The Publishing Performance Show

Oriana Leckert from Kickstarter - How Authors Are Raising Millions Through Crowdfunding

• Teddy Smith • Episode 54

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Oriana Leckert is the Head of Publishing at Kickstarter, where she helps creators bring a marvelous array of literary projects to life. She's written and edited for Vice, MTV News, Slate, Hyperallergic, Gothamist, Atlas Obscura, and many more. Her first book, Brooklyn Spaces: 50 Hubs of Culture and Creativity (Monacelli, 2015), grew out of a multi-year project chronicling the rise and fall of under-the-radar creative places across New York City.

In this episode:

  • Understanding Kickstarter's role in publishing
  • Creating successful crowdfunding campaigns
  • Setting realistic funding goals
  • Designing compelling rewards
  • Building community before launching
  • Case studies of successful book campaigns
  • Common mistakes to avoid


Resources mentioned:

  • Kickstarter.com/publishing
  • Kickstarter for Authors Facebook group (6,000+ members)
  • Russell Notle's book on Kickstarter
  • Anthea Sharp's guide for authors
  • Writer MBA with Monica Lionel


Featured Kickstarter Campaigns:


Book recommendations:


Connect with Oriana:


Connect with Teddy Smith:

Support the show

[00:00:00] Teddy Smith: Happy new year, everyone. And welcome to 2025. I thought, what better way to kickstart the new year than to have Oriana on from Kickstarter. Now Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform, which I've previously used to buy new upcoming gadgets or invest in some software platforms. But it's actually one of the biggest platforms for authors to get funding to funds their new books.

[00:00:25] Teddy Smith: And the way that it works is you create things like special editions, products or other things in order to get fans to give you money so that you can launch your new special edition books. And it basically is another way of getting funding for your business. Now, this is an amazing episode because Oriana has worked with some of the biggest names in self publishing to have some super successful crowdfunding campaigns that have had hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment, which has really helped, you know, authors to get their books off the ground.

[00:00:54] Teddy Smith: So I'm really excited to this episode. I think you're going to learn lots from it. And Check out kickstarter. com to get more information and I will see you in the show. Hi everyone. Welcome to the publishing performance show today. I'm really delighted to be joined by Orian Lekert, who is the head of publishing and she's also a writer, but she's the head of publishing at Kickstarter.

[00:01:12] Teddy Smith: So thank you very much for joining me. 

[00:01:14] Oriana Leckert: Danny, thank you so much for having me. What a delight. 

[00:01:16] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Well, we actually met at auth nation So it's really nice to have you on for a proper chat because we had a short one recently But it's really nice to get you on because it's such a conversation we had together So thank you for coming back, but I think kickstarter.

[00:01:29] Teddy Smith: So I did go about it for books for a while, but actually it's something I've known more for things like Businesses who want to get funding for their startups, for example So could you give us a bit of an overview for what kickstarter is and how it works for authors? 

[00:01:43] Oriana Leckert: Yeah, totally kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform That lets you build community connect directly with your audience and of course raise much needed funds.

[00:01:51] Oriana Leckert: That's true for All of our creative categories. I think there are 15 main categories on the Kickstarter site. Kickstarter is a public benefit corporation which means that we have a fairly strict legal and business charter that requires us to consider, you know, our impact on the world with everything we do and essentially makes us a mission driven for profit organization.

[00:02:11] Oriana Leckert: Our mission is to bring creative projects to life. That's, The whole thing, everything we do. So every campaign that's run on the platform has to create something new to share with the world. It is an excellent product market fit for books. Although I would say out in the world, we're best known for games and gadgets, 

[00:02:27] Teddy Smith: but 

[00:02:28] Oriana Leckert: excellent product market fit for things like books, comics, CDs, sort of tangible items that are powered by creative work.

[00:02:36] Oriana Leckert: You know, the kind of idea around crowdfunding is you are casting a wide net to generate a large number of small dollar donors. And there's a, you know, sort of like persistent misapprehension that Kickstarters are, you know, begging people for charity, which is exactly not true. What you're doing is.

[00:02:56] Oriana Leckert: Taking a creative journey. You're asking people to come with you on that journey to support your efforts to be part of your story. And you are rewarding them with things that will come out of that creative practice that you're doing. So, the rewards are very central to the Kickstarter proposition.

[00:03:12] Oriana Leckert: That's what separates it from a lot of other ways of selling books. Online, you know, you're giving people limited editions, you're giving them special merch, you're giving them personal consultations, individual naming rights, things like that. So you're really, your goal is to really make people feel connected to the work that you're doing to shore up your community, to, um, yeah, build your, your audience and your network of people who love what you do.

