Crowdfunding Creations

How to crowdfund your next book

This article first appeared in Writing Magazine in April 2017. (*= affiliate link: I sometimes use affiliate links in my posts. This won’t cost you anything, but if you go on to buy from a link I may earn a small commission.)

Handouts? © Simon Whaley

Traditionally, writers are used to selling their books to readers once it’s been published. But have you ever considered selling your book to readers in order to get it published in the first place?

That’s the general business idea behind crowdfunding. You sell your project idea to the public, who offer to back it financially, for some sort of reward, and hopefully enough cash is raised to bring your project to fruition.

For writers, crowdfunding is a now a viable business model. Publishers want to know there’s a market for your book. With crowdfunding, it’s the market that gets your book published. But how easy is it to publish a crowdfunded book? And should you do it all yourself, via a general crowdfunding website, or are you better targeting a publisher specialising in this finance-raising business model?

Unbound Undertaking

Jennie Ensor’s novel, Blindside*, was published in July 2016, after a successful campaign, via the crowdfunding specialist publisher Unbound (https://unbound.com)…