Episode 230 - The Good, the Bad, and the Surprising of Kickstarter with Megan Haskell and Jennifer Hilt
March 19, 2024
Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!
Megan Haskell and Jennifer Hilt discuss THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE SURPRISING OF KICKSTARTER. They offer their insider perspectives, covering both fiction and non-fiction books, including how Kickstarters enables authors to tap into a growing desire among readers for access to creators; which comes first, a Kickstarter campaign or a reader community; how Kickstarter has become a platform where readers browse for books (and aren’t looking for bargains); the importance of starting small; the challenge of data management; the value of a campaign as market research; ideas for backer tier offerings; which parts of the campaign were harder or easier than they expected; and the importance of not just adding a Kickstarter campaign on top of your existing schedule and of building in rest time.
If one of those topics piques your interest, you can easily jump to that section on YouTube by clicking on the flagged timestamps in the description.
If one of those topics piques your interest, you can easily jump to that section on YouTube by clicking on the flagged timestamps in the description.
Listen to the full episode ...
Listen to and watch the interview ...
Megan Haskell is the award-winning author of The Sanyare Chronicles, the epic fantasy "Forged in Shadow," and a women’s contemporary fantasy series, starting with "Aether Bound." And she and Greta Boris are the forces behind The Author Wheel.
Jennifer Hilt is the author of THE TROPE THESAURUS series, including TROPE YOUR WAY TO A STRONGER STORY and books on horror and romance tropes. She is also the USA Today bestselling author of 24 books across four pen names. And Jennifer is my co-host for the MINING THE MOVIES WITH TROPETALK video series that you’ll find on The Indy Author YouTube channel.
Jennifer Hilt is the author of THE TROPE THESAURUS series, including TROPE YOUR WAY TO A STRONGER STORY and books on horror and romance tropes. She is also the USA Today bestselling author of 24 books across four pen names. And Jennifer is my co-host for the MINING THE MOVIES WITH TROPETALK video series that you’ll find on The Indy Author YouTube channel.
Links
Megan and Jennifer's Links:
https://meganhaskell.com/
https://www.jenniferhilt.com/
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
https://meganhaskell.com/
https://www.jenniferhilt.com/
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Megan and Jennifer! Have you done a Kickstarter and, if yes, are there any tips you can share with your fellow authors? Have you thought about doing a Kickstarter, and did our conversation make your more or less likely to take the plunge?
Please post your comments on YouTube--and I'd love it if you would subscribe while you're there!
Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!
AI-generated Summary
This episode of "The Indy Author Podcast" features a discussion with Jennifer Hilt and Megan Haskell on their experiences with Kickstarter campaigns for their books. They cover the basics of Kickstarter, their personal motivations for using the platform, and the different strategies they employed in their campaigns. Jennifer focuses on non-fiction projects related to tropes, while Megan discusses her fiction series. They share insights on setting up campaigns, choosing reward tiers, and the importance of direct reader engagement. Challenges such as fulfillment, international shipping, and managing backer expectations are also discussed. The conversation highlights Kickstarter as a tool for expanding reader reach, testing market interest, and providing unique reader experiences. Both authors stress the importance of understanding Kickstarter's community-driven nature and the need for clear planning and execution in campaigns.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Matty: Hello, and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today, my guests are Jennifer Hilt and Megan Haskell. How are you guys doing?
[00:00:07] Megan: Good!
[00:00:09] Jennifer: Happy to be here.
[00:00:10] Matty: Yes, I'm very happy to have you here, one of my few multi-guest podcast episodes. So, this is a special acknowledgment for you guys.
Meet Jennifer Hilt and Megan Haskell
[00:00:18] Matty: To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Jennifer Hilt is the author of the "Trope Thesaurus" series, including "Trope Your Way to a Stronger Story" and books on Horror and Romance Tropes. She's also the USA Today bestselling author of 24 books across four pen names. Jennifer is also my co-host on the "Minding the Movies with Trope Talk" video series that you will find on the Indie Author YouTube channel.
Megan Haskell is the award-winning author of the "Sanyare Chronicles," the epic fantasy "Forged in Shadow," and a women's contemporary fantasy series, starting with "Aether Bound." She and Greta Boris are the forces behind the Author Wheel. So, as soon as you've caught up with the Indie Author Podcast, please go over and subscribe to the Author Wheel Podcast, which is a wonderful podcast.
[00:00:59] Megan: Oh, thank you.
[00:01:01] Matty: And I invited Jennifer and Megan on the podcast to talk about Kickstarter because Kickstarter is just in the news so much, and I thought this would be a good combination because we have someone who has had success with a non-fiction Kickstarter, Jen, and someone who has had success with a fiction Kickstarter, Megan, and then we have someone who has no experience with Kickstarter whatsoever, me. So, we figured that we would bring a good combination of perspectives to this. Jen and Megan have also promised to share not just the glory moments of their Kickstarter but also some of the more challenging moments as well.
What is Kickstarter?
[00:01:48] Jennifer: Before that, can I just take a minute to define what I think Kickstarter means? Because I didn't know that.
[00:01:55] Matty: Oh, sure. Yeah, please.
[00:01:56] Jennifer: If you're listening here and don't get it, Megan, chime in with whatever you think. But Kickstarter is a way of what we call direct sales, and you're interacting with your readers. It's similar to GoFundMe in that idea, except Kickstarter is only for creative projects. That's just kind of like the basics, which I didn't even really understand when I first was like, what is this Kickstarter thing? So just to give you a rundown of what that is. You can only use it for creative projects, and then we'll go into all the details about that.
Background on Jen's Kickstarter campaign
[00:02:27] Jennifer: My Kickstarter, the reason why I was interested in it, is I sell non-fiction; my non-fiction books are obviously about tropes. I've been using those wide, and I was seeing people like Sky Warren, Brian Cohn, and Russell Nolte doing Kickstarters with their non-fiction books and having success with that. I was like, I know zero about this, like, probably even less than zero if that's possible. So, I was wondering if that would be something that would work for me. That was kind of how I got my entry; I just plunged into it.
I had a book, "My Trope Thesaurus Romance," my second book, that I hadn't put out on Amazon or wide or anything like that. And I had a pretty good draft of it. It wasn't completely done, but I had a pretty good draft. And I thought, well, what if I use that for a Kickstarter? That was pretty much all I thought with it. And I went into it quite naive, I would say. Megan and I can talk more about that. But that was my entry into doing it: I have this product, I see other people having success with it, let me give it a go and see what happens.
Background on Megan's Kickstarter campaign
[00:03:37] Matty: And Megan, how about you? Give us a little background on your Kickstarter.
[00:03:41] Megan: Sure. So I actually have done two so far. The first was nonfiction, which was for the Author Wheel. We did a Kickstarter for our "Foundations of Great Storytelling, Preparing to Write," and that one was reasonably successful as well. Then I did my fiction one, which was kind of me putting my toes in the water because, like Jennifer, I didn't quite know what I was doing and was figuring things out. I wanted to test something that I already knew how to do.
So I did a paperback Kickstarter for the second book in the "Rise of Lilith" series, "Aether Crossed." Like Jennifer, it was successful. I fully funded within a couple of hours and exceeded my goals. I was really excited about it as a way to kind of get going. And now I'm just about to launch my second fiction Kickstarter, which will be for a special edition hardcover of my debut novel, "Sanyare: The Last Descendant," for the "Sanyare Chronicles." I think that's my big tip of the day: go slow, put your toe in the water, and build from there. That's my two cents on my Kickstarters.
The mechanics of Kickstarter
[00:05:10] Megan: The way Kickstarter works is that you set up your sales page, your campaign page, and you set up different tiers for the rewards that your backers can opt in and support you at. Then you hit launch, and you can choose how long your campaign is and how much funding you need to make it happen. For my paperback fiction campaign, I set my funding goal at $500, which would basically cover the print costs and shipping costs of the books and give me a little boost for the launch of the book. You can launch elsewhere afterward, but for the Kickstarter, I set a small goal because I was putting my toe in the water and wanted to fund those costs.
Then you set your time period; mine was a 21-day campaign, meaning I had three weeks to convince enough people to back me to achieve that funding goal. I managed to do that, getting $500 in a couple of hours, which was fabulous. That let me know I was going to meet my minimum goal and would be able to fund the print of the paperbacks and all the associated costs.