[00:03:34] Teddy Smith: So would you say that Kickstarter is mostly for new authors who maybe haven't got a lot of history or a lot of funding behind them and they want to get that funding, or is it actually a lot also for experienced authors who are maybe trying to connect to their audience a bit more? 

[00:03:48] Oriana Leckert: I think Kickstarter is for everyone.

[00:03:50] Oriana Leckert: I think, you know, whatever kind of project you're doing, you can probably find your way on Kickstarter, but you need to have a clear kind of sense of where you are in your journey. If you're an emerging author, who's still building your list, you know, You probably don't want to ask for 100, 000, you know, you want to make sure that your ambition matches your reach.

[00:04:08] Oriana Leckert: So, and further you can build your audience on Kickstarter, but it is a difficult place to be if you haven't got any real network built up. Kickstarter has an amplifying effect. So, On a publishing project on average maybe 15 to 30 percent of your backers are going to come through the Kickstarter ecosystem just by nature of being on the platform.

[00:04:27] Oriana Leckert: So that's not nothing, but it's definitely not everything really. You need to bring your audience first and then Kickstarter will be able to like use that to expose your project to a larger universe of folks that just don't know that they're your fans yet. 

[00:04:40] Teddy Smith: Right. I see. So is it a bit like a marketplace or a search engine where if there's more traffic goes towards listing, then it gets more chance of getting seen by new people as well.

[00:04:50] Oriana Leckert: Yeah. Our algorithm works on attention. So the more people who are clicking, commenting, backing, reacting, interacting with your project, that will help it rank higher in search results that'll power our recommendation engine, which exposes projects to people all across the sort of universe of backers.

[00:05:06] Teddy Smith: Okay. That makes, I didn't know that. That's very interesting. Cause my main thing is. Amazon ads and obviously Amazon ads working in almost exactly the same way. You know, the books that most likely to get sold on Amazon are going to pin at the top of the searches. And that's so getting that traffic to the listing is one of the main things that can affect that.

[00:05:22] Teddy Smith: So I didn't know that Kickstarter works in a similar way. 

[00:05:24] Oriana Leckert: Yeah. Well, I, I do not love being compared to Amazon. You know, I mean, it's true that. You know, you, you want to bring your audience first, but we're not, I guess I see what you're saying probably in the upper echelons and our million dollar campaigns, you know, once somebody is doing hundreds of thousands of backers, that is going to stay sort of like at the tippity top.

[00:05:47] Oriana Leckert: But I would not say like, that's. As I said, like, you're going to get backers just from being on the site. It's going to depend like the height, the number of backers will depend on how, you know, how well trafficked your campaign is, but it isn't, that's not the full story. And like, All of, you're also getting effort, like the whole way that you're promoting your project through your channels, you know, you're basically shouting from the rooftops, both to the audience that you have and the audience that you want.

[00:06:16] Oriana Leckert: It's a real good way to galvanize and sort of, you know, focus a broad swath of marketing efforts all into one, like funnel it into one project, you know, during a campaign, you're going to be hopefully, you know, blasting the project out through your newsletters, through all your socials, Going on podcasts and YouTube channels and Instagram lives.

[00:06:34] Oriana Leckert: You'll be trying to get traditional press. You'll be working with signal boosters, amplifier, you know, so like in all of these ways, you're generating a huge amount of interest in what you're doing beyond, you know, the additional backers who are coming through the Kickstarter ecosystem. 

[00:06:49] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Great. I think, I think I'm just saying that the.

[00:06:52] Teddy Smith: It's not, if you're doing a campaign with Kickstarter, it's not a case of just putting up and just leaving it and hoping for the best. There's, there's money 

[00:06:59] Oriana Leckert: tree and hope to be made rich. 

[00:07:03] Teddy Smith: Yeah, exactly. Well, so what are the key steps involved when you are creating your Kickstarter campaign? What does that process look like?

[00:07:09] Oriana Leckert: Yeah, sure. I mean, it's both very simple and kind of as complicated as you want it to be. You are going to make a project page. Well, first you're going to figure out what your project is. That might seem like it shouldn't need to be said, but it definitely does. Are you making, are you launching a new book?

[00:07:25] Oriana Leckert: Are you doing a series of new customized cover? covers for, you know, an old series that you wrote. Are you making a literary museum exhibition? Are you making literary inspired chocolate bars? Whatever is the thing that you're doing, you know, figure that out, do your budgeting, make sure that you know what your costs are going to be to produce and ship the thing that you're making and any associated rewards.

