Beyond the Book Podcast: 6 Ways Authors Are Making $100k+ on Kickstarter

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Here are six wild ways that authors are making hundreds of thousands of dollars on Kickstarter, and in some case, even millions of dollars.
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Now, what's special about this is we're gonna be breaking down real campaigns, their rewards, their different pricing, what they got right, and what they got wrong, all live in this podcast.
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And it won't just be me today breaking down these Kickstarter campaigns and sharing with you these interesting categories and totally new products and ways of thinking about how to give story experiences and how to share really our worlds with readers.
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Instead, I have a special guest, and her name is Oriana Leckert. For those who don't know Oriana, she is the head of publishing at Kickstarter.
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She's probably the most knowledgeable mind about what's happening on Kickstarter and how to succeed on Kickstarter when it comes to different campaigns and different rewards than pretty much anyone on the planet.
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And today, Oriana shares with us some of her insight from not just seeing these campaigns, but working behind the scenes on these campaigns to help these authors actually
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publish these campaigns, launch them, and in some cases, make close to a million dollars off of just one campaign.
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So I'm so excited to share with you what these amazing creators have done, and what's really cool is right now I actually have a Kickstarter project live myself. It's called Author Marketing Superpowers Deck.
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It's 50 superpowers to help you supercharge your income as an author.
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They're in a beautiful deck of cards that you're able to flip through and get bite-sized concepts, strategies, and tactics to help you grow your business, and you can even flip the decks of cards and shuffle them to mix and match the superpowers into unique combos for your next marketing campaign.
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It's a ton of fun, and they have 50 beautiful illustrations to go along with them. So I'd love if you supported the campaign.
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We're currently gunning for some stretch goals here, which involve some beautiful maps and other really awesome benefits.
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So you can check that out in the link in the description and see my own unique way of trying to bring author education out of courses and out of books, and instead trying to adapt it into a beautiful set of cards.
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And fittingly, our first category that we're going to explore on Kickstarter that authors are making bank in is actually games, and the project that we're gonna be covering in detail is a card game by an author that literally made over $600,000 in 28 days.
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Let's get into it. Oriana, I'm so excited that we have the person of publishing at Kickstarter to talk to us about some really incredible campaigns.
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Now, this first one we're starting off with an incredible one from none other than Holly Black, enemies and lovers.
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Almost 10,000 backers, nearly quarter million dollars, 650,000 raised from a card game based on her books. It's wild. Specifically, it's based on the Folk of the Air series.
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I'm curious from your knowledge and what you saw, what did she get right? How did this campaign get so big? 'Cause I know she has a really big following, but this is a very big outcome. Yeah.
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I think it's probably a combination of factors. She's a big deal. This project actually came about, I think it was her agent's idea.
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So there was, like, a team put together that was, like, Holly and her agent, and also the folks who actually manufacture the cards were heavily involved.
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I think this hits on a lot, just like a nexus of things that are incredible on Kickstarter. It captures the sort of, like, TikTok effect of special editions in the, like, beautiful cards.
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I think at some point, maybe two-thirds of the way down the page, there's a little GIF showing the cards shimmering, getting that, that sort of tactile, as tactile as you can get in a GIF. Yeah, exactly.
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Also, the idea of doing a sort of, like, IP crossover from an author you love, finding some other way to experience her work, I think is a really compelling...
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And also, I actually just checked before we got on this call, so this is, it's, at least it ended in tabletop games.
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I imagined I counseled them that because this is like bridges multiple worlds, you can move a campaign around category to access different audiences, and in this case, the games audience on Kickstarter is our strongest and most, like, symbiotic.
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So I probably, I can't remember exactly, I probably told them to launch in games once they hit maybe, like, week two, move it into publishing, leave it there for a week or two, and then end back in games to get the full advantage of that audience at the strongest times for the campaign.
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I also just pulled some stats. I don't track games. I just preside over publishing, and so I know everything I can about that, and know nothing about everything else.
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Had this ended, had this sorted into publishing, it would've been the fourth highest funded project in publishing last year. Wow. Okay, that is such an interesting strategy.
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You're hitting the sort of organic audience that Kickstarter has in a campaign that might not deli- like, she traditionally is in publishing, actually literally is in traditional publishing, in a sort of entendre there.
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I love that. I would've never thought to do that. Yep. Yep. Wow. Okay. This makes a ton of sense. If you look at the backers, it looks like a lot went for
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not only the regular cards, but also the sprayed edge deck, which is that something that feels like an influence from, like, sprayed edge- Yeah, 100%, of course.
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Everyone is obsessed with sprayed edges right now, no matter what. You could probably do, like, a sweatshirt with sprayed edges somehow, and people would, like, glom onto it. Incredible, and I know a campaign like this,
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obviously Holly has a lot of her own audience,
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but when thinking about collaborating with other creators on Kickstarter across niches, is that something, like, you see Kickstarter creators open to, "Oh yeah, we'll cross-promote you even if you're not necessarily the quote-unquote a creator who's typically in our niche," or is it something where creators on Kickstarter kind of have to more stay in our lane?
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How does that work in terms of collaborating?I'm not always, I'm not super involved really with conversations between authors. Yeah.
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If I were making recommendations, I would approach an author the same, especially someone you don't know, the same way you'd approach anyone. Here's where I think the crossover is between our audiences.