If you don't fund on Kickstarter, meaning if you don't get enough backers to meet your goal, the campaign doesn't fund. I don't like looking at it as failure, but it fails. And so, none of the backers get charged, and you are not required to complete that Kickstarter. For example, there are Kickstarters out there, like for a board game, they set usually high funding goals because they have bigger costs than we do as authors for books. So if they don't hit that 100,000 funding goal, they don't have to make the game at all. They don't owe it to anyone. But if they do hit that funding goal, they have to fulfill it for their backers. So it's really important to set your funding goal at a level that is achievable but covers your costs, so that if you fund, you can actually afford to make the product.
Expanding reader reach
[00:07:44] Matty: I'm curious to ask both of you, what were your own author business goals when you decided to pursue it? Jennifer, you had talked about that a little bit, but did you have very specific goals in mind, like what you wanted to achieve? You wanted to fund something, or you wanted to expand your reach, or you wanted to get more visibility or anything like that. Any additional goals you had there.
[00:08:06] Jennifer: Yeah, I definitely wanted to expand my reach and find other readers/community because it seems like often the people who are supporting Kickstarters are not exactly the same people you're going to find on the other channels. So it's really a way to give you more audience. That was kind of the thing that I was interested in because, like Megan said, when you're finished with your Kickstarter project, authors usually wait a minimum of three months before they put up the product for sale on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other vendors.
So, you're selling the same product twice to two different groups of people, I guess. That was obviously very appealing as an author because we don't get that a lot. That said, there's a lot of work involved in doing that. And, like the things that Megan talked about, like setting up your page and campaign, the first time I did it, I would say that all that took me a month. I'm not a particularly techie person, probably that's not a surprise, but just figuring out what everything meant took me a lot of time to figure out what rewards really mean, what a tier is, how that works with someone, and then just working out the pages themselves to make them look attractive and those kinds of things.
For me, all that was a really big part of the learning process that I was glad I did, but it definitely takes time and energy to do. It's not a set-it-and-forget-it thing in any kind of way. And it's just important for people to know that. I wanted to look for more of an audience, and I definitely had that opportunity, but it also took a lot of time and energy to learn how to do that search. So, that was really my biggest thing, because, oh, one of the things that was really nice about it is because the Kickstarter people are often other creative people, they really tend to want to sign up for your mailing lists. We're always trying to improve our mailing lists.
So that was a really great benefit that I found as I gained a whole bunch more newsletter subscribers. Things like that were more long-term goals. But the initial thing was just to broaden my reach and learn a bit more about ways to sell direct besides what I had been doing.
A growing reader desire for access to the creator
[00:10:28] Megan: I think for me it was, like Jennifer said, reaching a new audience. The interesting thing is that we're in this moment of transition within the author and reader communities, where there are huge differences between the readers that are in Kindle Unlimited, for example, who just want to read as many books as they can, and maybe they find favorites and become a different kind of reader, but they start out there, at least. And then there are the readers who are interested in having a physical copy of something, in supporting an author directly, that kind of sustainability of the creative industry. There are readers out there who are strongly in favor of that and in favor of reaching those authors and having access to more, you know, to the creative process for that author.
So I'm not saying you need to go out and have coffee with them, but like, just that access is a premium.
[00:11:30] Matty: That's a really premium deliverable to give them.
[00:11:31] Megan: That would be huge.
[00:11:33] Matty: It would be a really premium deliverable.
[00:11:36] Megan: Absolutely. One of the premium tiers that I did offer on mine was a one-on-one coffee on Zoom. I didn't meet them in person, but on Zoom. It was a very high tier, a high-cost item, and there were a few other things involved with it as well, including the books, obviously. But I did have a few backers who were like, "Yeah, I'm going to spend a couple hundred bucks so I can sit and chat with you because I think it's so cool to have access to an author and talk about the creative process and how you came up with the story idea." So it's a different audience. And for me personally, that's the direction I wanted to go, or wanted to pursue, that more community-based, experience-based group of readers rather than the 'as many books as fast as possible' reader community.
So that was just a personal strategy decision for myself. It feels right for me. It's the kind of business I want to run. But I know there are plenty of authors out there who are like, "No, I just want to write and I can write fast and I want to put out a lot of books and make sure my readers have that bingeable quality." And that's totally cool. It's just a very different mindset and a very different type of reader.
So for me, it was largely starting to try to tap into that community. And then also that first campaign, the paperback campaign, I knew it wasn't going to be a big-ticket seller like the really super high edition, luxury hardbacks. But it was my way of being like, "Is this even really feasible for me? I know how to make a paperback already. So, okay, let's do that and see if we can start to figure out what this Kickstarter thing really is, and how much work goes into it," because it is a lot.
[00:13:34] Matty: Yeah, we're definitely going to be delving into that, and I wanted to share a story that I think I heard at 20 Books, but I remember someone talking about the fact that someone did something like a Kickstarter, and one of their tiers was where the author would fly to the contributor's hometown, meet them at the airport, have lunch with them, and hand them a signed book. This was a multi-thousand-dollar tier, and he got like two people who were willing to spend, I don't know, $10,000 a piece or something like that for him to fly to their airport and hand them the book. It was really just a great example of almost literally the sky's the limit if you have the kind of community you can tap into.
The chicken and egg question of reader community
[00:14:15] Matty: Which leads to my next question, which is sort of a chicken and egg thing because you want to build up more of a community using the Kickstarter, but you kind of have to have a community that wants to interact with you in that way to start with. I do sense that a certain amount of the Kickstarter activity is Kickstarters supporting each other, especially in the author community. There's this community of Kickstarter-using authors, and they're very generous about supporting each other's Kickstarters, but among your reader base, it has to be seeded with people who want to, or maybe already are interacting with you in that way. So, Jennifer, can you talk a little bit about that? Which comes first? The seed of that kind of community, or can that come as a result of the Kickstarter?
Kickstarter as a platform for browsing for books
[00:15:02] Jennifer: Yeah, one thing that I keep learning, and I keep forgetting, but I keep relearning, is that there are so many people out there. Especially in our author communities, we sometimes feel like there's only a finite number of people interested in our work. That probably is true, but there are also just so many people out there. Kickstarter has shown me a window into just how many other people out there that I didn't even know who could be potentially interested in my work. There's a lot of people on Kickstarter. The biggest challenge when you put something up there is gaining visibility for them to see you. They have this little sticker that if your project funds in a certain amount of time, you get a "projects we love" thing, and then you get a little more visibility.
In general, I just think there's a whole lot of people out there who want to read and are interested in different ideas. Like when I did two campaigns, either time I have done very little promo, like pre-order equivalent, just because it's taken me so long to set it all up. I tend to be like, "Okay, guess what, this is coming out in three days, the campaign's going to start," and it's been really interesting to me that immediately I see people backing it who I don't know any of these people.
[00:17:12] Matty: Yeah, I guess I always just assume, because this is how I would use Kickstarter, and of course, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking everybody else is using something the way I'm using it, but I only ever go to Kickstarter if I hear somebody that I already like announce they have a Kickstarter. Then I'll go look and say, "Oh yeah, that looks good, I'm going to fund that," but I would never go to Kickstarter just to poke around.
[00:17:34] Jennifer: But I know people that do.
[00:17:36] Matty: Yeah, evidently. Megan, what are your thoughts about that?
[00:17:39] Megan: Yeah, so I agree. I think there are people that Kickstarter has become the primary way that they shop for books. They want, especially book collectors, who want that physical copy in their hands. I think there are people, that's how they do it. They like the system, they like interacting with the authors directly, they like having that physical, gorgeous product in their hands. It's a completely different audience than the people who are just reading ebooks online and are used to that. So I think there's that aspect to it.
As far as the chicken and the egg, I think it's both. You need both. If you've been primarily or exclusively online with Amazon, especially if you're exclusive with Amazon, but even if you're wide, even if you're across all the ebook platforms, your audience is therefore going to be mostly digital. They're going to be the ones that have subscribed to your list. Now, some of those people will be super fans or want that physical, beautiful collector's edition because they love your work. But, as a percentage, it's hard to say what that percentage is going to be. It will fund some, but it's probably not going to be everything.