[00:07:49] Oriana Leckert: This is all in the sort of like background work. Do that and, you know, also start to think Where your community is, what your avenues are for reaching them, make sure that you've got all of those avenues kind of well primed to set up a campaign. You will probably make a campaign video. It's not a requirement, but it is a preference on the site.

[00:08:07] Oriana Leckert: A short. You know, 1 1 minute teaser video is really all that's required. You'll design your campaign page. Tell your story. That's, you know, the plot of your book, but maybe also who you are, what brought you to this work, what excites you about, you know, this telling this story and why all sorts of other, your collaborators, your timeline, your budgets, things like that.

[00:08:27] Oriana Leckert: You'll set up your rewards. And you'll run your projects, that can, we recommend running campaigns for about 30 days. So you'll want to build in at least two weeks for a pre launch phase where you've got a pre launch page collecting followers. You're building up your audience that way.

[00:08:44] Oriana Leckert: And you'll launch, you'll run it for your 30 days. You can put in late pledges now, if you want to. That's a brand new feature. so you can continue collecting backers after the campaign has closed up until the point when you say, okay, we're done. Now we're going to start producing these books. Then you make your beautiful, wonderful books, send them out to all your people, and now you're done.

[00:09:03] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Amazing. Now, you mentioned at the beginning that you create a video and that sounds maybe a bit scary. What, what sort of, can the video literally just be you speaking to the camera, talking about what your book's about? 

[00:09:13] Oriana Leckert: Yep. Yeah, totally. It should really be a low, the lowest possible lift for a sort of high lift medium.

[00:09:19] Oriana Leckert: Really, our data shows that most people stop watching after the first minute. So you're talking about something very short, a direct to camera, you know, you with your laptop, you on your phone. This does not need to be a Hollywood production style endeavor. Think about also once you're generating video assets, can you utilize some or all of this?

[00:09:38] Oriana Leckert: During and after the campaign, don't like marshal all these efforts for something that you're never going to need again. But so think about generating assets that you can put on socials, on your website later, that sort of thing. And also, if the, if the thing that is keeping you from running a Kickstarter is the video, Don't make a video.

[00:09:56] Oriana Leckert: Plenty of campaigns succeed beautifully without a video, especially in, you know, I mean, if I was running the film category, I would say it's like probably pretty important that you demonstrate your knowledge of video technology, but for a book, you don't want to make one, don't make one. That's totally fine.

[00:10:10] Teddy Smith: Wow. Now, so you just talked about rewards. So. When I've done Kickstarters before, it's mostly been for a new product launch or something like that. So the reward has often been, well, you get the product early or it could, or it could be, maybe you get some extra merch to do with the company. So what sort of rewards to authors typically give for their campaigns?

[00:10:31] Oriana Leckert: Yeah, so I think this is sort of the most exciting part of conceptualizing what you're going to do for your Kickstarter campaign. Yes, of course, the book, the thing, the series, the whatever, the main thing you're making, that is your primary reward tier, but you can get really creative about what you, what else you offer to your fans.

[00:10:47] Oriana Leckert: Remember, like, this is a way to like, galvanize your most diehard supporters and get them really excited to be part of your work and your world. So general guidance. For stuff below the book tier, probably digital rewards are the best. You don't want to be on the hook to like produce and ship just a sort of endless amount of like bookmarks and stickers and like tiny paper goods that are going to wind up costing more to deal with than you're going to make back.

[00:11:15] Oriana Leckert: But so digital wallpaper, you could do a 20 track playlist of songs that inspire you to write or a book soundtrack. You could do audio narration if you want to. You could, yeah, there's a lot of. Sort of just like small virtual things, a pretty PDF of like 10 other books that you recommend for folks who love your work, things like that.

[00:11:33] Oriana Leckert: Above the book tier, that's where you can get really, really creative. Think first about your own personal skills. Are you a social media expert and you want to offer consultations? Are you an editor and you want to offer manuscript reviews? Things like that. Are there companion type items you can make along with your book?

[00:11:49] Oriana Leckert: If it's a fantasy novel, can you make a, yeah. Like books of maps or a collection of maps. If it's a children's book, can you do coloring pages? If it's a nonfiction book, can you do worksheets or a workbook? Things like that. Also think about who else is in your community who might want to donate some of their own items.

[00:12:05] Oriana Leckert: Other people, other writers could offer signed books. If you know, beautiful crafters, maybe somebody wants to donate a scarf with a quote or a scene from your book knitted into it. Candles that have a smell that is relevant to your story. You can also think about participatory rewards. We see a whole lot of naming rights.