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Especially if they're not like we're both doing special editions about lesbian mermaids or whatever, it would be nice to say, "I think this element of your project will resonate with my readers.
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I think this element of my project would resonate with yours. Here's how I might recommend that we..."
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Just give someone the grace of don't let them think you're just coming to them to be like, "Hi, you have a lot of followers. How can I take advantage of that?"
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That's beautiful advice on collaborating on Kickstarter, just in general.
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And before we move on to our next campaign, which is from an author that I think a lot of folks listening will, will be familiar with, but it's recent. It's going on right now.
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Before we get there, what would be some of your insights around, I don't wanna say adapting, but in a sense bringing something that's publishing IP, a book, into the category of, like, games or cards?
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I'm sure you've seen it go right. This obviously went really right. I'm sure you've seen it go wrong. So when do you think it's a good idea? Yeah, 100%. I think... So the games community to me is, like, a bit scary.
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They're, like, ravenous for projects, but they're also, I'm making sweeping generalizations, but as a group I think highly suspicious of outsiders attempting to capitalize without earning an authentic place in that community.
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So when I've seen this go wrong is someone who does not know how to make or play games just, like, swooping in to be like, "Hey, games people, I hear there are a lot of you. Give me money."
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I think it's really important to back games campaigns, to follow games campaigns, to work with i- if not a games designer, game players, game reviewers.
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Be an authentic and real part of the community, because I think folks can smell someone who's just trying to take advantage in an inauthentic way.
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Kickstarter is all about community, like, in every possible way, and so, like, really understand that and know... That's the same advice I would give someone who's funding a book for the first time. Back campaigns.
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Follow creators. Don't just drop in and be like, "Where's my magical internet money? Let's have that." That's so great.
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It's, Kickstarter's about the long game as well, each launch kind of building on your next one, so it's- Totally... definitely not the first launch gonna...
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It could blow it out of the water, but it's, your 10th one will certainly be bigger than your first if you do it right. Another thing I would think about is, like, again, not to just be opportunistic about it.
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Think about what in the gaming space actually makes sense for you.
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Another example, way before my time, Patrick Rothfuss, in one of his big series, there was a game in the books, and he came to Kickstarter to make that game.
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That could not be more authentically connected to his work, of course. But again, just don't just try to take advantage of a hot trend. Think about what truly fits with your work, what your audience will love.
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And this is hardly a pro tip, but if you don't know, ask your audience. One of the best things about Kickstarter is that we help collapse those boundaries between a creator and their fans, so go to them.
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Would you rather see a card game or an RPG or a video game?
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Even if you know that your resources would, like, never allow you to make something as high production value as a video game, if you find out there's a huge appetite for it, that's gonna tell you something about your audience, and it can help you think about what else you might do or, like, how to, what other kind of thing you could come up with that would scratch that itch for people.
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Or you can start making a 10-year plan to generate zillions of dollars [laughs] so you can produce a video game. I don't know. But yeah, talk to the people who are going to ultimately be supporting you.
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Let them help you shape, uh, your ideas. Yeah, no, readers first always, and I, I love that. Like, open it as a conversation. You don't need to generate all the ideas as- Totally... some creative in the dark.
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Now, speaking of dark, we have [laughs] Dark Billionaire- Brilliant series... Velvet Special Edition Omnibus, which at the time of recording this just really went live, like, today and funded very quickly.
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Reached, uh, 7K in two hours, which is incredible. It's from Lee Savino. She's the creator of the campaign. She co-authored these books and has done an amazing job with the story, with the design of this campaign.
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It's very interesting. And if you're watching the YouTube version, you can actually see us screen-sharing.
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But all the links to every campaign we mention will also be mentioned in the episode description, so you can go check it out yourself.
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This campaign you actually can still back if you'd like, if you're listening in the near future.
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But I wanna ask you, Oriana, 'cause you let me know ahead of the podcast that this campaign is special 'cause not only is it special edition campaign for a special edition story, which is a, it's a category unto itself on Kickstarter, but it also is executing it in a very specific way.
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So I'd, I'd love for you to share some of the behind the scenes of this. Yeah, totally.
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The first thing that I'll say, uh, and then I'll get into your second question, is that Lee did an excellent job with her pre-launch page. Mm.
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Depending on your level of familiarity with Kickstarter, pre-launch pages we launched I think, like, a year and a half ago, so relatively new in the lifetime of Kickstarter.
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But a pre-launch page is a cover page that sits at the same URL where your campaign will ultimately live, and it's designed to collect followers.
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So people can have a pre-launch page up for a couple of days, a couple of weeks. I've seen them stay up for over a year in a very, one specific case.
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I don't think I'd recommend that long, but we see a really high conversion, like 30% to 40% from pre-launch followers to project backers, and they tend to do it right away, day one. Mm. And this is great.
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It helps you have a really strong start to your campaign, which is excellent for morale, excellent for messaging, excellent for your overall chances of success. So I really think anybody can and should do this.
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Get your pre-launch page up and have a strategy for promoting it. This is also, by the way, a time when you can warm your audience up-To the idea of Kickstarter, if you're an author- Mm-hmm...
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who has not been on the platform before, or if you think your, your readership is largely not familiar with crowdfunding or, like, what sort of is happening here, you can send out your pre-launch page and s- say to people, "Make your Kickstarter account now.
