tunalegs
Pretended Artist
Yes. Read above.
Financing a Selfpublished Book with Kickstarter?
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David Hughes
David Hughes
Why not put a sample or teaser on line and use it as bait for the printed version?
BTW, there's firms in Indian printing etc to order. I assume from their sites that means order one and they print one and post it...
Regards, David
BTW, there's firms in Indian printing etc to order. I assume from their sites that means order one and they print one and post it...
Regards, David
lundrog
Established
Why not self publish through Amazon kindle ebook? I subscribe to kindle unlimited for example.
x-ray
Veteran
My wife and I and a good friend self published a book four or five years ago. It's about the legendary moonshiner Popcorn Sutton. Popcorn became nationally famous after his 4th felony arrest and conviction for making and distributing illegal whiskey, tax evasion, firearms charges and drug charges. Three days before going back to federal prison he killed himself in his car, the 3 jar Ford, using a fabricated PVC drain pipe system to direct the exhaust into the car.
My wife is a retired creative director and graphic artist, my friend is a retired professional advertising writer and journalist and I'm a commercial and documentary photographer. None of us had any experience publishing but I knew people in the industry and did a huge amount of research.
My friend and I had spent three years documenting the like and illegal whiskey operation of Popcorn. I wound up with hundreds of B&W film based images of his personal life and business and my friend recorded many hours of digital recordings of Popcorn that eventually were turned into copy.
After Popcorn's death there became so much interest in him and his whiskey we decided to combine forces and produce a book. Each of the three of us contributed our tallness and produced a great selling book.
What we did was produce one version that we sell even to this day through Amazon. In addition we produced a very slick soft cover version we print through a very high quality local printer on a digital press. We front a few hundred at a time and distribute these through book stores, lectures and museum gift shops. Both versions have sold extremely well and the printer who prints the slick version asked to distribute and sell the books themselves.
In the beginning we each kicked in a couple of thousand dollars. I don't know the exact number of sales but looking back at numbers from Amazon we've sold about $200K in books through them and several times that direct and through our printer.
My writer friend wants to do another book but I'm skeptical as to whether we'll have any success. Photo books don't sell very well and the cost is quite high to get one printed. One thing that helped sell the Popcorn Sutton book was a traveling museum show we did of Appalachian Culture that's disappearing. Popcorn was a part of it and the show generated thousands of museum visits. The show toured from 2009 until the first of this year.
I think to have another successful book There'll have to be either another colorful subject like Popcorn or a successful touring show to peak interest in the book. I'm planning and have requests from the museum that hosted my first show to do another and will eventually. Museum shows take several years to put together and to schedule into the museums show schedule. Books take a lot of pre planning, design planning and copy writing. The initial book went through several major and minor revisions before submitting it to the copyright office and eventually printing.
Publishing a book is no small undertaking. There's a great chance for failure and huge amounts of money to be lost. Make sure you have an audience that will buy thousands of books and have a way of distributing them.
I have a good friend that got grants from corporations to publish a book on the city we live in. He's an excellent commercial photographer and has a huge inventory of stock images of the area. One local TV station, a museum and some private money went into producing the book. It's a coffee table book with slick hard cover, it's a portfolio piece. My friend had somewhere over 10,000 copies printed. It was published about 12 years ago and sadly my friend still has many boxes of them in his garage. If he hadn't had corporate sponsors he would have lost about $40,000. Many of the copies wound up being given to local businesses as a portfolio piece to help generate commercial business.
My wife is a retired creative director and graphic artist, my friend is a retired professional advertising writer and journalist and I'm a commercial and documentary photographer. None of us had any experience publishing but I knew people in the industry and did a huge amount of research.
My friend and I had spent three years documenting the like and illegal whiskey operation of Popcorn. I wound up with hundreds of B&W film based images of his personal life and business and my friend recorded many hours of digital recordings of Popcorn that eventually were turned into copy.
After Popcorn's death there became so much interest in him and his whiskey we decided to combine forces and produce a book. Each of the three of us contributed our tallness and produced a great selling book.
What we did was produce one version that we sell even to this day through Amazon. In addition we produced a very slick soft cover version we print through a very high quality local printer on a digital press. We front a few hundred at a time and distribute these through book stores, lectures and museum gift shops. Both versions have sold extremely well and the printer who prints the slick version asked to distribute and sell the books themselves.