[00:12:26] Oriana Leckert: Uh, we'll name the dragon after your dog. We'll name the villain after your mother in law. We'll name the girl after your son. Things like this. Yeah. book clubs, read alongs, annotated editions, launch parties, virtual IRL, really like. Anything you can think of that has to do with your creative world can probably be packaged up as a cool reward that's going to excite somebody.

[00:12:47] Teddy Smith: Yeah. So it's literally endless what you could do. It's about getting creative and trying to find what you think your audience would like. A hundred percent. So when, with these, all these different campaigns and rewards, it, it doesn't sound not, it sounds like people have like, Lots of different types of goals for their books and you mentioned there's like different goals What typically are the goals that people set for a book launch?

[00:13:09] Oriana Leckert: Do you mean the actual financial goal? 

[00:13:11] Teddy Smith: I think so. Yeah, I mean, you know, some people might have a non financial goal Maybe I don't know they may just want to get a certain amount of readers But are there other goals do people typically start with say I want to raise a thousand dollars or is there a set?

[00:13:24] Teddy Smith: Or something like that. 

[00:13:25] Oriana Leckert: Yeah, totally. I think there may be are two ways to answer this question. The, you know, the, the mechanism of a campaign requires you to choose a stated financial goal. That's how all or nothing funding works. You say, I'm going to raise five grand, or I'm not going to do this thing.

[00:13:39] Oriana Leckert: So in that, to answer that part of the question, I think I said already, like, you just want to make sure that your ambition matches your reach. So, So you want to consider your funding goal, a floor, not a ceiling. Once you've hit that base goal, you can continue to raise money for the life of the campaign.

[00:13:54] Oriana Leckert: So you want to set and make sure it's enough money to actually do the things that you're setting out to do. A lot of people set their campaign goal for 200 and claim that they're going to make a leather bound deluxe edition. Well, 200 is not enough to create books like that. And so unless you've got a different kind of plan, if you only fund the amount you've asked for, you actually put yourself in a pretty bad spot because you now don't have enough money to, like, do the things that you've promised to do.

[00:14:22] Oriana Leckert: so I would recommend kind of, The lowest amount necessary to actually really truly do the thing and not put yourself in a financial hole. Um, and then yeah, think about ways to like continue driving enthusiasm and like keeping the momentum up. Maybe you can add stretch goals or like other things that will keep people donating even after you've hit that amount.

[00:14:43] Oriana Leckert: The second way to answer your question is that the primary goal of running a Kickstarter is to raise funds, but everybody has at least one, if not multiple secondary goals. And that is really important to think about before you start your campaign. What are those secondary goals? Are you trying to build your list?

[00:14:59] Oriana Leckert: If so, you might want to have a lot of low dollar rewards, you know, people who are, you know, Just paying a buck or two for like a digital shout out. And now these are folks who are on your mailing list who you can continue marketing to forever. Is your goal to get recognition out in the world? Then you might want to tailor your campaign or think about what's the most like press worthy angle.

[00:15:20] Oriana Leckert: What's the hook that's going to really excite people, you know, is your goal. Yeah. Just like thinking about all of the other things that can happen while you're running the campaign. And then Taylor. Your strategies so that you're working on fulfilling those things as well as raising the amount of money that you've set out to earn.

[00:15:37] Teddy Smith: Yeah, right. Okay. Now, at the beginning of just before we talked about the goals, you mentioned it was an all or nothing campaign. So does that mean if you don't raise the amount you say you need, then the you don't get to keep that money and it goes back to the backers? 

[00:15:50] Oriana Leckert: Yeah, I mean, so, it actually doesn't go back to anybody because it has never moved at all.

[00:15:55] Oriana Leckert: The way the money runs on Kickstarter is that while the campaign is live if I pledge 25 to your campaign, Stripe, our payment processor, is going to verify my identity, confirm my bank account, and make sure that it has at least 25 in it, but not touch anything beyond that. When the campaign closes, if it has successfully reached its goal, It's called stripes got two weeks to kind of pull all those monies from all the different accounts.

[00:16:18] Oriana Leckert: They're going to keep their fee. They're going to send kickstarter our fee, and they're going to deposit the rest for the creator. And so, yes, if you say I'm setting out to raise 10, 000 and he only raised 6, 000, you don't get any of the money, which goes back to, it was actually designed to protect the artists and creatives because you don't, if, if the thing that you're going to do is going to cost you 10, 000, Having 6, 000 is worse than having nothing at all.