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Sign up to follow this page so that you can have access to the early bird rewards," or, "You can be one of the earliest adopters," whatever it is. But encourage them to remove that friction.
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Go to the other room and get your credit card and make your account now, far before it actually matters, so that it's just gonna be one click and done when you actually have the campaign go live. Oh, amazing advice.
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[laughs] So definitely get some followers, do pre-launch. It's, yeah, even just getting feedback from people before you have the big day is- Yeah, totally... invaluable. Yeah.
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Um, but so the other thing that you're talking about, so Leah's working, uh, and if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, I think she's, um, very open about it, with a company called The Influence, is a design, and they're an agency.
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They do a lot of things. They work with many campaigns in many different ways. It's not me- for me to say, like, all of the different things that they'll do with creators.
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But one thing they do is they will run campaigns for you, and that too can have, like, different options of what they, what parts they do and what parts you do. I know them very well.
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They're a new but really very fast-growing agency. They work mostly with romance writers.
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It's founded by Dana Claire, who is herself a romance novelist who has been on Kickstarter, and she absolutely knows what she's doing.
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And so this is the kind of thing where if you have the means and the desire, there are lots of people who do this kind of work with campaigns.
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You can think about the parts of creating, designing, running, fulfilling the project that you'd really rather give somebody money to do instead of doing it yourself.
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And then of course, just make sure that you have vetted your, your partners and your collaborators, and make sure that they are trusted and they're gonna do good work. Yeah. No, it's looks great.
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I know Dana personally, and she's wonderful, and I love that Leah was able to launch this with Stasia and do such a really... It looks like they've done an awesome job.
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Just even looking at the different benefits here, they have so many different tiers they've been able to bundle together. They have the foiled bookmarks, foiled stamps.
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And what I wanted to get your insight on before we move on to our next Kickstarter campaign is with all of the special edition campaigns you see, and I imagine you probably see more than maybe anyone else in the world, unless there's, like, a very big super fan reader who's backing every single campaign, which I wouldn't be surprised if there's one of them.
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But what I'm really curious about is what makes a special edition special? Like, what special things about it do you see doing really well on Kickstarter right now?
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Yeah, I think this too, the things that make it special are gonna be somewhat unique to the author.
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I think table stakes at this point are, like, sprayed edges, spot gloss on the cover, fancy ribbon bookmarks, but it can go on and on into the stratosphere.
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Color change filters in your slip cases, and vellum art inserts that are translucent and can be selected based on different backers.
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Uh, I keep hearing about, I don't wanna, like, spoiler anybody, but yes, I keep hearing about new crazy features that folks are lining up all the time.
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What makes it special is that it's limited, it's collectible, it activates both that FOMO of, "This is the only time I'm gonna be able to get this thing," the sort of collector mentality.
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I'm actually not much on TikTok, which I know is becoming a professional liability.
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[laughs] But I am sent constantly the unboxing videos, the sort of, like, shelf safari tours that I was just looking at some yesterday about book hauls.
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These, a boyfriend takes his girlfriend to the bookstore and says, "You have 20 minutes, as many books as you can grab, I'll buy you today."
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I don't know about the sort of gender and class politics of that, but people want these gorgeous books to see, to touch, and then to put on the shelf and display as a signifier of the kind of person they are and the sort of things that they love.
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This is a great way to appeal to all of that. Yeah. It's almost reminds back when I was, like, super into the YouTube world.
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A lot of YouTubers make a lot of their money off of merch, and it's a very similar idea of you want to, as a fan of the creator, as a fan of IP, as a fan of a story, be able to share that representation with the world.
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And having that special edition book that sits on your shelf now becomes something you wanna show your friends, becomes something you look at all the time, that you have as part of your life, just like a shirt can be.
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So funnily enough, Dana Claire from The Influence, who we were just talking about, I commissioned her to write an article for the Kickstarter blog last year called The Allure of Special Editions on Kickstarter and How to Create Your Own.
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That's a great follow-up. If you wanna dive deeper into special editions, go to the description. We have the article from Dana all about that. That sounds awesome. I'm personally excited to read it myself.
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And what's very interesting about Kickstarter, and really just going beyond the book in general, is that you don't necessarily have to be creating a physical product. You could also be creating a space for people.
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These next three campaigns do it all in, like, similar-ish ways. You have, I actually backed this campaign. You can see this is a, basically a new bookstore meets coffee shop in Chicago. It's called Junction Cafe.
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We also have The Story House, which is a bookmobile, which will be for kids. And then we have Books and Brews, which is going to be a, in Indianapolis, a book and coffee shop, which still exists now. You can go find it.
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This one was actually five years ago was when it ran. So one of them's ongoing and is a new thing in Chicago. Then there's the bookmobile. Then there's a past bookish space.
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I'm curious what you've seen, 'cause just perusing Kickstarter, you can see a lot of, like, indie bookstores or people creating, like, bookish spaces, literary clubs popping up on Kickstarter.
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I'm curious, like, what you've seen in those campaigns, what makes that type of campaign successful. Would love your insights on that. Yeah, totally.
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And I should have-When we were talking before, I, I could have given you, like, 15 more literary spaces. In fact, I can't... Scroll down a smidge where you currently are. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. No, that one says food.
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So go back to Junction, and then if you see that's shelved into the subcategory of literary spaces, if you click on where it says literary spaces, you can sort that and see all of the bookstores, museums, the Rocky Mountain Land Library.
