Inkshares Community discussion

Just a quick question for Inkshares writers that have successfully met their publishing goal: How soon after the end of your campaign are you expected to turn in your completed manuscript? Immediately? In a matter of days? Just curious, as I'm getting a little neurotic about breaking up my time between pushing for pre-orders and finishing rewrites. Thanks!

I don't believe there is a deadline.

Some projects are only proposals. I believe The Haida Gwaii Lesson was proposed as an investigative journalism piece and that the author would start his project only after knowing that it had enough support to guarantee it would be published.

In my case: within a day or two of reaching my funding goal, I was contacted and asked what stage my project was in.

They take that information, along with your assessment of when you believe you will have a ms ready for submission and they build the timeline around that.

My advice would be to spend your time generating pre-orders and not worry about finishing your ms until later.

Of course, it's always a good idea to keep your supporters (and your prospects) apprised that the book won't be available until some future date and that it is a work in progress.

Mykl wrote: "I don't believe there is a deadline.

Some projects are only proposals. I believe The Haida Gwaii Lesson was proposed as an investigative journalism piece and that the author would start his projec..."

Awesome. Very good to hear. I will kick all my free time into the campaign. Thanks!

By the way, if anyone is interested: https://www.inkshares.com/projects/da...

43 days and 125 orders to go. Your interest is appreciated! :)

Inkshares is great in this regard. I published with the Sword & Laser contest and still have work to complete for my book.

The focus for Inkshares seems to be quality first. I write in between my full-time job and family time with my wife and son, and They have been incredibly accommodating.

The idea that I was so far along in funding a barely-written book frightened me. It's the reason I had my book pulled from funding back to draft.

It's rad that Inkshares lets us post books at any stage, but for my part I didn't feel right in selling unfinished work.

Before Inkshares morphed into a pre-order goal funding format, they started out more like Kickstarter where they encouraged pitches for cash and asked writers to describe what they would use the cash for. Your funding goal was a dollar amount, not a number of books pre-sold.

Some reasons given for raising cash were for travel money to conduct research and interviews, etc. A writer could set a funding goal in excess of the Inkshares minimum - and use that excess as an advance - even if that advance was to cover living expenses while you worked on writing your book.

I put my unfinished project up during this phase, but decided on my own to only solicit pre-orders and not cash. I guess you could say I was ahead of the curve and operated my campaign in a way that resembles what the model would later become.

When I started out, (over a year ago) there were less than thirty book projects and a few "articles" on the site. I was taking a chance on a completely unproven model with a brand new startup.

But I liked the energy (and experience) of the founders and their business plan, so I dove in. I saw the mix of talent starting with Larry Levitsky and the young guns as a perfect blend of experience, talent and energy.

They had a bulk purchase option at that time with a steep discount and several of my backers took advantage of that. I only later found out that Inkshares had intended that option to be used mostly by bookstores. But nowhere on the site was that spelled out, so I was fortunate to be able to take advantage of that brief window while it lasted.

It's amazing to see them go from that start to having a couple thousand projects in various stages in just this first year of operation.

You work with them to determine how long you need, and then you set a deadline and a handshake with them. I lucked out that I already had so much work done with mine, I only spent a month after the contest poking it some more with sharp sticks until it was tender enough to submit.