Meanwhile, now you've got this Kickstarter page, and especially after your first campaign. And we'll see how this works out for my second campaign. So, Jennifer, you might be able to speak to this a little bit more. But it starts to snowball because all the people that backed your first campaign you can now message them and say, "Hey, I've got a new campaign up, I've got a new book, or I've got this special edition." So now they do already know you, they're already in the system, and I think there's more momentum there. Start small. On that first campaign, again, this is why I think, my personal belief, and I have not done enough Kickstarters to prove this out yet, but, my personal belief is that you start small. You put your toe in the water, easy funding goals, something you already know how to do, something that's digital, or, I mean, Kickstarter likes physical products, so you still should do a physical product of some kind, but start small, don't have massive goals for your first Kickstarter.
[00:20:22] Matty: I'd be interested in hearing from both of you about how your Kickstarter experience differed from what you expected, like what were your biggest surprises as you went through the process? And Jennifer, let's start with you on that one.
[00:20:34] Jennifer: Biggest surprises... Let's see, I would say, overwhelmingly, backers have been lovely. Like, if you have some worry about like, oh, I'm going to get some, no, people have just been great. I've really enjoyed interacting with them; they've been nice, enthusiastic, understanding, just great.
The challenge of data management
[00:20:52] Jennifer: The management of how you deliver the stuff is a whole other thing and a very real part of it, and so the data management part of a Kickstarter campaign is kind of basically three things for me. One, a product that you create. Two, the Kickstarter campaign itself that we were talking about, that you're trying to get funded. And then three, what they call fulfillment, of how you actually get all those things that you've promised people to them. And so those are, in my mind, pretty much three distinct things that I have to do. The fulfillment part takes a lot of time and energy from me as I'm learning how to do it.
And there's not just a platform you can use Kickstarter to do it, but there's another platform that can help you do it, and one of them that I use is called BackerKit, and they do it for a fee, but it helps you manage all the people, like the email addresses and the physical addresses and who gets what, because as you get a whole bunch of tiers, it can get very confusing very quickly.
So, learning how to do all that has been something that's taken a lot of time and energy, and I feel like, oh, I'm really understanding it the second time, but the first time that I did it, I was like, very much pulling my hair out, like, "What am I doing? How does this work?" And it was very intense for me to figure all that stuff out.
So I think it's just kind of like everything else. You don't know until you do it, and I wouldn't have thought there would be so much, like, data management involved, which is probably incredibly naive on my part, but that, but there it is.
Controls on use of backer data [00:22:26] Matty: I'm curious as to how much of the backer data you get. Do you get email addresses and mailing addresses because you need them to fulfill, and are there any restrictions on how you can use that data?
[00:22:46] Jennifer: You cannot just take and download all the emails and put them on your list unless you ask. I can communicate with them through Kickstarter or BackerKit about their order, but if I want to send them an email privately or send them my newsletter, there's a way that you ask them in a survey at the end of your campaign, with a question that says, "Hey, do you want to be on my mailing list?" Overwhelmingly, that community says yes, which is why it's a great way to grow your email list. But you absolutely, 100 percent, cannot just take and download all these emails and put them on your list.
[00:23:47] Matty: Makes sense.
[00:23:49] Megan: And they don't give you any of that information until your Kickstarter funds and closes. During the campaign, other than sending backer updates within Kickstarter, it's like a message through Kickstarter to your backers or people who are following your campaign. So you can do that, but you don't actually see who those backers are until after the campaign closes and is funded. Then you can move them over to BackerKit or there's another one called PledgeBox. There are a few different companies, as Jennifer was saying. That's when you get that information, and on all the sites, they have this big thing that you have to check the boxes that say, "I understand, I will not copy, save, or distribute this email list. I understand this is their privacy, laws and all that stuff." So that's an important consideration as well. But for people who are concerned about being backers, that's what you can tell them, is that you don't have access to their information other than what you need to do to fulfill the Kickstarter, and you're not keeping or saving it anywhere.
[00:24:59] Matty: So Megan, I want to give you a chance to answer the question about what was the biggest surprise for you as you ran your Kickstarter campaign.
Kickstarter as market research (e.g., readers want to read but not take online cocktail classes)
[00:25:05] Megan: So again, kind of going back to this is an ongoing learning process, right? So I thought for my fiction campaign, because my series has a protagonist who is a bartender, I created cocktail menus for each of the books with the help of a bartender friend. And I thought as an upper-tier add-on, people would love to have an online Zoom cocktail class with my friend who teaches them, right? It was just such a no-brainer, why would you not do that? But nobody backed it.
[00:25:45] Matty: Really?
[00:25:45] Megan: Yeah, nobody backed it, except for a couple of people who bought in at the highest tier because they wanted the one-on-one. Honestly, they didn't really care that much about the cocktail class, but nobody else backed it. So, I was like, "Oh, well, fun fact of the day, readers like to read, not attend a cocktail class." Sometimes I think Kickstarter can be another great way, like live events, to really start to understand who your audience is and what they really want, as well as interacting with them more personally and so forth like we've talked about. But that was a big aha moment that like, "Oh, no, this is, that didn't fit. It wasn't what the readers wanted." So taking that information moving forward, I will not be offering a cocktail class in the future.
Ideas for backer tier offerings
[00:26:43] Matty: Well, we've mentioned sort of in passing what you were offering as different tiers. Megan, can you just go through what your different tiers were in one of your Kickstarters and what the financial commitment was from a backer for each of them?
[00:26:55] Megan: Yeah, I'll do my best. I don't have it up, but, so the base level was just to support the project. So I think for $3 or something like that, you could just support the project. And I had a couple of digital downloads, like coloring pages, for that one. Then I had the digital-only or ebook-only tier, which was just for the ebook of "Aether Crossed." I kept the same lower-tier items as well, so it still had the coloring page, a computer wallpaper, but digital downloads. That one I think was $10. Then I had the two-book series in digital, it might've been like $15 for that one or something. So that was all my digital-only tiers.
And then I had the paperback, so that was my first physical tier where I actually had to ship stuff out. With the paperback, you also got a bookmark, and it was signed by me, and then I think I charged $25 because it included shipping. Shipping is tough, and I'm still, for my next campaign, I want to figure out international shipping, which Jennifer, I don't know if you've done international shipping, but I may have to
[00:28:09] Jennifer: We should talk because I would like to figure it out too because people ask all the time and I'm like, I'm afraid, I'm afraid.
[00:28:14] Megan: Yeah, international shipping is tough. But for U.S. shipping, I included that in all the tiers so that it was all wrapped up in a single price. Then I had the two-book paperback tier because it was the second book in the series. And then I started adding on the VIP tiers, or the experience tier. It was an expensive high-ticket item, but it was a cocktail class, a group Ask Me Anything on Zoom meeting, and of course, all the digital books, all the physical VIP tier, which had all the physical books, as well as all the digital stuff, as well as all the classes. And then I had the super extra VIP experience, which included the one-on-one. So, yeah. I want to say that one was like $350.
I think I offered a discount at the beginning of the campaign to try to get people in there, and then after a week or something, I think the full price was $350, I want to say, so, yeah, that was how I broke that one up.
Now, for the hardback edition that I'm about to do, I'm going to try and keep it a little simpler because it was a lot to manage on the back end as far as understanding which backers were in which tiers and what they got and making sure they all got the things that they were supposed to get and all that stuff. So I think I am going to try and simplify it a little bit, but we'll see. Sometimes my ideas run away with me.
[00:29:51] Matty: And Jennifer, how about you? What were some of the things you offered at different backer rates?
[00:29:55] Jennifer: Yeah, similar to Megan, the same thing of like ten dollars was the ebook. I had like a one-dollar PDF. Ten dollars was the ebook and I think thirty dollars was the paperback. So when you get the paperback though you get the ebook and you like everything below it. So it all kind of meshed. And then the BackerKit, the users are used to that. So you don't have to explain that. You know, it's pretty laid out. So that makes sense. I simplified for my second one because it really seemed like people are just basically interested in books and classes and then doing some more one-on-one things.