In the beginning we each kicked in a couple of thousand dollars. I don't know the exact number of sales but looking back at numbers from Amazon we've sold about $200K in books through them and several times that direct and through our printer.
My writer friend wants to do another book but I'm skeptical as to whether we'll have any success. Photo books don't sell very well and the cost is quite high to get one printed. One thing that helped sell the Popcorn Sutton book was a traveling museum show we did of Appalachian Culture that's disappearing. Popcorn was a part of it and the show generated thousands of museum visits. The show toured from 2009 until the first of this year.
I think to have another successful book There'll have to be either another colorful subject like Popcorn or a successful touring show to peak interest in the book. I'm planning and have requests from the museum that hosted my first show to do another and will eventually. Museum shows take several years to put together and to schedule into the museums show schedule. Books take a lot of pre planning, design planning and copy writing. The initial book went through several major and minor revisions before submitting it to the copyright office and eventually printing.
Publishing a book is no small undertaking. There's a great chance for failure and huge amounts of money to be lost. Make sure you have an audience that will buy thousands of books and have a way of distributing them.
I have a good friend that got grants from corporations to publish a book on the city we live in. He's an excellent commercial photographer and has a huge inventory of stock images of the area. One local TV station, a museum and some private money went into producing the book. It's a coffee table book with slick hard cover, it's a portfolio piece. My friend had somewhere over 10,000 copies printed. It was published about 12 years ago and sadly my friend still has many boxes of them in his garage. If he hadn't had corporate sponsors he would have lost about $40,000. Many of the copies wound up being given to local businesses as a portfolio piece to help generate commercial business.
benlees
Well-known
1. Find a printer. Quality is what you want? How many do you want to print? How much $ will that be? How long will it take?
2. Make sure the numbers work. Measure thrice.
3. Flood the world with your work, promotional style.
4. Set up a Kickstarter. Or vice versa.
5. See what happens.
6. Take a copy of book and show to 100 different publishers. Maybe there will be a taker. Work something out. If it works out, you're "legit"; get another idea and maybe you could start at 6 instead of 1. That would be all right.
Basically, what Tunalegs said.
2. Make sure the numbers work. Measure thrice.
3. Flood the world with your work, promotional style.
4. Set up a Kickstarter. Or vice versa.
5. See what happens.
6. Take a copy of book and show to 100 different publishers. Maybe there will be a taker. Work something out. If it works out, you're "legit"; get another idea and maybe you could start at 6 instead of 1. That would be all right.
Basically, what Tunalegs said.
tunalegs
Pretended Artist
I guess I presumed too much. There's a lot about running a kickstarter that isn't completely obvious until maybe you're in the middle of one, or after you've done it and realized you should have done something different.
Not only do you need to account for all costs (printing, shipping, packing materials, everything) but you also need to keep track of your rewards. If you're offering a reward of say a book for everybody who pledges $X, make sure that $X will actually cover the cost of the book, and the cost of packing and shipping that book to the buyer. If you get this wrong things can go haywire pretty quickly and you can lose a chunk of money or worse, accidentally screw over the people who funded you. Oh yeah, and some of your rewards may not be the book you're funding - keep track of those costs too! If (for example) you're printing and mailing bookmarks for people who pledged $2, can you do that? Can you afford to do that? Or are you losing money? Do the math on everything. Do not let anything slip by. Roll the costs into the kickstarter total if you can.
In the comic book circle there was a pretty infamous kickstarter screw up a few years ago where a rather well known writer/artist team kickstarted a book. Even though they exceeded the goal, they hugely underestimated the shipping costs. Rather than just use the excess money from the fundraiser to pay for their mistake to get books to people on time, they started another kickstarter just to fund shipping. Needless to say a lot of people who had already given plenty of money to them were rather unhappy.
The trickiest part here, aside from estimating how many books you need to print in the first place, is deciding how many books you're going to "give away" as "rewards" for the kickstarter. For example, do you print 100 books and aim to sell all 100 books through the kickstarter? Or do you sell 50 through the kickstarter, and hold on to another 50 to sell online or at gallery shows? The conundrum here is all about figuring out how to best market the kickstarter itself rather than the book - are people willing to pledge money if they're not getting the product itself? Do you want to use the kickstarter system to practically allow buyers to preorder? Or do you need funding to print books to sell elsewhere? That's all up to you, but whatever you choose do the math and do it well.
