Inkshares Community discussion

So, because I woke up today and am totally sick and not going to work. I decided to write this up. Here are my thoughts and experiences from the Nerdist contest with what's working and not for general crowd funding.

History: I'm not a full time author. My book isn't finished. (It still needs editing) It's also my first one. However, I crowd sourcing and contests are nothing new to me. I've organized one for Legend of the Five Rings that was global, I've helped graphic novel friends with theirs, and I am a project manager / engineer for a 2,500 man electrical company that does work across the nation.

Getting people: From point A. To point B. Is a thing I do.

Step 1: Knowing if it's right for you.
Crowd funding is not for everyone. Just straight up, it's not. If you do not like asking people for money. If you do not like badgering your friends and family. Then you might want to look at other options. You need to be willing to go sit at conventions and talk to strangers and SELL your product. Or do radio shows and live interviews. Figure this part out first. If you think you got it. Then go all in.

Step 2: The presentation: What works and what doesn't?
Turns out your book doesn't matter to inkshares! Who knew right? Yup. You heard it. Go through all the people and find JUST how many people have actually read a 5th chapter of anything?
What does work: Your cover. Your Genre. Your idea. Your exerpt. Your "about the author". Also ONE chapter at best.
Before you begin spend the time going through our page and setting up all of this. Make it look polished. Hire an editor to fix it up if you really want to.
Get a few taglines ready. Soundbites, elevator pitches. Keep in mind that people generally have the attention span of small mammals. In a crowd funding campaign, people like to see videos. Not book trailers either, everyone just rolls their eyes at those unless you have the money for real graphic editing. Look at "These Old Bones" For probably the best video in the contest.
Before you present your work to others, you kinda want to have all this stuff polished up and taken care of. I made a very targeted plan to have something in every box and at least SOMETHING filled out before I even reached out to my first person.

Passive Media: Flyers, stuff you'll post on facebook, Press Kits, etc etc. This stuff is nice. But don't expect to gain a single sale from ANY of this until the very last stage. Passive Media does not sell anything. Instead it's a constant visual reminder.

To many chapters: Don't sell yourself out and overload the reader. There are a few entries that have "chapter 1, a 67 minute read". Nobody is going to read that. Sorry. Also, "Hey guys I just released chapter 18!!" is also detrimental. Why would anyone buy your book if they can just read 18 chapters? Do a prologue, and (1) Story bloc. I.e. Something that draws the reader just up to the mark of the first tragedy, which should happen quickly.

Releasing more content has not seen significant turn around for anybody that I've noticed. I haven't released a new chapter in 5 weeks. Keep it short. Sweet. Simple.

Step 3: Getting out there.
Okay. So. You've polished up your page and you've done your stuff. Question: Does anybody know you've been writing a book? Like... anyone besides the people living in your very house? If yes: Continue. If no: Go back to step one, and spend a few months talking to everyone you know that you are writing a book. Go out to dinner parties, go out to places, be social have fun, drink wine. But be proud of what you've done. You WROTE a BOOK!

If people ask you "oh when can I read it." Just say your still editing. I lucked out in this contest, not gonna lie. I've been doing this the past year. Because when people in the office ask you the casual "Oh... hows it going?" I always say "Up all night editing" or something like that that. I was just being honest. Everyone then got curious.

But if nobody knows you wrote a book... how are you going to start off day one of a time limited crowd funding campaign? When I entered the nerdist contest, I researched Inkshares, i looked into it, then I checked my viability. I figured I could at least get 350 book sales by the end. (Not readers, book sales). Which might give me a few more months to shoot for 750.

Okay. Now that you've gone back in time, and prepped a campaign by priming things up....

Step 4: Actually going out there.

This time: You have an awesome book cover, you got a great pitch line, you got a video, AND you have a small gaggle of people who all know you've been writing a book from the start. Perfect: Ready for no sleep? You have 90 days....

Now.

RUN! RUN LIKE THE WIND! DON'T STOP!! Omg run so friggin hard like you've never believed it. You hit that "Launch campaign button" your next step better be a phone call to your mom. You are in a race against time my friend. It is not kind.

Your first goal is to contact everyone you KNOW will back your book. You get them on there. NOW. Not "I'll check it out later". Not "Oh, hey maybe next week". NOW.

Why?

