Our latest Kickstarter is only weeks away from finally delivering. Everyone has been paid, and I am finally wrapping up details to begin actually getting all the pledges and tiers ready to go. So I thought it would be timely to make a post about my experience.
Why make a post about our Kickstarter? Mainly for transparency. People want to know where their money is going and that it is being used correctly. They also want to see if Kickstarters or crowdfunding could work for them.
There's a huge myth in the industry that when a Kickstarter goal has been met, it results in a windfall for the publishing house or author. While that may be true for those campaigns that reach tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, the reality for us small fishes in the sea is quite different.
Don't get me wrong, our latest Kickstarter with Eerie River for "The Earth Bleeds At Night" (releasing January 3) was a HUGE success in my books (you can tell me if you think so by the end). We were able to raise about $6000 CAD after Kickstarter took their cut, which is amazing!
However, math being math, and people needing to be paid, approximately 60-75% of that amount goes directly to shipping and printing all the items for the Kickstarter tiers. This leaves a much smaller portion for other expenses and profits.
Here is my experience:
Our actual profit after fees and expected costs for shipping and printing books is small compared to our expenditures. The CAD dollar is tanking right now so all the books and shipping costs are fluctuating pretty hard right now so the 'profits' or leftovers are still up in the air.
But let’s get into the numbers:
-We paid approximately $8000 CAD to our authors for their stories.
-Artists, editing, and other expenses took up another $1200.
ARCs (physical) are estimated around $200.
Marketing, including online ads, cost about $500 (probably more when I get into it).
There are a lot of people who would see this as a complete fail. The Kickstarter barely touched the actual expenses of the project, and in reality, I am absolutely in the negative; there are no two ways about that. However, in my eyes, this was a success. Why? That small profit window we saw was instrumental in paying our authors, artists, and editors. I would never have been able to cover the full professional rates without the Kickstarter backing.
Because we were able to offer those rates, I also got the honour of working with some of my dream writers—the ones that I fangirl over at StokerCon and read every story they publish. My dream goal has been met! How many people can say that?
There are definitely things we learned along the way. Maybe we went too big, added too many authors, or added too many tiers. We will take the lessons to the next Kickstarter and get better and better at it.
For now, we will focus on the wrap-up of this project and make sure that we are fulfilling our obligations to everyone that supported us.
A huge thank you to all the authors for being a part of this project and to our Kickstarter backers who made this possible. To the amazing Shona for editing and fantastic Lynne for her artwork. Thank you to Holley and her amazing team of readers. To Christian and Kate, who cheered on from day one and everyone else that gave me words of encouragement.
If you didn’t back us but would like to order, you can do that on Amazon for the ebook. Paperbacks and hardcovers are coming soon to pre-order everywhere.
To say publishing in the indie world is difficult is the understatement of the year, and this year kicked my ass. But it is so worth it.
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