So those are the kind of things I offered. The neat thing about this is that in addition to the things that you're actually offering for the tiers and things, there's also things that are called add-ons. And that's how people who have a really good backlist, like Megan's fans, per se, they can go back and get copies of her books that she has. I can also get those also, even if they're not in a tier. So it's a different way of adding.
I think the one thing that I really learned that I think is important that sometimes gets lost is, if you have a really good product, you don't have to knock yourself out with lots of bells and whistles. So I think it's okay to not offer 9 million other things to have a good thing and some various versions of that can appeal to people at different price points, but you don't have to do all the things. And I think that, I've seen that has helped, you know, work for me, but I also see other campaigns where that's working, too. If people like it, they're going to like it. You don't have to entice them with a whole bunch of other extraneous elements.
Backers aren't bargain hunters
[00:31:39] Matty: I'm curious about how you balance the price you're charging or asking for from a backer for a product, and then what you eventually want to sell it for when you get to the point where you can put it up on a retail platform.
[00:31:51] Jennifer: I don't actually think that's an issue. Early on, I made the mistake of thinking these were different kinds of backers who want different experiences. They're not just looking for a bargain at $7.99 for an ebook. They're happy to pay a higher price if they're going to have some interaction with you, they're going to have a paperback that's signed, and those kinds of things, so it doesn't really compare directly. It's not as much of an issue as I would have thought at first.
[00:32:22] Matty: That's interesting.
[00:32:32] Jennifer: Did I have a philosophy? I guess I'd heard or read somewhere that the $60 tier should be really good stuff, so when I do a $60 tier, it's like, it includes a class, a digital copy, and a physical copy if you're in the U.S. I really try to make sure that has a lot of good stuff for that price point. The things below it tend to just be more like regular book sales. That was just my way of doing it.
[00:33:33] Megan: To add on to that, the key part here to remember is that you have to know your costs. Understanding your budget before you go in is incredibly important. So figuring out what it's going to cost you to print, are you going to do print on demand or a print run, what the shipping materials costs, the credit card fees costs, all these other costs have to be built into that Kickstarter tier. Backers understand that.
So when you're coming up with your pricing, it matters, but not as much as you might think. The nice thing about nesting everything is that you can have all these little digital add-ons that give your backers something exclusive for Kickstarter, like the wallpaper or coloring book page I made, which haven't been sent out any other time or place. For some backers, that's going to be awesome.
If you just have a lot of digital items included in your tiers, you can build up over the course of all the tiers what those are, and those digital items, at very basically zero cost, add to that backer experience and give you that higher tier price value.
[00:35:19] Jennifer: For example, I just did five small videos, mini vids, talking about tropes in various movies that are only available to people at the $60 level and above, and they get the little code to watch those, and those are theirs.
[00:35:32] Megan: So those are like in addition, you know, so like she's saying, you can add other things on digitally that's not more like things that you're shipping.
Which parts were more difficult than expected?
[00:35:40] Matty: That's cool. So, that leads into the next question I wanted to ask, and I'm anticipating the answer a little bit. But, of all the people I've spoken to about Kickstarter, the thing that people said took much more time than they expected was fulfillment. I'm wondering if that was the case for you, or if there was some part of it that was much more difficult than you expected, whether that was time-wise, effort-wise, or psychically, what was much more difficult than you expected? Jennifer, let's start with you.
[00:36:08] Jennifer: I think it was just, like we talked about, figuring out who gets what, when. You can just use Kickstarter to do it. You don't have to use one of these other fulfillment providers. I used BackerKit the first time because people had said it makes it easier for subsequent campaigns. It was pretty stressful figuring out all the stuff the first time. The second time, things have gone a lot smoother. Part of it, I think, is BackerKit has improved. It still takes a lot of time to figure out how all this stuff gets to everybody.
[00:37:09] Megan: There's a learning curve. Go in knowing that it's going to be challenging, from campaign setup all the way through fulfillment. Don't bank that money until you get everything shipped out because there is a new ecosystem to learn. It's going to be challenging, especially if you haven't ever worked in a warehouse. You have to give yourself patience and grace and break it down into small, easy-to-complete steps. Figure out the next thing you need to know, and then the next thing. Don't expect to create the campaign page in a week and then launch the campaign and think it's going to be all smooth sailing. It is a lot of work and a lot of learning. So just be prepared for that.
How KS compares to running an online store
[00:38:38] Matty: It might be useful for people who aren't familiar with Kickstarter to think of it as setting up an online store, a more elaborate one. They need to figure out the technology, fulfillment, and how to reach the customers they want to reach. There are analogies to all those things for Kickstarter. It's like establishing a new outlet with all the little pieces and parts that need to be accommodated.
[00:39:12] Megan: For authors interested in more direct sales, Kickstarter is a great first step because it guides you through the process. You can use templates and information out there. It's easier to do direct sales like a Shopify store after Kickstarter because you now have inventory, copywriting, and many pieces you need, which you built with Kickstarter's help.
[00:40:21] Matty: That's interesting because I would have assumed it would be the other way around, starting with the online store and then Kickstarter.
[00:40:32] Megan: You can do it that way, I did. But Kickstarter's active community and the guidance they provide can make it easier to then transition to an online store setup. It's just that the nice thing with Kickstarter is that there's such an active community, and they do kind of walk you through the pieces to get you set up, and then you have all those pieces in place, so you can more easily transfer them onto a website, what would be an ad hoc or more ad hoc website system.
What was easier or smoother than expected?
[00:41:02] Matty: Was there any part of it that was easier or smoother than you expected? Megan, let's go back to you.
[00:41:12] Megan: The easy part for me was actually running the campaign. The setup process to get the campaign ready was stressful, making sure I was going to make a profit. But the actual campaign run was less stressful because I had systems in place. I pre-scheduled a lot of stuff, so during the actual campaign run, I wasn't as stressed as I thought I would be.
[00:42:52] Matty: And Jennifer, you had mentioned that you found the BackerKit experience made that part smoother than you had worried it would be. Are there other things that ended up being smoother than you expected for you?
[00:43:03] Jennifer: Like Megan, I found the pre-launch pretty stressful, as I was trying to figure all this out and wondering if anybody would want the things I'm coming up with. But once the campaign itself is going, it does kind of roll along. You tend to it, but you aren't making big changes or doing big things, so it's more just emotionally being there. When it's going, you're less actively working it as opposed to the beginning and the end.
[00:43:58] Matty: That's lovely. So I wanted to ask both of you about just in general, how did you feel about the results of the campaigns you've run? Did it deliver what you were looking for? Are there any major changes you would make the next time you ran one? And Megan, let's start with you.
[00:44:13] Megan: The biggest change for the next campaign is that I'm going to simplify the tiers a bit and not offer a cocktail class. This next campaign will be very much more focused on the product itself, the hardback, making it really beautiful, getting enough backers to afford the print run. The first fiction campaign was successful because I learned a lot, what my audience is looking for, and what the audience on Kickstarter in general is looking for. The first one's tough, I'm hoping the second one is less so.
[00:45:18] Matty: Jennifer, what's your thought on that?
The importance of building rest time in
[00:45:20] Jennifer: I agree with all the things she said, and I'm just really thinking about going forward, making sure to build some rest time in because when you finish, you're like, "Oh, you have all these other things to do." And then you're thinking about the next one, but also realizing, "Oh, I need to take a break." There are people who can run many close together, but I'm probably not that person. And just to kind of honor the way that it works and not feel like, "Oh, just because this person did it this way, I have to do it that way." Kickstarter is very much a great platform to take a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and work out what thing works best for you. But you don't have to follow so much of a set pattern and knock yourself out.
Don't just add KS on top of your existing schedule
[00:46:03] Megan: I like that a lot. Expanding on that, the thing I learned from my nonfiction campaign, which we're finally almost completely fulfilled with because we had to make some courses, is that you can't maintain your standard schedule on your creation of stuff when you're trying to fulfill or when you're trying to do these Kickstarters. You can't stay at that same level and then add something on top. It stresses you out. So, making sure that you go, "Okay, this is now a component of the process, and so some of the other things that you normally do are probably going to slow down. And that's okay, and you need to be able to breathe." My current mantra is "pause, breathe, recover."
