design — but it could still be done.

The next hurdle that came, wasn’t actually a hurdle, but was complete naivety on my part. I calculated the three month delivery timeline based on what I knew about publishing at that time, the author writes the script, the editor edits it, the designer puts it into the correct formats and then it is printed, sent to the warehouse and posted. Voila! What I didn’t consider, was that a children’s book is very, very different to the technical books I’d been involved in. Every page had to be hand-drawn and digitally composed, there were storyboards, project meetings, first drafts, rough drafts, line drawings, colours added in and textures added.

It was a world away from what I was used to, and my first indication that I hadn’t researched the project like I should have. After a few months, the illustrations were complete and I was finally ready to start thinking about getting the book printed. I knew I wanted to do a large print run, much larger than I needed to fulfil the Kickstarter pledges as I had ambitions to use this is a platform to launch a children’s publishing house. I found a printer, based in the UK who specialised in self-publishing and assured me I could send them the basic artwork, they would get it print ready and do the rest for me. I ordered 2000 copies, at an absolute knockdown price (you can probably guess what happened next!) and after a few weeks I made the long drive to pick up my bundles of books. Its safe to say, they weren’t the quality I was expecting (like a cross between a dodgy village fete brochure and the school paper I printed when I was nine!). I managed to get some of the money I had paid back from the printer, but my already tight budget became practically non-existent.

After that I approached some publishing houses to see if I could get the book picked up and printed via them, although I got quite a lot of initial interest — it became apparent very quickly that it wasn’t going to be a long-term fit.

The low point

By this point it was 14 months after I launched my campaign. I was getting daily messages, tweets and emails from (understandably) frustrated and angry backers. What did I do? Did I write an update explaining my troubles? Ask for help? Make a plan? Nope. I hid. You don’t need me to tell you why that was a bad idea, and made people angrier, ask more questions and left them totally bewildered and confused.

It had gotten to the point where I felt that I couldn’t email a Kickstarter update that wasn’t ‘Ta-da! Here it is’. I was too proud, I was embarrassed, I was stupid.

After a few months of burying my head in the sand, I had a stern word with myself and came up with a solution. The book couldn’t have french folds, foiled covers and be printed in its thousands — but I could do a small print run, enough to meet the pledges I’ve already taken and get the book out there for people to see. So that’s what I did. I emailed all my Kickstarter backers and, well, I grovelled. I said I was sorry for how I handled the situation, and laid out a plan with rough dates as to how I would get the book printed.

The after-aftermath

I found a printer with an incredible reputation, they were based in the US and did their manufacturing in China. I told them my budget, and my wish-list for the book — and they gave me different options as to what I could afford. Determined not to make the same mistake again with printers, I added an extra couple of weeks and $200 to my order to have a hard proof posted to me. When it arrived weeks later, the project finally felt real. After 18 months of seeing the book on the screen, I now had something to hold in my hands.

I signed off the proof, and then had the eight week agonising wait while my books were printed, packed and shipped from China. During this time I busied myself getting everything ready, I ordered packaging, I had fake postage stamps printed with the main characters face on them, I had die-cut stickers printed to include as a freebie and had postcards printed so that I could write personalised thank you notes to each backer.

During this eight week wait, I also wrangled with VAT Moss regulations, EORI numbers, ISBN numbers, barcodes, Neilsens and carrier calculated shipping. Each one of those things could be a blog post of their own, and came with their own challenges — but I’ll tell you about those another time.

I had a few hundred copies of the book more than I needed to fulfil my Kickstarter campaign, so I also started planning a launch for a few weeks after I fulfilled my pledges. This involved getting a new website developed and an iPad app made (expensive for most people, but I’m fortunate enough to have married a web developer!). Retailers don’t tend to deal with authors who have self-published, so I called myself ‘Lion Girl Publishing’ and developed some branding around that identity.

Eventually the books arrived, and I finally had all my ducks in a row. It took around a week to get all the books packaged and sent and I’m finally able to say that I have fulfilled my Kickstarter campaign, (even if it’s 18 months later than planned).

A few bits of advice

I made an awful lot of mistakes during my attempt at crowdfunding, even if it did eventually result in a positive outcome. If I could give anyone considering Kickstarter and advice, it would be this:

• Make the best quality video you can afford, it’ll get way more views than you imagine. Most people don’t read the written content, they press play, give it a few seconds and if it doesn’t capture their interest, they move on.
• When you have figured out how long it will take to deliver your product if you are successful, double it. It’s better to under promise and over deliver than the other way around.
• Utilise social media, it’s free, it’s instant and if you can get people to become advocates for you it will be much more impactful than you asking for backers.
• Keep an eye on your Kickstarter stats as your campaign progresses, look at where your traffic is coming from, how many initial views your video is getting versus completed views and update your project as you get more data.
• Spend some time working out your costings. Make sure you have considered design, production, delivery, shipping and a contingent. Consider what you will do if you have lots of declined credit card charges after your campaign finishes. Make sure you have considered tax & Kickstarter fees in your final calculations.
• If things go wrong, be open about it. Learn from my mistakes.
• Keep your chin up. There’ll always be that one person on Twitter who makes a dig. Don’t let it get to you, it’s hard to put yourself out there, especially when your name is attached to it. Stay strong, stay positive and go for it.

If you want to take a look at the final book, or even better, buy a copy, then visit www.liongirlpublishing.com