The Theory of Kale :). Everyone assumes that if there is few people buying something. It's bad. You'll never get stranger if nobody has bought your book. Crowd swell is a real thing. Plus, you want the early expansion on your network. In a contest, this is even more important. You hit that ground sprinting, because you'll benefit from any passive media that is released if you can sprint into the leader boards.

Take a day off work if you can. But get as many people that will support YOU. First.

Not your book: YOU. It doesn't matter if they read. Give it as a gift. Your grandma is not going to read your book most likely, nor your aunt. Heck, maybe not even your own mom. But they have friends who will. Kids who will. What you are doing is building a small blob of people who can click the 'like buttons" or share things and start the word of mouth.

Remember: Time is a bitch and she's ticking down. You have to sell X number of books in X number of days. You want that number to be smaller than larger.

Step 5: Other authors: Your genre and idea and taglines matter so much here. It's a good thing you prepped all the press kits. Getting in touch with other authors and doing blog posts and reaching out to them, or even through them into their networks is healthy. Be ready to return all favors. This is a great thing starts that buzz and puts that passive media out there. You won't get much in the way of sales, but it places the passive media in the spot it needs.

Step 6: The Grind:

Personal Message. Call. Show up with Beer. Talk about it constantly. A) Always. B) Be C) Closing. A. B. C. With everything else done now it's time to close the deal. Go forth and conquer. You'll have to remind someone about something 5 times before they will look into it. This may ruffle feathers. If your funding duration is long enough, you can do this with more etiquette. Be social, have some fun and always be looking to get someone on their phone checking out your site. Get them to just sign up right there if you can. This is a full time job you'll find. You'll be out there every night doing something.

There will come a time where you will visit stores that your flyers have been at for a month. You'll think "These were a waste." You'll start messing with them and people will go "Oh hey! That's you?!" Then you can smile... that's passive media. It's a nibble. It wears people down bit. By bit. Politely, and passively. It will take a month or more, but eventually, it might get you a few sales IF you are there for the ACTIVE close.

Sadly, passive media is next to no help in a contest. The time frame is to short.

Step 7: The Long Haul.

But Rick... you aren't at 1000 copies of your book! How are you gonna give us advice? Yes. This is correct, and I still have until November 17th to get there. Just keep going. Don't stop sprinting. When you can't run for yourself anymore.

Find another author and make it rain for them. Go back to your fanbase and be like... "Hey, I know this really great author here. Everyone, go buy their stuff as well." and actively campaign for someone else for a few days. You never know if you had a friend who has another network you can reach out to by touching base with your early supporters.



Well... that's my thoughts: It pretty much comes down to: Prep. Plan: Sprint like their are zombies on your heels.

But also knowing if crowd sourcing is right or not for you. You really need to understand that it's a battle against time.

I'm going to go curl up under a blanket and die of a cold or flu or some sort of disease now.

Hope this is helpful!

Rick.

Thanks for the advice, I imagine most people will need this. So far, it should be noted that there's a high chance most of your preorders are from other writers. I would wager 90% are from writers on the site and 10% from your own network. Inkshares is mostly composed of writers. The best way to get more preorders is you paradoxically preordering their, since it's common etiquette to preorder the works of those who preordered yours.

Just a quick thought to add to this. Though I imagine most of you guys to be surprised. Considering that if you're reading this, you are an Inkshares writer.

Actually: Math says otherwise. Only 10% of my preorders are from other authors. They provide you a nice boost. But just like family and friends, they run out pretty fast.

Richard wrote: "Actually: Math says otherwise. Only 10% of my preorders are from other authors. They provide you a nice boost. But just like family and friends, they run out pretty fast."

I made up that statistic. But I'm trying to make a point. Writers fend for each other. While I would like to think of every campaign as unique, never seen before stuff, my experience tells me that more preorder came from others asking to trade orders or browsing. Seriously, that IS more-or-less 90% of my preorders.

Getting friends and families to preorder had never been my top priority, I mainly do it out amusement to see what excuses they came up with for not preordering. The most creative one I heard so far is: I got AIDS. Sorry, can't do it.

Seriously, there needs to be a thread for e most creatively lame excuses friends and family members use to get out of not preordering. :)

Cheers

Well, even if all 340 authors backed your book. You would still need another 760. If it's not friends and family... better hit those convention tables.