[00:47:00] Matty: It could be PBR, except that's already Pabst Blue Ribbon, right? You could use a PBR to PBR.
[00:47:06] Megan: Yeah, there we go.
[00:47:08] Matty: Well, I love any suggestion that a guest ever makes in support of self-care and reasonability, and taking care of yourself as well as taking care of your business. So thank you so much to both of you, and I want to give both of you a moment to share where people can find out more about you and everything you do online. Megan, let's start with you.
[00:47:26] Megan: My fiction website is meganhaskell.com. All of my books are available there, in signed paperback as well as ebook, and I have a few titles that have been done in audio at this point as well, so that's all there. They are also available wide. For the nonfiction side of my life, you can visit authorwheel.com. And then I also have started recently writing a new newsletter called Clarify, Simplify, Implement on Substack.
[00:48:16] Matty: Perfect. Jen, how about you?
[00:48:19] Jennifer: You can find all my stuff at jenniferhilt.com. I've got my nonfiction there, and there's a little bit of my fiction too, if you'd like to take a look. And like Megan, I have a Substack going to trope talk and YouTube channel so you can find me around doing that stuff. And Megan's Substack, I really love.
[00:48:39] Megan: Well, I was going to say, I really love yours too, so we can all be happy together.
[00:48:44] Jennifer: Whenever your thing comes, I'm like, "Oh God, I needed to hear that right now."
[00:48:49] Megan: Yay!
[00:48:50] Matty: I love it when you guys do the promotional work for me. So thank you both so much. This was a great conversation.
[00:48:56] Jennifer: Thanks, Matty.
[00:48:57] Megan: Thank you for having us.
[00:00:07] Megan: Good!
[00:00:09] Jennifer: Happy to be here.
[00:00:10] Matty: Yes, I'm very happy to have you here, one of my few multi-guest podcast episodes. So, this is a special acknowledgment for you guys.
Meet Jennifer Hilt and Megan Haskell
[00:00:18] Matty: To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Jennifer Hilt is the author of the "Trope Thesaurus" series, including "Trope Your Way to a Stronger Story" and books on Horror and Romance Tropes. She's also the USA Today bestselling author of 24 books across four pen names. Jennifer is also my co-host on the "Minding the Movies with Trope Talk" video series that you will find on the Indie Author YouTube channel.
Megan Haskell is the award-winning author of the "Sanyare Chronicles," the epic fantasy "Forged in Shadow," and a women's contemporary fantasy series, starting with "Aether Bound." She and Greta Boris are the forces behind the Author Wheel. So, as soon as you've caught up with the Indie Author Podcast, please go over and subscribe to the Author Wheel Podcast, which is a wonderful podcast.
[00:00:59] Megan: Oh, thank you.
[00:01:01] Matty: And I invited Jennifer and Megan on the podcast to talk about Kickstarter because Kickstarter is just in the news so much, and I thought this would be a good combination because we have someone who has had success with a non-fiction Kickstarter, Jen, and someone who has had success with a fiction Kickstarter, Megan, and then we have someone who has no experience with Kickstarter whatsoever, me. So, we figured that we would bring a good combination of perspectives to this. Jen and Megan have also promised to share not just the glory moments of their Kickstarter but also some of the more challenging moments as well.
What is Kickstarter?
[00:01:48] Jennifer: Before that, can I just take a minute to define what I think Kickstarter means? Because I didn't know that.
[00:01:55] Matty: Oh, sure. Yeah, please.
[00:01:56] Jennifer: If you're listening here and don't get it, Megan, chime in with whatever you think. But Kickstarter is a way of what we call direct sales, and you're interacting with your readers. It's similar to GoFundMe in that idea, except Kickstarter is only for creative projects. That's just kind of like the basics, which I didn't even really understand when I first was like, what is this Kickstarter thing? So just to give you a rundown of what that is. You can only use it for creative projects, and then we'll go into all the details about that.
Background on Jen's Kickstarter campaign
[00:02:27] Jennifer: My Kickstarter, the reason why I was interested in it, is I sell non-fiction; my non-fiction books are obviously about tropes. I've been using those wide, and I was seeing people like Sky Warren, Brian Cohn, and Russell Nolte doing Kickstarters with their non-fiction books and having success with that. I was like, I know zero about this, like, probably even less than zero if that's possible. So, I was wondering if that would be something that would work for me. That was kind of how I got my entry; I just plunged into it.
I had a book, "My Trope Thesaurus Romance," my second book, that I hadn't put out on Amazon or wide or anything like that. And I had a pretty good draft of it. It wasn't completely done, but I had a pretty good draft. And I thought, well, what if I use that for a Kickstarter? That was pretty much all I thought with it. And I went into it quite naive, I would say. Megan and I can talk more about that. But that was my entry into doing it: I have this product, I see other people having success with it, let me give it a go and see what happens.
Background on Megan's Kickstarter campaign
[00:03:37] Matty: And Megan, how about you? Give us a little background on your Kickstarter.
[00:03:41] Megan: Sure. So I actually have done two so far. The first was nonfiction, which was for the Author Wheel. We did a Kickstarter for our "Foundations of Great Storytelling, Preparing to Write," and that one was reasonably successful as well. Then I did my fiction one, which was kind of me putting my toes in the water because, like Jennifer, I didn't quite know what I was doing and was figuring things out. I wanted to test something that I already knew how to do.
So I did a paperback Kickstarter for the second book in the "Rise of Lilith" series, "Aether Crossed." Like Jennifer, it was successful. I fully funded within a couple of hours and exceeded my goals. I was really excited about it as a way to kind of get going. And now I'm just about to launch my second fiction Kickstarter, which will be for a special edition hardcover of my debut novel, "Sanyare: The Last Descendant," for the "Sanyare Chronicles." I think that's my big tip of the day: go slow, put your toe in the water, and build from there. That's my two cents on my Kickstarters.
The mechanics of Kickstarter
[00:05:10] Megan: The way Kickstarter works is that you set up your sales page, your campaign page, and you set up different tiers for the rewards that your backers can opt in and support you at. Then you hit launch, and you can choose how long your campaign is and how much funding you need to make it happen. For my paperback fiction campaign, I set my funding goal at $500, which would basically cover the print costs and shipping costs of the books and give me a little boost for the launch of the book. You can launch elsewhere afterward, but for the Kickstarter, I set a small goal because I was putting my toe in the water and wanted to fund those costs.
Then you set your time period; mine was a 21-day campaign, meaning I had three weeks to convince enough people to back me to achieve that funding goal. I managed to do that, getting $500 in a couple of hours, which was fabulous. That let me know I was going to meet my minimum goal and would be able to fund the print of the paperbacks and all the associated costs.
If you don't fund on Kickstarter, meaning if you don't get enough backers to meet your goal, the campaign doesn't fund. I don't like looking at it as failure, but it fails. And so, none of the backers get charged, and you are not required to complete that Kickstarter. For example, there are Kickstarters out there, like for a board game, they set usually high funding goals because they have bigger costs than we do as authors for books. So if they don't hit that 100,000 funding goal, they don't have to make the game at all. They don't owe it to anyone. But if they do hit that funding goal, they have to fulfill it for their backers. So it's really important to set your funding goal at a level that is achievable but covers your costs, so that if you fund, you can actually afford to make the product.
Expanding reader reach
[00:07:44] Matty: I'm curious to ask both of you, what were your own author business goals when you decided to pursue it? Jennifer, you had talked about that a little bit, but did you have very specific goals in mind, like what you wanted to achieve? You wanted to fund something, or you wanted to expand your reach, or you wanted to get more visibility or anything like that. Any additional goals you had there.
[00:08:06] Jennifer: Yeah, I definitely wanted to expand my reach and find other readers/community because it seems like often the people who are supporting Kickstarters are not exactly the same people you're going to find on the other channels. So it's really a way to give you more audience. That was kind of the thing that I was interested in because, like Megan said, when you're finished with your Kickstarter project, authors usually wait a minimum of three months before they put up the product for sale on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other vendors.