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Uh, there's all kinds of... This is where the, the vast majority of the literary spaces, obviously, as it says on the tin, tend to live. So I'll tell you a cute little anecdote about Junction Cafe.
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The reason, and this is, like, a little insight into my professional life, this campaign came about because our social media manager lives in Chicago, and she saw, probably on Instagram, that...
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So Semicolon, it's not a new bookstore. It's been around for several years. They had opened up, I think they had opened up a third branch, and they might have, their reach might have exceeded their grasp.
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So our social media manager heard about it right before that was gonna close, and she reached out and said, "Do you wanna talk to us about running a Kickstarter campaign?
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Because we think that this could be something that might help in this moment." So we had a call with them literally on a Monday, and by that Friday they had a draft and launched the following week.
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I even said to them, "Do you want to take a little more time?" And she was like, "Nope. We're ready. We're doing it. My staff is on board. We can't wait. We're so excited for this." So I think the idea had been brewing.
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We just were like, "Hello. Is this something that we might help with?" Some things about running a spaces campaign, there are, the first particular challenge is that
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getting people, compelling backers who are not in Chicago, who are not likely to be able to walk into said space.
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I too am a backer of this campaign, and I think neither you nor I live in Chicago, so clearly these folks did a good job.
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Sometimes that is just means having a really compelling story, which I think Junction does, and I don't mind giving them money even though I will never get to physically, maybe not never, but unlikely to walk right in.
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But a way to get beyond that is to think about what can you make that you can send to everybody?
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Maybe people don't wanna wear a T-shirt of a bookstore they haven't gone to, but can you do customized book recommendations or even get your staff together and everybody shares, you make a nice PDF of everybody's favorite book or some kind of virtual tour of the space.
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Things like that. Think about what might be cool for someone else. You can also line up some buy one, give one, or just give one.
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Buy a book for somebody in the neighborhood so you'll never go to the bookstore and you'll never read that book, but you'll know that by doing that, you're both supporting a bookstore and its readership.
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And a really cool thing about spaces is you can sell off naming rights to anything. Mm. You can sell off naming rights to every single shelf, to every toilet, cash register, corner of the wall.
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I've seen people do an entire mural on one wall that incorporates the names of every single backer. There's a lot of stuff that you can do in that space that you can't do with a stack of books.
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So that can also be a really fun way to think about a campaign like this. Oh, yeah. No, 100%. And also though, you can apply it digitally to books.
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I know so many people listening might not fall into the, the camp where they're gonna be running a spaces campaign anytime soon. You can apply the naming thing to books. You're a little bit more limited, like you said.
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You can't necessarily name the shelf in your bookstore that doesn't exist, but you can have people name secondary characters, maybe- Oh, yeah... coffee shop. Matt Dinniman, Matt Dinniman did a tremendous job of that.
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He writes the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, which is, like, a huge ensemble cast. There's, like, hundreds and hundreds of characters.
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And so in his last campaign, for $666 he would kill you off in the next book, and for $777 he would let you live. I love it. But I've also seen, we'll name the dragon after your dog.
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We'll name the villainess after your mother-in-law. We'll name the hero after your son. All sorts. You're right. Naming rights are absolutely a thing in books as well.
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And you can see here the Junction did a really good job with at each level they have something, beyond $1, they have something that you're getting that is valuable to both people in Chicago and people who are potentially outside of Chicago.
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Being able to, at $250, them people, like, the coffee is really cool.
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That's the tier where I backed, and I told our social media manager, "I'm gonna need you to walk into the store and pick that up for me, and, uh, the next time we have our Kickstarter retreat, I'll get it from you."
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I love it. I love it. Yeah, no, that's epic. Epic, epic stuff. And speaking of being able to deliver cool things that aren't just books
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to people around the world, we have book boxes, and specifically this campaign, which you showed me about, which I had not seen but looks epic, which is Lucy Eden's Love Nudes from Paradise Book Box. And it's- Lucy-...
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a luxury book box each quarter. Raised almost $30,000. That's a really great campaign. Lucy Eden is such a star. I think you can see it if you look in my screen, that blue, that box up there, that's from- Yeah...
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this campaign. Oh, so cool. I have a problem. I back a few too many Kickstarter campaigns. But it is, Lucy did an incredible job. This is, you can do a lot of different things with book boxes.
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What is so astonishing for me about Lucy is this was, like, an it takes a village kind of effort.
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She coordinated so many authors, so many artisans, so many craftspeople, and every bit of the campaign had, like, such a strong professional touch. The boxes are themselves super lovely.
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So the way this campaign works is that each quarter you get a box with a book and a bunch of associated swag, and all of the swag is made by artisans with whom she is friends or, like, part of the community.There's also a book club, so you get to read the book, have the swag, do book club meetings.
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One of, I think, her toppest tier reward, which I don't know, I don't remember whether anybody got.
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Where she lives, she Airbnb's part of her home, so there was a super mega deluxe package that you and a friend could come stay in her Airbnb on the weekend of the book club conversation, so you could participate IRL while also being in this fancy place, while also getting all of this incredible swag.
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I, I have gotten to know Lucy since this campaign. She is so ambitious. I actually just said this to somebody else this morning.
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An unofficial part of my job is to help people not ruin their lives with Kickstarter campaigns.
