Top Ten: Game-Changing Crowdfunded Books
This list is prompted by a really interesting piece in the Guardian last month with the headline ‘Kickstarting a books revolution: the literary crowdfunding boom’. It was written by Marta Bausells and was drawing attention to the amazing impact that crowdfunding is having on the world of books. It ends with a list of ten literary crowdfunding projects that includes lots of nice ideas (although some are very niche). But I thought overall the list seemed pretty underwhelming.
Something extraordinary IS happening and it is happening on a far larger scale than Marta’s list suggests, so I thought I would put together my own list of books that I think are changing the game.
I should point out that I am not an uninterested party, I work as the Head of Publishing at Unbound, a company that is at the vanguard of this revolution. So here we go…
1. Letters of Note
Letters of Note began as a blog created by Shaun Usher. In 2013 Unbound helped turn it into a book. It received extraordinary reviews, and went on to sell over 100k copies in the UK (it has now been licensed to publishers in 22 countries). It even turned into a star-studded live show. With 125 letters spread over 384 pages, traditional publishers would have been scared by the high production values (and permission costs) that Shaun understood the project deserved.
2. The Wake
The first crowdfunded novel to achieve widespread literary acclaim. The Wake won the Gordon Burn Prize 2014, was longlisted for the Folio Prize 2015, the Desmond Elliot prize 2015 and the Booker Prize 2014, was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2014 and won The Bookseller’s Book of the Year Award 2015.
Set in 1068, The Wake is written in a language, constructed by the author Paul Kingsnorth, that is a middle ground between Old English and the English we speak today. Copies of the beautiful first edition with coptic stitching now sell for hundreds of pounds. Mark Rylance has bought the film rights. This book showed that ‘the crowd’ could be adventurous in its taste.
3. Hate Mail
As I write this, Mr Bingo’s crowdfunding campaign for the definitive collection of Hate Mail has raised £85k on Kickstarter — and the campaign still has 17 days to go. It will easily reach over 100k — he will earn far more from this than from a traditional publishing deal. His brilliant film has the production values of a pop video. He has included some very funny levels — for a mere £18 he will tell you to fuck off on the internet. For £200 he will meet you for a pint in five years time.
4. Tales from the Loop
In April this year, 3,890 people backed Simon Stålenhag’s two volume book of his suburban sci-fi paintings Tales from the Loop on Kickstarter. The project target was $10,000 it ended up raising a staggering $321,680. The average pledge was an amazing $82. These are books for teenagers — not rich middle class, middle aged men and they are spending $82! At Unbound our average pledge is over £40. Crowdfunding offers the opportunity of driving up the price of books, at a time when retailers are ensuring that traditional publishers cannot do that.
6. Ashens
Stuart Ashen is a YouTuber with 850k followers and 190 million views. His book ‘Terrible Old Games That You Have Probably Never Heard Of’ went live on Unbound a few weeks ago. It funded within 24 hours. He showed that YouTubers, or more broadly people with an established digital audience, can sell books to people other than teenage girls.
7. Raymond Briggs
At other end of spectrum is national treasure Raymond Briggs who has sold millions of books and probably hasn’t even heard of YouTube. His book Notes from the Sofa coming out this Autumn is his first in ten years. He choose to do it with Unbound because he liked the idea of having a direct relationship with his readers - ‘it sounds like a marvelous idea’.
8. Dogs in Cars
A book of artistically photographed dogs staring enigmatically out of car windows doesn’t sound like it is changing the world and yet… What makes this project, that raised over $30,000 on Kickstarter, so interesting is that it was created by Hoxton Mini Press. They are a new publisher specialising in books about East London, with a mission to re-invent local publishing, and they raised the initial capital through a crowdfunding campaign. If you want to start a publishing company — crowdfund it!
9. The London Album
This amazing photographic book containing 600 photos of London produced by the Gentle Author, who runs the blog Spitalfields Life, is interesting because he raised the funds for it directly from his own website — without using a third party crowdfunding platform. His previous book had been published to widespread acclaim by Hodder and Stoughton.
10. Eric Ries
The author of the best-selling book The Lean Start-up has chosen to do the follow-up on Kickstarter it has raised over $500,000. What makes this interesting is his use of Backerkit, a company that looks after the logistics of crowdfunding and that he is at the same time writing a new book for his traditional publisher Crown. I am sure we will see more authors having this kind of hybrid career. Great interview with Eric about why he chose to crowdfund on the Forbes website here. N.B. This book was on Marta’s list.
Thank you for reading, I am sure this list isn’t perfect. If you have any suggestions of books I have overlooked please leave a comment or drop me an email. If you would like to publish with Unbound please submit and idea here. We would love to hear from you.