So, you're selling the same product twice to two different groups of people, I guess. That was obviously very appealing as an author because we don't get that a lot. That said, there's a lot of work involved in doing that. And, like the things that Megan talked about, like setting up your page and campaign, the first time I did it, I would say that all that took me a month. I'm not a particularly techie person, probably that's not a surprise, but just figuring out what everything meant took me a lot of time to figure out what rewards really mean, what a tier is, how that works with someone, and then just working out the pages themselves to make them look attractive and those kinds of things.
For me, all that was a really big part of the learning process that I was glad I did, but it definitely takes time and energy to do. It's not a set-it-and-forget-it thing in any kind of way. And it's just important for people to know that. I wanted to look for more of an audience, and I definitely had that opportunity, but it also took a lot of time and energy to learn how to do that search. So, that was really my biggest thing, because, oh, one of the things that was really nice about it is because the Kickstarter people are often other creative people, they really tend to want to sign up for your mailing lists. We're always trying to improve our mailing lists.
So that was a really great benefit that I found as I gained a whole bunch more newsletter subscribers. Things like that were more long-term goals. But the initial thing was just to broaden my reach and learn a bit more about ways to sell direct besides what I had been doing.
A growing reader desire for access to the creator
[00:10:28] Megan: I think for me it was, like Jennifer said, reaching a new audience. The interesting thing is that we're in this moment of transition within the author and reader communities, where there are huge differences between the readers that are in Kindle Unlimited, for example, who just want to read as many books as they can, and maybe they find favorites and become a different kind of reader, but they start out there, at least. And then there are the readers who are interested in having a physical copy of something, in supporting an author directly, that kind of sustainability of the creative industry. There are readers out there who are strongly in favor of that and in favor of reaching those authors and having access to more, you know, to the creative process for that author.
So I'm not saying you need to go out and have coffee with them, but like, just that access is a premium.
[00:11:30] Matty: That's a really premium deliverable to give them.
[00:11:31] Megan: That would be huge.
[00:11:33] Matty: It would be a really premium deliverable.
[00:11:36] Megan: Absolutely. One of the premium tiers that I did offer on mine was a one-on-one coffee on Zoom. I didn't meet them in person, but on Zoom. It was a very high tier, a high-cost item, and there were a few other things involved with it as well, including the books, obviously. But I did have a few backers who were like, "Yeah, I'm going to spend a couple hundred bucks so I can sit and chat with you because I think it's so cool to have access to an author and talk about the creative process and how you came up with the story idea." So it's a different audience. And for me personally, that's the direction I wanted to go, or wanted to pursue, that more community-based, experience-based group of readers rather than the 'as many books as fast as possible' reader community.
So that was just a personal strategy decision for myself. It feels right for me. It's the kind of business I want to run. But I know there are plenty of authors out there who are like, "No, I just want to write and I can write fast and I want to put out a lot of books and make sure my readers have that bingeable quality." And that's totally cool. It's just a very different mindset and a very different type of reader.
So for me, it was largely starting to try to tap into that community. And then also that first campaign, the paperback campaign, I knew it wasn't going to be a big-ticket seller like the really super high edition, luxury hardbacks. But it was my way of being like, "Is this even really feasible for me? I know how to make a paperback already. So, okay, let's do that and see if we can start to figure out what this Kickstarter thing really is, and how much work goes into it," because it is a lot.
[00:13:34] Matty: Yeah, we're definitely going to be delving into that, and I wanted to share a story that I think I heard at 20 Books, but I remember someone talking about the fact that someone did something like a Kickstarter, and one of their tiers was where the author would fly to the contributor's hometown, meet them at the airport, have lunch with them, and hand them a signed book. This was a multi-thousand-dollar tier, and he got like two people who were willing to spend, I don't know, $10,000 a piece or something like that for him to fly to their airport and hand them the book. It was really just a great example of almost literally the sky's the limit if you have the kind of community you can tap into.
The chicken and egg question of reader community
[00:14:15] Matty: Which leads to my next question, which is sort of a chicken and egg thing because you want to build up more of a community using the Kickstarter, but you kind of have to have a community that wants to interact with you in that way to start with. I do sense that a certain amount of the Kickstarter activity is Kickstarters supporting each other, especially in the author community. There's this community of Kickstarter-using authors, and they're very generous about supporting each other's Kickstarters, but among your reader base, it has to be seeded with people who want to, or maybe already are interacting with you in that way. So, Jennifer, can you talk a little bit about that? Which comes first? The seed of that kind of community, or can that come as a result of the Kickstarter?
Kickstarter as a platform for browsing for books
[00:15:02] Jennifer: Yeah, one thing that I keep learning, and I keep forgetting, but I keep relearning, is that there are so many people out there. Especially in our author communities, we sometimes feel like there's only a finite number of people interested in our work. That probably is true, but there are also just so many people out there. Kickstarter has shown me a window into just how many other people out there that I didn't even know who could be potentially interested in my work. There's a lot of people on Kickstarter. The biggest challenge when you put something up there is gaining visibility for them to see you. They have this little sticker that if your project funds in a certain amount of time, you get a "projects we love" thing, and then you get a little more visibility.
In general, I just think there's a whole lot of people out there who want to read and are interested in different ideas. Like when I did two campaigns, either time I have done very little promo, like pre-order equivalent, just because it's taken me so long to set it all up. I tend to be like, "Okay, guess what, this is coming out in three days, the campaign's going to start," and it's been really interesting to me that immediately I see people backing it who I don't know any of these people.
[00:17:12] Matty: Yeah, I guess I always just assume, because this is how I would use Kickstarter, and of course, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking everybody else is using something the way I'm using it, but I only ever go to Kickstarter if I hear somebody that I already like announce they have a Kickstarter. Then I'll go look and say, "Oh yeah, that looks good, I'm going to fund that," but I would never go to Kickstarter just to poke around.
[00:17:34] Jennifer: But I know people that do.
[00:17:36] Matty: Yeah, evidently. Megan, what are your thoughts about that?
[00:17:39] Megan: Yeah, so I agree. I think there are people that Kickstarter has become the primary way that they shop for books. They want, especially book collectors, who want that physical copy in their hands. I think there are people, that's how they do it. They like the system, they like interacting with the authors directly, they like having that physical, gorgeous product in their hands. It's a completely different audience than the people who are just reading ebooks online and are used to that. So I think there's that aspect to it.
As far as the chicken and the egg, I think it's both. You need both. If you've been primarily or exclusively online with Amazon, especially if you're exclusive with Amazon, but even if you're wide, even if you're across all the ebook platforms, your audience is therefore going to be mostly digital. They're going to be the ones that have subscribed to your list. Now, some of those people will be super fans or want that physical, beautiful collector's edition because they love your work. But, as a percentage, it's hard to say what that percentage is going to be. It will fund some, but it's probably not going to be everything.
Meanwhile, now you've got this Kickstarter page, and especially after your first campaign. And we'll see how this works out for my second campaign. So, Jennifer, you might be able to speak to this a little bit more. But it starts to snowball because all the people that backed your first campaign you can now message them and say, "Hey, I've got a new campaign up, I've got a new book, or I've got this special edition." So now they do already know you, they're already in the system, and I think there's more momentum there. Start small. On that first campaign, again, this is why I think, my personal belief, and I have not done enough Kickstarters to prove this out yet, but, my personal belief is that you start small. You put your toe in the water, easy funding goals, something you already know how to do, something that's digital, or, I mean, Kickstarter likes physical products, so you still should do a physical product of some kind, but start small, don't have massive goals for your first Kickstarter.
[00:20:22] Matty: I'd be interested in hearing from both of you about how your Kickstarter experience differed from what you expected, like what were your biggest surprises as you went through the process? And Jennifer, let's start with you on that one.
[00:20:34] Jennifer: Biggest surprises... Let's see, I would say, overwhelmingly, backers have been lovely. Like, if you have some worry about like, oh, I'm going to get some, no, people have just been great. I've really enjoyed interacting with them; they've been nice, enthusiastic, understanding, just great.
The challenge of data management
[00:20:52] Jennifer: The management of how you deliver the stuff is a whole other thing and a very real part of it, and so the data management part of a Kickstarter campaign is kind of basically three things for me. One, a product that you create. Two, the Kickstarter campaign itself that we were talking about, that you're trying to get funded. And then three, what they call fulfillment, of how you actually get all those things that you've promised people to them. And so those are, in my mind, pretty much three distinct things that I have to do. The fulfillment part takes a lot of time and energy from me as I'm learning how to do it.