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Unfortunately, there are many ways that you can get a little carried away and get yourself in trouble, and we had many conversations w- during the lead up to this project where I was like, "Are you sure?
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Is this too many people? Is it too many books? Is it too many boxes? Are you gonna be okay?" But she was okay. She did it. She knocked it out of the park. Wow. That's incredible.
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Everything about it, being able to have that really awesome luxury tier that involves going to [laughs] her house, which is wild. And I'm curious, like when you see a book box campaign like this, it's...
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This one's limited in quantity. But I also know there's like the opposite
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problem where if you have too little book boxes sold, it can be like a lot of effort in sourcing and like making the boxes, where it's, man, you put a lot of effort into just three boxes.
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So I'm curious, I know it's tough and it's always more art than science, but I know a lot of times with Kickstarters you try and set a lower goal to try and reach it so that you actually get funding, and then know that obviously you wanna get more past that.
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But with these types of campaigns where there's potentially more fixed costs or it's, man, if you're only selling three book boxes, is it really worth it?
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How do you recommend like thinking about what the campaign goal should be when there's more involved in the campaign? Yeah, totally. I think this is a huge thing, and you're right.
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There is a trend of people aiming far lower than what they need. I won't ever give someone a dollar amount. I'm not in your books. I'm not like neck deep in your budget, but I worry about that trend. I think- Hmm...
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people get... People can take that a bit too far, where they will do deluxe special editions and set a goal of $500.
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And I know that they're largely motivated by fear or being, wanting to be able to say, "Fully funded in 10 minutes," or whatever.
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The reason why Kickstarter was designed with all or nothing funding is to protect the creatives.
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If you do your budget and you really need $5,000 to make this book at this trim size with this paper quality and this page count, and then you come out of the campaign with $4,000, like you're in a terrible spot.
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Like we didn't ever wanna force somebody to be bringing their project to life with an incomplete budget. So that's like what you do to yourself if you aim very low.
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Like you're making all these promises and you're gonna have to keep them even if you haven't really raised enough money to do... What can I say? I get it. I understand why people do it, but I'd be really careful.
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Make sure that you have a full understanding of your budget, not just your print production, which is no small thing, but also every reward that you're making, every box and roll of tape and sheet of bubble wrap that you're gonna need.
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Build in a buffer. Just like really know what your costs are, and then really understand if you set a goal that's significantly lower than that, you're gonna have to...
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There's not you're going to have to, but there's a chance that you will need to make up the rest yourself, and what is that gonna mean for your budget, for your means, for your life?
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And decide whether that is worth it to, to set yourself on that path. Yeah. That's like a really good PSA for everyone. That's really good to keep in mind. You,
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you obviously wanna reach your goal, but you have to set your goal in a place where you know you're actually okay doing it, and if your goal isn't actually your goal, [laughs]
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then it's potentially that, that could be a tricky thing. I love your advice. I also love just you saying like, "Part of my job is like keeping people like okay." Like we wanna make sure people don't get too out of hand.
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Now, one thing that I'm curious about is there's a lot of book box, like this is one book box campaign in particular. There's a lot of successful book box campaigns on Kickstarter,
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and I know a lot of them aren't necessarily from authors themselves, but might be readers creating it for a specific genre or community.
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What are some interesting things you've seen across book box campaigns, and is it something like as an author, like do you recommend doing a book box campaign for your own books like the Willow Winters model, 'cause she really includes her own books in a lot of it, or should I be doing it for other authors' books?
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Like approaching book boxes can feel like a lot. Yeah. I think, um, it is a lot, and there's pros and cons to each of those endeavors.
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The idea, if you're doing it with multiple authors, that is a somewhat different way of doing an anthology project, and the big benefit there- Hmm... is that you're bringing many audiences together.
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This is nice as a writer just to, if you like my books, you'll also like these books, which I think are great. But also for the success of your campaign, everybody's working together, rising tide, all the boats.
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Of course, authors, though I love them, can be skittish and somewhat flaky creatures.
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So in order to really succeed with a campaign like that, you're gonna need like a chief cat herder who's making sure that all of those audiences are being brought to bear, that everybody is doing their promotion as they said they would, and getting their stories in on time, and participating in like each stage of the project.
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So if you are deciding whether this is a campaign that you wanna run, decide whether you want to be that chief cat herder or if there's somebody else you can tap for that job.
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I would say if you wanna do book boxes for only your own work, that obviously keeps everything in your control.
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But it's much more ambitious than just funding a single book, and someone like Willow Winters-There's nothing she can't do. But not everybody is like quite at her level yet.
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So understand what you're getting in for, what you're setting yourself up to have to do, and make sure that feels comfortable and achievable for you, and that you will not, yet again, ruin your life [laughs] in the fulfillment of it.
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Yeah. So we wanna do the exact opposite. We wanna- Exactly... have, kickstart amazing things for you. And I think that's fantastic advice.
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Now, this next project is quite interesting i- in a good way, and you also brought this project to me, and I was like, "What?"
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I would've never thought of this, which is illuminated tapestries, and it's featuring original artwork from artisans in actually my home state, which is South Carolina. Cool. And yeah, I was like, this is so cool. I...
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Now I'm, like, invested in this. So cool. And they've raised nearly $90,000, just over $89,000, which is a quite a large campaign, at least in my eyes. I don't know how...
