Three reasons I am giving Kickstarter a try for my upcoming audiobook…
Full disclosure: the campaign is still ongoing and is currently funded at 30% … So, not sure if I’ll be successful with it or not. And this post is both aimed to be informative and to maybe also spur a few of you to back this project.
Communication is key, right?
You can’t back a project you don’t know about. And transparency is important. Can you tell I used to work as a press officer?
If you don’t know, on Kickstarter, you can pledge amounts for rewards (or just because you want to support a project). The creator is the one coming up with the rewards. Your pledge is only debited if the full project is funded.
So, for this project, the rewards range from: a digital postcard, to talking to me about self-publishing, an early copy of the audiobook, your name in the credits, choosing a name in an upcoming novel/novella, signed copies and so much more… Backers support a creative process. You basically become a “patron of the arts”.
Here are the three reasons I am giving Kickstarter a try this time around.
- The Kickstarter can serve as a pre-order for the audiobook. All rewards backers can choose (except the $1 reward) include the audiobook. It’s a win-win for listeners since they receive the audiobook ahead of publication (all they have to do is download an app to listen to it) and it is cheaper than it will be after publication. For me, that means that I receive almost the entire price of the audiobook instead of a much lower royalty when a listener purchases it online and can then use the project funding to compensate my narrator…
- I want to distribute the audiobook to libraries. To do so, I cannot have the book exclusive to audible. That means I cannot do a so-called royalty-share plus agreement via ACX with my narrator. This also means I need to compensate my wonderful narrator a higher price per finished hour. Trust me, narrating, mastering and editing an audiobook is a very demanding job. You not only have to be a talented narrator; you also need to be tech savvy and have the needed software.
- Financing the project via Kickstarter enables me to not put money up-front—except to run a very low-budget ad. This allows me to use parts of my budget for other projects. Being a self-published author means I remunerate an editor, a copy editor for my books. I have software costs and marketing costs. I also have an ad budget and a translation budget. In addition, if you sell books on certain retailers, you only get paid for those sales about two months later. Financing the audiobook via Kickstarter might enable me to realize other projects during 2022, such as more bilingual books.
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Elodie Nowodazkij 