And there's not just a platform you can use Kickstarter to do it, but there's another platform that can help you do it, and one of them that I use is called BackerKit, and they do it for a fee, but it helps you manage all the people, like the email addresses and the physical addresses and who gets what, because as you get a whole bunch of tiers, it can get very confusing very quickly.
So, learning how to do all that has been something that's taken a lot of time and energy, and I feel like, oh, I'm really understanding it the second time, but the first time that I did it, I was like, very much pulling my hair out, like, "What am I doing? How does this work?" And it was very intense for me to figure all that stuff out.
So I think it's just kind of like everything else. You don't know until you do it, and I wouldn't have thought there would be so much, like, data management involved, which is probably incredibly naive on my part, but that, but there it is.
Controls on use of backer data [00:22:26] Matty: I'm curious as to how much of the backer data you get. Do you get email addresses and mailing addresses because you need them to fulfill, and are there any restrictions on how you can use that data?
[00:22:46] Jennifer: You cannot just take and download all the emails and put them on your list unless you ask. I can communicate with them through Kickstarter or BackerKit about their order, but if I want to send them an email privately or send them my newsletter, there's a way that you ask them in a survey at the end of your campaign, with a question that says, "Hey, do you want to be on my mailing list?" Overwhelmingly, that community says yes, which is why it's a great way to grow your email list. But you absolutely, 100 percent, cannot just take and download all these emails and put them on your list.
[00:23:47] Matty: Makes sense.
[00:23:49] Megan: And they don't give you any of that information until your Kickstarter funds and closes. During the campaign, other than sending backer updates within Kickstarter, it's like a message through Kickstarter to your backers or people who are following your campaign. So you can do that, but you don't actually see who those backers are until after the campaign closes and is funded. Then you can move them over to BackerKit or there's another one called PledgeBox. There are a few different companies, as Jennifer was saying. That's when you get that information, and on all the sites, they have this big thing that you have to check the boxes that say, "I understand, I will not copy, save, or distribute this email list. I understand this is their privacy, laws and all that stuff." So that's an important consideration as well. But for people who are concerned about being backers, that's what you can tell them, is that you don't have access to their information other than what you need to do to fulfill the Kickstarter, and you're not keeping or saving it anywhere.
[00:24:59] Matty: So Megan, I want to give you a chance to answer the question about what was the biggest surprise for you as you ran your Kickstarter campaign.
Kickstarter as market research (e.g., readers want to read but not take online cocktail classes)
[00:25:05] Megan: So again, kind of going back to this is an ongoing learning process, right? So I thought for my fiction campaign, because my series has a protagonist who is a bartender, I created cocktail menus for each of the books with the help of a bartender friend. And I thought as an upper-tier add-on, people would love to have an online Zoom cocktail class with my friend who teaches them, right? It was just such a no-brainer, why would you not do that? But nobody backed it.
[00:25:45] Matty: Really?
[00:25:45] Megan: Yeah, nobody backed it, except for a couple of people who bought in at the highest tier because they wanted the one-on-one. Honestly, they didn't really care that much about the cocktail class, but nobody else backed it. So, I was like, "Oh, well, fun fact of the day, readers like to read, not attend a cocktail class." Sometimes I think Kickstarter can be another great way, like live events, to really start to understand who your audience is and what they really want, as well as interacting with them more personally and so forth like we've talked about. But that was a big aha moment that like, "Oh, no, this is, that didn't fit. It wasn't what the readers wanted." So taking that information moving forward, I will not be offering a cocktail class in the future.
Ideas for backer tier offerings
[00:26:43] Matty: Well, we've mentioned sort of in passing what you were offering as different tiers. Megan, can you just go through what your different tiers were in one of your Kickstarters and what the financial commitment was from a backer for each of them?
[00:26:55] Megan: Yeah, I'll do my best. I don't have it up, but, so the base level was just to support the project. So I think for $3 or something like that, you could just support the project. And I had a couple of digital downloads, like coloring pages, for that one. Then I had the digital-only or ebook-only tier, which was just for the ebook of "Aether Crossed." I kept the same lower-tier items as well, so it still had the coloring page, a computer wallpaper, but digital downloads. That one I think was $10. Then I had the two-book series in digital, it might've been like $15 for that one or something. So that was all my digital-only tiers.
And then I had the paperback, so that was my first physical tier where I actually had to ship stuff out. With the paperback, you also got a bookmark, and it was signed by me, and then I think I charged $25 because it included shipping. Shipping is tough, and I'm still, for my next campaign, I want to figure out international shipping, which Jennifer, I don't know if you've done international shipping, but I may have to
[00:28:09] Jennifer: We should talk because I would like to figure it out too because people ask all the time and I'm like, I'm afraid, I'm afraid.
[00:28:14] Megan: Yeah, international shipping is tough. But for U.S. shipping, I included that in all the tiers so that it was all wrapped up in a single price. Then I had the two-book paperback tier because it was the second book in the series. And then I started adding on the VIP tiers, or the experience tier. It was an expensive high-ticket item, but it was a cocktail class, a group Ask Me Anything on Zoom meeting, and of course, all the digital books, all the physical VIP tier, which had all the physical books, as well as all the digital stuff, as well as all the classes. And then I had the super extra VIP experience, which included the one-on-one. So, yeah. I want to say that one was like $350.
I think I offered a discount at the beginning of the campaign to try to get people in there, and then after a week or something, I think the full price was $350, I want to say, so, yeah, that was how I broke that one up.
Now, for the hardback edition that I'm about to do, I'm going to try and keep it a little simpler because it was a lot to manage on the back end as far as understanding which backers were in which tiers and what they got and making sure they all got the things that they were supposed to get and all that stuff. So I think I am going to try and simplify it a little bit, but we'll see. Sometimes my ideas run away with me.
[00:29:51] Matty: And Jennifer, how about you? What were some of the things you offered at different backer rates?
[00:29:55] Jennifer: Yeah, similar to Megan, the same thing of like ten dollars was the ebook. I had like a one-dollar PDF. Ten dollars was the ebook and I think thirty dollars was the paperback. So when you get the paperback though you get the ebook and you like everything below it. So it all kind of meshed. And then the BackerKit, the users are used to that. So you don't have to explain that. You know, it's pretty laid out. So that makes sense. I simplified for my second one because it really seemed like people are just basically interested in books and classes and then doing some more one-on-one things.
So those are the kind of things I offered. The neat thing about this is that in addition to the things that you're actually offering for the tiers and things, there's also things that are called add-ons. And that's how people who have a really good backlist, like Megan's fans, per se, they can go back and get copies of her books that she has. I can also get those also, even if they're not in a tier. So it's a different way of adding.
I think the one thing that I really learned that I think is important that sometimes gets lost is, if you have a really good product, you don't have to knock yourself out with lots of bells and whistles. So I think it's okay to not offer 9 million other things to have a good thing and some various versions of that can appeal to people at different price points, but you don't have to do all the things. And I think that, I've seen that has helped, you know, work for me, but I also see other campaigns where that's working, too. If people like it, they're going to like it. You don't have to entice them with a whole bunch of other extraneous elements.
Backers aren't bargain hunters
[00:31:39] Matty: I'm curious about how you balance the price you're charging or asking for from a backer for a product, and then what you eventually want to sell it for when you get to the point where you can put it up on a retail platform.
[00:31:51] Jennifer: I don't actually think that's an issue. Early on, I made the mistake of thinking these were different kinds of backers who want different experiences. They're not just looking for a bargain at $7.99 for an ebook. They're happy to pay a higher price if they're going to have some interaction with you, they're going to have a paperback that's signed, and those kinds of things, so it doesn't really compare directly. It's not as much of an issue as I would have thought at first.
[00:32:22] Matty: That's interesting.
[00:32:32] Jennifer: Did I have a philosophy? I guess I'd heard or read somewhere that the $60 tier should be really good stuff, so when I do a $60 tier, it's like, it includes a class, a digital copy, and a physical copy if you're in the U.S. I really try to make sure that has a lot of good stuff for that price point. The things below it tend to just be more like regular book sales. That was just my way of doing it.
