Exciting times on Kickstarter

Hey all, Robin here. I’m taking over Michael’s blog (as I sometimes do). Because it’s a pretty exciting time for Kickstarters. I’m a HUGE fan of Kickstarters. We’ve backed hundreds of them and even run more than a dozen a campaigns, and while each one is a lot of work, it’s also a great deal of fun.

I’ve been shouting from the mountaintops that more authors should use Kickstarters, and I did get some traction, but even so the Fiction Category remained the sleepy little corner of the Kickstarter world (Games being the hot spot). It was such a small pond that at one point Michael had 5 of the top 10 most-funded Kickstaters of all time (across the entire world!). But then Brandon Sanderson’s record-breaking 47M campaign happened and that opened a lot of eyes. That project did more than all my evangelizing and I’m thrilled that so many authors are now using this platform. In my pitch to other authors I told them please knock my projects down a few pegs – and they did!  I now don’t have any projects in the top 10 (my highest is #12), and I couldn’t be happier about that.

But there are a lot of misconceptions when I speak to people who aren’t familiar with Kickstarters. The most common misconception is it’s a form of charity, where you see a project you like and you give the creator some money.  There are crowd-funding campaigns like that on other platforms (GoFundMe being the most common). But Kickstarter isn’t that. What’s the difference? Well let me back up and tell you some of the major aspect of Kickstarters.

1. The creator sets a goal, start date, and end date.  These parameters can’t be changed once the Kickstarter is launched, and if the project fall short of its goal, no money is collected from the backers, and no money comes to the creator. In other words, it’s an all-or-nothing proposal.
2. You don’t “give money” to projects you purchase something. It may be a physical item like a book or an event like a pre-screening of a movie, but you MUST receive something in exchange for the money you provide. In the case of fiction projects, you are basically pre-ordering just like you would on Amazon or other online stores.
3. Generally there are multiple reward levels. For instance a single Kickstarter might offer a $10 ebook, a $15 audiobook , a $20 trade paperback, a $35 hardcover, and a $75 deluxe edition. That way there is generally something for people of all budget levels. 
4. What you are receiving has to be something new. It’s meant to provide funding to create something that might not otherwise be produced if the creator had to rely on their own funds. Because of this aspect products generally ship quite some time after the project ends because it has to be made and that can take months and in some cases years.
5. There is a bit of risk when backing a Kickstarter. Despite the creator’s best intentions they may fail to produce the item they were trying to create. In that case there are no refunds, your money is gone. But that is an uncommon occurrence. Generally creators set their goal high enough so a “failed project” is one that doesn’t fund. But it can happen.  Generally if you are backing projects by people with a good track record, you won’t hit that situation.

If you’ve never backed a Kickstarter, I encourage you to do so.  We’ve gotten all kinds of great things from the platform (mostly books but also things like the Ooni Wood-fired Pizza Oven, the Solo Stove, and a great portable desk I use when lying on the couch). All told we’ve backed 214 Kickstarters (173 of which reached their goal and 41 that didn’t fund).  Here are the Kickstarters that are “Live” that we are currently backing (and I think off of them are funded already.