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What, what do you think of an $89,000 ca- campaign meaning, do you see those often or that's, that's a great campaign? That's a good question.
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I actually have the same stats report that I pulled up to answer a different question earlier. I can tell you, where is it? The average raise last year, the average raise for a project last year was 16 and a half...
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In publishing, specifically in publishing in the calendar year 2024. So the average was 16K. Beehive, I happen to know they have done, I think 25 campaigns. They're a publisher out of Philly. They've done...
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They do incredibly gorgeous, really high effort deluxe book objects.
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They did illuminated editions, multiple campaigns of those before they did the illuminated tapestries, and by the way, they did two different illuminated tapestry campaigns.
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And by the way, these tapestries are not cheap, and yes, I have one, that one where you are right now. Yes, I could not help but back that. It's on the couch. I use it every night that I am watching TV on the couch.
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There's... The quality is great. The art is stunning. I, yeah, love them. I could have hung it on my wall like that one, but I wanted to cuddle with it all the time. What question am I answering? I have no idea.
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Is $80,000 an impressive campaign? For sure. For sure, for anybody.
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I will also let you know that Beehive has one of the highest ever funded publishing projects, which was their Botanica tarot deck that they did in early COVID days that earned, I think, well over a million dollars- What?
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... if I recall correctly. So they're an experienced creator. They were not... They didn't just wake up one morning and go, "What would it be like if we got comics people to make us blankets?"
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Yeah, so I don't know if that, if that's a good answer. [laughs] No, it's a great answer. I'm now gonna show everyone their other
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campaigns, and their entire profile will be linked below 'cause I think there's a lot of things they've done. They do incredible work. Incredible work, and that's really interesting to just garner inspiration.
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And so you can see just as you're scrolling, these are the, the illuminated editions, which I also have some of. They're oversize in slip cases. The slip cases have keyhole cutouts, so you can see the books below.
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That's the, like, huge Botanica. They do Lab, Lab, which is an art newsletter or a newspaper. They have, I think, oh yeah, you j- you went past the...
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They had an interactive Dracula to the right of that, where, like, the whole thing came deconstructed in a briefcase, and you had to go on a... They're, yeah, they're incredible, wonderful, splendid people.
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I suggest everyone- My God, that's amazing, the interactive story. It's a Dracula story told through letters, clues, maps, phonograph records, which what is phonograph records?
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Is that, like, audio or am I missing something? I think it is. This campaign, was it before I was at Kickstarter? It was a while ago. I will not tell you that I am intimately involved in it. No, that's okay.
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It raised literally 200,000. But what's interesting is you mentioned Pi, the goal. There's a lot going on in these projects.
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Their goal was 140,000, which I guess means to me that they probably needed that to, to make it happen, or at least around that.
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I, I don't know the details of the project, but really, wow, making a book something that is an interactive multimedia experience.
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And what's cool about this project is, although, like, I adore the tapestry, I adore the illuminated editions, they're so cool, I think a lot of, at least me, my first thing is I can't do that. [laughs] Yeah.
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Not to have a limiting belief, but I am not the best artist. I am, I'm certainly more of a writer.
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With these other types of products they've done, it's you don't necessarily even need to be, like, you can involve other types of ways of getting creative that don't necessarily require being, like, a- Producing knitted blankets.
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Yeah. Yeah, right. Like, but I also am curious about that too. I'm looking at the scope that's going on here, and they've worked with, seemed like artists out of South Carolina. They're based in Philadelphia.
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That's amazing. It looks like they're just collaborating with great people. What have you seen with people collaborating, like a writer collaborating with artists? Have you seen that?
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And how do you usually recommend going about that on Kickstarter? Yeah. It comes back to community. Another lovely example of this, Penny Reid, who, and probably people know, one of the biggest romance authors- Yeah...
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that we've had on the platform. I think she's done this at least twice, maybe three times. I think she's very close fr- She's in Seattle.
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She's very close friends with someone who runs a yarn store out there, and her books are, like, there's a big knitting element. They're called Knitting in the City, is one of her series.
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And those folks made a custom y- color of yarn that was only available through her campaign. So think about who you know. Like, you've got friends.
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You've got somebody who knits scarves or makes beautiful headwear or makes candles or whatever it is.
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Think about how that can be related to the work that you do.And if you don't, ask your readers, go out into your community in, like physically.
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Find things that make sense, that seem thematically aligned with what you're doing, and see what sorts of arrangements you can strike up with, uh, people who make stuff. Love it. Amazing. Amazing advice.
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And I didn't even know how deep the rabbit hole with Beehive Books went, but so glad that I know- Everyone should follow them, back whatever they do.
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It's like you never, I never know what they're gonna do next, but it is always just, like, an unbelievable delight. Yeah, no, they're definitely a follow. Fo- follow them. They'll be...
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Projects will be mentioned and, and their profile will be linked down below. This next profile as well is maybe less diverse in medium, but no less incredible- [laughs]... which is chocolate bars.
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Describe this one to me, 'cause I was blown away when you shared this with me. Yeah, they're literary inspired chocolate bars.
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I say whenever anybody asks what happens in publishing a Kickstarter, I say some version of books in every genre you can think of, and also bookstores, and podcasts, and literary museum exhibits, and literary inspired chocolate bars, if you can believe it.