[00:33:33] Megan: To add on to that, the key part here to remember is that you have to know your costs. Understanding your budget before you go in is incredibly important. So figuring out what it's going to cost you to print, are you going to do print on demand or a print run, what the shipping materials costs, the credit card fees costs, all these other costs have to be built into that Kickstarter tier. Backers understand that.
So when you're coming up with your pricing, it matters, but not as much as you might think. The nice thing about nesting everything is that you can have all these little digital add-ons that give your backers something exclusive for Kickstarter, like the wallpaper or coloring book page I made, which haven't been sent out any other time or place. For some backers, that's going to be awesome.
If you just have a lot of digital items included in your tiers, you can build up over the course of all the tiers what those are, and those digital items, at very basically zero cost, add to that backer experience and give you that higher tier price value.
[00:35:19] Jennifer: For example, I just did five small videos, mini vids, talking about tropes in various movies that are only available to people at the $60 level and above, and they get the little code to watch those, and those are theirs.
[00:35:32] Megan: So those are like in addition, you know, so like she's saying, you can add other things on digitally that's not more like things that you're shipping.
Which parts were more difficult than expected?
[00:35:40] Matty: That's cool. So, that leads into the next question I wanted to ask, and I'm anticipating the answer a little bit. But, of all the people I've spoken to about Kickstarter, the thing that people said took much more time than they expected was fulfillment. I'm wondering if that was the case for you, or if there was some part of it that was much more difficult than you expected, whether that was time-wise, effort-wise, or psychically, what was much more difficult than you expected? Jennifer, let's start with you.
[00:36:08] Jennifer: I think it was just, like we talked about, figuring out who gets what, when. You can just use Kickstarter to do it. You don't have to use one of these other fulfillment providers. I used BackerKit the first time because people had said it makes it easier for subsequent campaigns. It was pretty stressful figuring out all the stuff the first time. The second time, things have gone a lot smoother. Part of it, I think, is BackerKit has improved. It still takes a lot of time to figure out how all this stuff gets to everybody.
[00:37:09] Megan: There's a learning curve. Go in knowing that it's going to be challenging, from campaign setup all the way through fulfillment. Don't bank that money until you get everything shipped out because there is a new ecosystem to learn. It's going to be challenging, especially if you haven't ever worked in a warehouse. You have to give yourself patience and grace and break it down into small, easy-to-complete steps. Figure out the next thing you need to know, and then the next thing. Don't expect to create the campaign page in a week and then launch the campaign and think it's going to be all smooth sailing. It is a lot of work and a lot of learning. So just be prepared for that.
How KS compares to running an online store
[00:38:38] Matty: It might be useful for people who aren't familiar with Kickstarter to think of it as setting up an online store, a more elaborate one. They need to figure out the technology, fulfillment, and how to reach the customers they want to reach. There are analogies to all those things for Kickstarter. It's like establishing a new outlet with all the little pieces and parts that need to be accommodated.
[00:39:12] Megan: For authors interested in more direct sales, Kickstarter is a great first step because it guides you through the process. You can use templates and information out there. It's easier to do direct sales like a Shopify store after Kickstarter because you now have inventory, copywriting, and many pieces you need, which you built with Kickstarter's help.
[00:40:21] Matty: That's interesting because I would have assumed it would be the other way around, starting with the online store and then Kickstarter.
[00:40:32] Megan: You can do it that way, I did. But Kickstarter's active community and the guidance they provide can make it easier to then transition to an online store setup. It's just that the nice thing with Kickstarter is that there's such an active community, and they do kind of walk you through the pieces to get you set up, and then you have all those pieces in place, so you can more easily transfer them onto a website, what would be an ad hoc or more ad hoc website system.
What was easier or smoother than expected?
[00:41:02] Matty: Was there any part of it that was easier or smoother than you expected? Megan, let's go back to you.
[00:41:12] Megan: The easy part for me was actually running the campaign. The setup process to get the campaign ready was stressful, making sure I was going to make a profit. But the actual campaign run was less stressful because I had systems in place. I pre-scheduled a lot of stuff, so during the actual campaign run, I wasn't as stressed as I thought I would be.
[00:42:52] Matty: And Jennifer, you had mentioned that you found the BackerKit experience made that part smoother than you had worried it would be. Are there other things that ended up being smoother than you expected for you?
[00:43:03] Jennifer: Like Megan, I found the pre-launch pretty stressful, as I was trying to figure all this out and wondering if anybody would want the things I'm coming up with. But once the campaign itself is going, it does kind of roll along. You tend to it, but you aren't making big changes or doing big things, so it's more just emotionally being there. When it's going, you're less actively working it as opposed to the beginning and the end.
[00:43:58] Matty: That's lovely. So I wanted to ask both of you about just in general, how did you feel about the results of the campaigns you've run? Did it deliver what you were looking for? Are there any major changes you would make the next time you ran one? And Megan, let's start with you.
[00:44:13] Megan: The biggest change for the next campaign is that I'm going to simplify the tiers a bit and not offer a cocktail class. This next campaign will be very much more focused on the product itself, the hardback, making it really beautiful, getting enough backers to afford the print run. The first fiction campaign was successful because I learned a lot, what my audience is looking for, and what the audience on Kickstarter in general is looking for. The first one's tough, I'm hoping the second one is less so.
[00:45:18] Matty: Jennifer, what's your thought on that?
The importance of building rest time in
[00:45:20] Jennifer: I agree with all the things she said, and I'm just really thinking about going forward, making sure to build some rest time in because when you finish, you're like, "Oh, you have all these other things to do." And then you're thinking about the next one, but also realizing, "Oh, I need to take a break." There are people who can run many close together, but I'm probably not that person. And just to kind of honor the way that it works and not feel like, "Oh, just because this person did it this way, I have to do it that way." Kickstarter is very much a great platform to take a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and work out what thing works best for you. But you don't have to follow so much of a set pattern and knock yourself out.
Don't just add KS on top of your existing schedule
[00:46:03] Megan: I like that a lot. Expanding on that, the thing I learned from my nonfiction campaign, which we're finally almost completely fulfilled with because we had to make some courses, is that you can't maintain your standard schedule on your creation of stuff when you're trying to fulfill or when you're trying to do these Kickstarters. You can't stay at that same level and then add something on top. It stresses you out. So, making sure that you go, "Okay, this is now a component of the process, and so some of the other things that you normally do are probably going to slow down. And that's okay, and you need to be able to breathe." My current mantra is "pause, breathe, recover."
[00:47:00] Matty: It could be PBR, except that's already Pabst Blue Ribbon, right? You could use a PBR to PBR.
[00:47:06] Megan: Yeah, there we go.
[00:47:08] Matty: Well, I love any suggestion that a guest ever makes in support of self-care and reasonability, and taking care of yourself as well as taking care of your business. So thank you so much to both of you, and I want to give both of you a moment to share where people can find out more about you and everything you do online. Megan, let's start with you.
[00:47:26] Megan: My fiction website is meganhaskell.com. All of my books are available there, in signed paperback as well as ebook, and I have a few titles that have been done in audio at this point as well, so that's all there. They are also available wide. For the nonfiction side of my life, you can visit authorwheel.com. And then I also have started recently writing a new newsletter called Clarify, Simplify, Implement on Substack.
[00:48:16] Matty: Perfect. Jen, how about you?
[00:48:19] Jennifer: You can find all my stuff at jenniferhilt.com. I've got my nonfiction there, and there's a little bit of my fiction too, if you'd like to take a look. And like Megan, I have a Substack going to trope talk and YouTube channel so you can find me around doing that stuff. And Megan's Substack, I really love.
[00:48:39] Megan: Well, I was going to say, I really love yours too, so we can all be happy together.
[00:48:44] Jennifer: Whenever your thing comes, I'm like, "Oh God, I needed to hear that right now."
[00:48:49] Megan: Yay!
[00:48:50] Matty: I love it when you guys do the promotional work for me. So thank you both so much. This was a great conversation.
[00:48:56] Jennifer: Thanks, Matty.
[00:48:57] Megan: Thank you for having us.