The biggest mistake people make is not accounting for all of their costs before they start.
The second, at least as applies to books, is having way more books printed than one can ever hope to sell. If it's your first go at it, do yourself a favor and go small. Maybe 100 to 200 books, tops. You'll learn all about putting the books together, working with the printer, postage, etc. and you won't get in over your head. Plus, if for whatever reason the books just don't sell after the initial rewards are sent out, you don't end up with a full closet reminding you your work is unmarketable. And if you sell out of books in a month? Just order more. Keep the risk low and keep your sanity.
Not only do you need to account for all costs (printing, shipping, packing materials, everything) but you also need to keep track of your rewards. If you're offering a reward of say a book for everybody who pledges $X, make sure that $X will actually cover the cost of the book, and the cost of packing and shipping that book to the buyer. If you get this wrong things can go haywire pretty quickly and you can lose a chunk of money or worse, accidentally screw over the people who funded you. Oh yeah, and some of your rewards may not be the book you're funding - keep track of those costs too! If (for example) you're printing and mailing bookmarks for people who pledged $2, can you do that? Can you afford to do that? Or are you losing money? Do the math on everything. Do not let anything slip by. Roll the costs into the kickstarter total if you can.
In the comic book circle there was a pretty infamous kickstarter screw up a few years ago where a rather well known writer/artist team kickstarted a book. Even though they exceeded the goal, they hugely underestimated the shipping costs. Rather than just use the excess money from the fundraiser to pay for their mistake to get books to people on time, they started another kickstarter just to fund shipping. Needless to say a lot of people who had already given plenty of money to them were rather unhappy.
The trickiest part here, aside from estimating how many books you need to print in the first place, is deciding how many books you're going to "give away" as "rewards" for the kickstarter. For example, do you print 100 books and aim to sell all 100 books through the kickstarter? Or do you sell 50 through the kickstarter, and hold on to another 50 to sell online or at gallery shows? The conundrum here is all about figuring out how to best market the kickstarter itself rather than the book - are people willing to pledge money if they're not getting the product itself? Do you want to use the kickstarter system to practically allow buyers to preorder? Or do you need funding to print books to sell elsewhere? That's all up to you, but whatever you choose do the math and do it well.
The biggest mistake people make is not accounting for all of their costs before they start.
The second, at least as applies to books, is having way more books printed than one can ever hope to sell. If it's your first go at it, do yourself a favor and go small. Maybe 100 to 200 books, tops. You'll learn all about putting the books together, working with the printer, postage, etc. and you won't get in over your head. Plus, if for whatever reason the books just don't sell after the initial rewards are sent out, you don't end up with a full closet reminding you your work is unmarketable. And if you sell out of books in a month? Just order more. Keep the risk low and keep your sanity.
x-ray
Veteran
What you're wanting to do is a business not a hobby. I've owned my business in one form of fashion for forty or so years and every penny that comes out of your pocket has to be accounted for and a profit made to cover it plus future expenses and taxes. My rule of thumb is markup all outside expenses by 300%. 1/3 covers expenses, 1/3 for the tax man and 1/3 for you. This is a simplified formula but you get the idea.
When my wife started her business as a fine artist I told here there's no half way. You get all in and it's a full blown business or you do it as a hobby and forget making money.
When my wife started her business as a fine artist I told here there's no half way. You get all in and it's a full blown business or you do it as a hobby and forget making money.
tunalegs
Pretended Artist
A hobby is fine. It's silly to me that people will encourage others to spend many thousands on cameras, lenses, scanner, bags, printers and prints, but for some reason printing a book should be out of the question. Maybe that's just taking the hobby too far. 😀
The OP did not claim they wanted to make a living off their book. Any money they make is still money made, any they don't isn't any worse than all the money spent on all the other paraphernalia, so long as they enjoyed the process of putting it together and showing it off. But then again if they're running a kickstarter, they're not going to lose anything if they account for all costs before starting.
Back when I was still in the comic book loop I made enough money off of printing books, making art, and going to conventions to pay for printing books, making art, and going to conventions, with enough left over for groceries to spare. Not a business, but pretty good for a hobby!
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