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And you should believe it, because Open Book Chocolates, they've done six campaigns. Each... I think most of the campaigns have been between one and three new flavors. I don't think... I would have to open them.
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I can't recite off the top of my head what goes in each one. So Count of Monte Cristo, what is this? Has mushrooms and peach.
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One of them, I think one of the, I think 1,001 Nights has some kind of Japanese Himalayan sea salt. I don't... They are all inspired by the works they represent. Look at that design.
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They are not inexpensive, but yes, I have backed those every time. They are, can confirm, they are delicious.
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I, I think it's an important thing to highlight, too, not inexpensive is, is true, but if you want the most accessible chocolate, might as well just buy Hershey's. Or I guess I...
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Feastables is even more expensive than Hershey's, but MrBeast makes those. But whenever you're buying chocolate-wise, there's the brands that everyone knows that's...
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Yeah, if you're just gonna make an average chocolate bar. But I think the beauty of Kickstarter, but then also what we're all trying to create just with our stories is something special.
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So if you're gonna create something special and actually embody it, I think you deserve to, to get a premium. I'm looking at their prices here, $60 to $6 for six chocolate bars of any of the flavors.
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That's not cheap, but at the same time, I would... You buy a chocolate bar in a store and it's gonna be, you're gonna, it's gonna be four or five easy, and that's cheap chocolate. So to say premium chocolate's $11.
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Ice cream's eight or nine, just one ice cream.
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And you're also, of course, in the there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, you're supporting not just a higher quality product, but a small batch maker, an artisan- Yeah... who's...
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Like this, it does more, it puts more good into the world than obviously just, like, buying the cheapest version of whatever. And yeah, that's... You're not coming to Kickstarter for the cheap thing.
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You wanna support a great product, a great person, a great business idea, a really cool creative thing that, like, you can have that no one else can. And in fact, not no one else can have these.
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These are available in some stores. I don't know all the stores- Great article... but I know I had an event last year at the Rifted Bodice Romance Bookstore in Brooklyn, and they are for sale there. So cool.
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That's another great literary space. That was funded on Kickstarter. Oh, no way. I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. The first one- Wow... the one in LA. Yeah.
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They were, they were like, they were the first romance bookstore. Now I see like, once a month I see a romance bookstore campaign on the site. It is so thrilling. It is.
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The, that's like a whole category of, like, literary spaces that is becoming its own industry. Like even Charleston, which is, it's where I am right now. It's a relatively small city.
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Charleston, South Carolina has its own romance bookstore- I love it... called Dear Than Fiction, which- Heck yeah. Yeah. It's great, great space.
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So, uh, the, the fact that romance bookstores are able to make it outside of, like, really big cities just shows that there's so much demand for literary spaces, but even goes beyond that to, like, all of these other fantastic experiences and products we're talking about.
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So now I feel like we've probably exploded people's minds- Oh, boy... not only with ideas, but also a lot of advice. You shared some incredible insights.
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[laughs] If I'm listening to this and I'm walking away hopefully inspired, how do I take that inspiration into action?
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What's your one to maybe three steps that you would take after listening to this to actually go beyond the book and start to get your Kickstarter ready? Probably figure out what your idea is. Clarify that for yourself.
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Talk to all the collaborators that you might work with. Talk to the people in your community. Talk to your supporters. Is this something we like? Is this something that people are gonna be excited about?
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Can we really do it? I guess that's step one, clarify your concept. Step two is do as thorough of a budget as you are absolutely able to do. Do not skimp on that step. Don't skip it.
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Don't just guess the weight of the thing, the, like, where you're gonna produce it. And think through what if our goal is to make 100 of this thing, what if it accidentally hits and we need to make 1,000?
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What does that mean for our manufacturing? Yeah. What if we need to make 10,000? Plan out, do contingency planning for things going badly and for things going really well.
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And then also think through what are all the steps that are gonna get us there? What is the audience? How are we reaching them? What are all of the ways in which this is gonna get brought to life?
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Who are the collaborators? What's our timeframe? Put together as, plan as thoroughly as you are able, given your personal capacity to do, and that's gonna make everything easier once you go.
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And then see what's on the site already and out in the world. See what other people are doing. Emulate all of the tactics that seem to be working.
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We're all in this together, so figure out what hits and see how you can adapt that to the thing that you wanna do. So good. So good. I love, like, what you want to do. That, those last words are really key.
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I, I don't think-The takeaway should be from this, "Oh my God, like they did chocolate bars and it's working. Like, I need to make chocolate bars." No, certainly.
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You can if you want to, but it's more so about finding your passion and i- integrating into Kickstarter in, in an exciting way. I love this, Oriana. This is amazing.
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I know that most folks know if they wanna start a Kickstarter or support other Kickstarters and check the platform out, go to kickstarter.com.
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But maybe not m- a lot of folks know about the thing you're doing with Author Nation that's totally free that people can do to actually kickstart their Kickstarter journey. I love it.
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So I don't know if you wanna share a little bit about that, 'cause I think that's a really fun resource you're doing. Yeah, totally. I'm happy to talk about it.
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It's still, we're still formulating it, but the idea is that anybody who's running a campaign this year and who will be at Author Nation can be part of this cohort.
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So we're gonna have quarterly or bimonthly sessions where everybody can get together, ask me anything, talk to each other, work out how to collaborate and how to lift each other up. And then at Author Nation, you...