Well, comic con had came and passed in Australia. Not a big event such San Diego. While I know Inkshares had been there, I can't afford a plane ticket to America and set up shop.

Besides, conventions aren't exactly frequent events. Nut thanks for the advice anyway, I don't think throwing advertising money to this campaign is the right way to go, so I'll just have try my best marketing this book. :P

I kind of wish I had thought of this stuff beforehand. I still have plans to do lots of stuff, videos, narrated excerpts, and so on, and I really like the changes and additions I'm making in my last round of story editing, but I'm just not good at this. I'm a pretty severe introvert so while I love writing, showing up with beer is literally never going to happen with me.

Passion and love and dedication don't seem to be enough to get past not being completely social, and I'm terrible at marketing it seems, so my campaign is a guaranteed failure.

Maybe I'll try again with a longer time frame (by then I'll have the sequel done, honestly). Make longer term plans, work as much overtime as I have to for the cash to get attention at cons, go to small game nights in town and talk about it there if need be, where my energy won't be exhausted in ten minutes of extreme socializing.

The advice in Richard's post is fantastic, and convinces me of something I've been waffling about for a couple weeks: I have to give up. This isn't for me. I'll try again, on Inkshares or elsewhere, because my love of writing is deeply embedded in my bones. I'll keep to my original plans for additional content, updates, a web site, review copies, and so on, as practice for later. Inkshares has taught me a lot of lessons, most of them humbling and embarrassing, but I've learned a lot and will hopefully come back stronger some other time.

Step 2 varies from person to person as far as I can tell. Not everyone can do a video like Andrew did and some people will manage to put out a handful of quick, facilitating chapters that will hook people. Some will also have access to better than average graphic and editing capabilities for their book trailer and could pull that off. I think the best way to boil that down is to cater to your strength. Derek of Asteroid Made of Dragons has a great sense of humour and use that in his updates to drive his followers and it seemed to work.

Step 6 is by far the most important and most on target. You can probably flub everything else and still do good numbers if you can follow that step properly and with all your energy.

Where other authors are important is if they can open up your book to new audiences. Getting a pre-order from a fellow writer is nice but it won't change your numbers significantly. Having another author promote your book to his following though can become an avalanche of pre-orders. The issue with that is that it's difficult to get someone to promote for you when they are busy promoting for themselves.

Which leads me to something that's not in these tips, probably because they're more important in a post-contest environment: open up new markets. Once you've gone through your Facebook buddies and everyone of your aunts has ordered a copy, you'll want to get your book to be seen by the demographic it's intended for. This means finding the places and communities that will A) enjoy what you're selling and B) understand crowdfunding and be willing to support it. Local book clubs, conventions, do guest posts on blogs, etc. Anywhere people have not heard of you.

The odd thing is that is, again in agreement with the article but amped up, you're not selling a book. You probably never will sell books. You'll always be selling yourself. The book is an extension of the brand that is you. Publishers have known that for a long time (why are author names so big on covers, even for unknowns?) and the way media works today it's even more true.

One last comment and I'll shut up; Inkshares isn't a contest site. It's a crowdfunding site and a publisher. You can't look at your campaign as something that is built only for a contest. For starters, the environment of a contest is very different. When else are there going to be 300+ books in the same general genre as yours being funded at once? That dilutes attention. Readers get burnt after the sixth update they get in one day. A contest is the worst time to fund unless you win, but once the dust settles and things normalize, it won't be the same. You'll still have to do all of these things above, especially Step 6, but you won't be doing it to race up a leaderboard. You'll be racing against yourself. You can approach your campaign more calmly and look for different solutions and try different things.

Which is why we have this group. Not for the next contest but to get more books funded through the normal campaigns.

I'm going to NY Comic Con, this week. I'm hoping I can make some headway, there.

Had a nice peak on the last day of the contest, but that's turned into a plateau and my actual funding line, which looked really nice for a minute, is on the verge of reconnecting with the "ideal" funding line. I'd like to keep actual above ideal, but now I'm struggling to get new orders.

Good luck Steve. I'd recommend going with a laptop. I got a lot of smiles and "I'll check it out"s at Rose City Comic Con but not a lot of actual sales. Bring your laptop and be ready to walk people through it. Have the login page ready to go. Show them how easy it is.

How does one do a guest post on a blog?

Generally reach out to the blog owner via email. A lot of them are very receptive.