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If your campaign runs any point during the year, you can have a reward or multiple that you give out live to y- the readers who are attending, uh, Reader Nation at the end of that show.
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You can all, all of the, all the folks in this cohort who have tables at Reader Nation will be grouped together under like a Author Nation X Kickstarter banner.
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So you can also, if you have a live campaign then, have a QR code on your table. Again, build community, lift each other up, share resources, share audiences. Yeah, this is our first time doing it.
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We think it's a really cool idea. We'll see how it goes. We'll do it better next year. Please join us. I think, I'm not sure that there's any public facing messaging yet. It's in development.
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The first cohort meeting is in April, so hopefully we'll have some stuff that people can find so that you can join us. Love it. No, that's so exciting.
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And I know you've recommended this group before, but I also wanna share with people there's a free Facebook group called Kickstarter for Authors that if you're like at the stage where you're like, "Okay, I'm ready.
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I got all these amazing action steps, Oriana, but like how do I go to Kickstarter, go beyond the book? Like, I need advice in doing this. I need guidance," the community at Kickstarter for Authors is great.
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It's totally free. Anthea Sharp and a group of, um, amazing admins run it. Highly recommend that group. I think I've been in it for like two years now, mostly just snooping. But I learn a lot, and you should join it.
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I agree. I cannot recommend it highly enough. This is not an official Kickstarter group. This is just like a spontaneous gathering of authors. There are more than 7,000- Wow... people in that group.
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Anthea and Thorne run such a tight ship. I, I don't, I had like fully divested from Facebook. I do not enjoy giving my time or attention to most of these platforms anymore, but I am- Yeah... stunned by what it...
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It is just all day long authors talking to each other and saying, "Where are you sourcing your sprayed edges? How are you accounting for shipping rate changes?" Like, all the technical questions.
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There are tremendous resources. It is incredible. I really think everyone should join that group. I love it. This was such an amazing conversation.
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Thank you so much for your time because it's, I feel like I could bring on anyone else and we, we could riff and have a great time, but to get some of the behind-the-scenes insight from you is just invaluable.
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And really, Michael, thank you so much because I do these talks all the time. Uh, pro tip, I have a weird name and I'm hyper online.
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You can find so many versions of my face, uh, having these conversations, but this was a really, this was a perfect way in.
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This is like a different framing than most of the, most of these things that I do, so I really appreciate you coming up with it and giving me a different way to talk about the same stuff that I talk about all the time.
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Yeah, no, it, it's great, and I could see there were some beautiful moments where I could see you were like, "Oh, I've got something to share," in it, so that was amazing and yeah. Thank you again for being here.
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Awesome. This rules. Thank you so much. Just as a reminder, you can check out the link to my Kickstarter campaign in the description below. I'd love if you backed it.
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There's some amazing rewards, and I should mention that they're on a discount that will never be offered again.
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These cards are only gonna be available in a bundle that's gonna cost $99, and likewise, the Reader's First Challenge and a lot of the other benefits I have are literally either not going to be available at all or available at double to even triple the price outside of this campaign.
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So not only is it a chance for you to help support this creative project, it's also a chance for you to get these things early and at a discount.
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Likewise, I also have the free e-book and audiobook available, so it should be linked on the Kickstarter campaign page. If it's not yet, I, I'm working my best to get the various pages up.
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But there's also a free e-book and audiobook of Author Marketing Superpowers available for everyone. The Kickstarter campaign is to help back physical decks because
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I'm working with a factory that requires 1,000 minimum order quantity. They're gonna do it beautiful. I trust them. I have a few author friends who've worked with them before.
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But to be able to really afford 1,000 minimum order quantity campaign, that's exactly why I'm running this Kickstarter.
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So I guess the good news is that there'll be cards for authors for a while to come, and you backing this campaign not only supports right now
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you getting cards, but also makes this project possible by funding the illustrators and funding the print run of all of these cards. So I'd love if you supported it. Check it out in the link description.
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It'll be a lot of fun. It'll really help you, whether you're just getting started marketing or you've been marketing books for the last 10 years and making six figures a year.
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There's gonna be insights in there that really help you. Now, this was an amazing episode. I wanna thank Oriana for coming on. She's a legend.
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She comes onto so many podcasts, and I'm just very grateful to have her time because I know she has a ton on her plate, and everything the Kickstarter team's doing is really, really great.
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I don't normally like necessarily endorse a platform, but I think Kickstarter's creating a great community for authors and has really done a great job at opening up a whole new world of possibilities for creators.
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So I love that, and I'm really grateful for her sharing some really awesome behind-the-scenes insights with us.
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Now, if you want more episodes like this from Beyond the Books, all about h- So if you want more episodes like this from Beyond the Book, all about how you can turn your stories into an empire,
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put your readers first, and grow as an author, then I'd love if you, one, subscribe to this podcast. You can also review and rate it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. That helps out a ton.
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So if you're able to do that, that would be amazing. And I'd also love if you sent me at hello@authorsidekick.com any of your episode ideas. I have a few really exciting interviews lined up and episodes coming, but
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I'm always in search of great new ideas. I'm always in search of learning what your problems are so I can help you go beyond the book together and share with you some valuable insights.
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With all that said, thank you so much for listening. I'll see you again next week. But in the meantime, don't forget, together we are boundless.