[00:16:44] Oriana Leckert: You have to like, come up with the rest of that money. You have to make an inferior product. Maybe you're not going to make the thing at all, which is going to be a really bad outcome for yourself and all the people who believed in you. Um, so yeah, that's, that's why we've designed, that's why the. Platform is designed in the all or nothing 

[00:16:59] Teddy Smith: way.

[00:16:59] Teddy Smith: That makes sense. And it also protects customers as well. So it doesn't make sure they don't get, yeah, no, it makes perfect sense. Now, is there a typical amount that you see authors try to raise at first, maybe for their first Kickstarter? 

[00:17:11] Oriana Leckert: Yeah. I really encourage people not to think in terms of sort of like site averages because there's such a vast variety.

[00:17:18] Oriana Leckert: I mean, really we have everything from. You know, a teenager stapling zines in their parents basement up to major publishers and self publishing authors raising literally millions of dollars. So finding an average between those points is not that helpful. I would say again, what go back, going back to, you know, you really need to do an honest assessment of what your network and abilities kind of look like.

[00:17:43] Oriana Leckert: You know, if your book is going to cost 25, how many people will you How many people are you capable of reaching? What percentage of those people are likely to back? And at what levels? You know, try to sort out like what is possible for you, which is way more important than what is on average for Kickstarter.

[00:18:00] Teddy Smith: Right. That makes sense as well. Cause I know some books obviously going to be huge and they're going to just need loads and loads of money to get them made. And when we're in auth nation, we saw some of the books that were being made and they were really expensive. Like some of the really high quality print books were like a hundred dollars just to print them at each one.

[00:18:16] Teddy Smith: So I guess it depends on what sort of rewards you're offering as well as to how much you're going to see. Now, let's talk about a couple of really good case studies, because I think that's my questions are quite like broad. And so the case studies will bring it back down to real life examples. So, it'd be good to see some case here about some case studies of what's worked well, but what would be good to know is.

[00:18:37] Teddy Smith: you know, how much were they trying to request and also what rewards did they offer as a result and how that went? 

[00:18:44] Oriana Leckert: Yeah. Well, so I'll start with the sort of like biggest, flashiest, craziest, I've pulled up a list of the, uh, top 15 earners in the publishing category in 2024. Wraithmarked books. They are in here a lot.

[00:18:57] Oriana Leckert: They've done They've got I think four deluxe editions. They're a publisher of deluxe editions of previously published books. They're, they earn over a million dollars in their highest campaigns. They do really gorgeous sort of like Smith stone binding, high end covers, deluxe art, spot gloss, various sorts of like effects like this.

[00:19:20] Oriana Leckert: They run. A lot of campaigns and they have a really strong connection to their audience. They actually are the highest funded project of the year, which just closed a couple of weeks ago and is not even a book. It's a statue. It's a collectible statue from Christopher Paolini's Aragon series. So it's like a two foot or a foot and a half dragon.

[00:19:40] Oriana Leckert: Anyway Some of the other highest funded, Will White, who has run four campaigns for his Cradle series. His latest project also broke a million dollars. He has a vast, huge, massive, insane audience that is ravenous. for his works. so he's done, he's done, the books in sets of three. So he did, you know, books one through three, four through seven, et cetera, four through six, seven through nine.

[00:20:06] Oriana Leckert: He'll have one more campaign and he'll have the complete series done on Kickstarter. Another of our biggest was Bonkers Romance. They did the Black Rose Auction, which is a Three book, six story series. Each book is two books. They're like flip flops. So one is printed front to back and the next is printed back to front.

[00:20:24] Oriana Leckert: So they combined the audience of six different really popular romance novelists, again, making, you know, sort of deluxe edition books. They had vellum art inserts, translucent art pieces that are the same trim size as the book. And there were, I think they had a dozen. You could choose four out of 12 art pieces, so you can sort of customize your book without them having to make split print runs of every different combination of pieces of art.

[00:20:53] Oriana Leckert: And Penny Reed, another huge romance novelist, she did her Winston Brothers book from the Beard series, raised 500, 000. The Black Rose Auction also raised over 500, 000. So those are some of our, oh, and then another one I was just going to mention, um, Adam what is his last name? I'm going to take it. I'm going to pause and say this as a sentence when I get, yeah.

[00:21:16] Oriana Leckert: Another one I wanted to mention is Adam Ellenbos. Uh, he does a, an annual daily horoscopes collection. He's an astrologer who's also very, very popular. His latest of those hit just under 400, 000. Wow. So he's another really big author who comes onto the platform once a year. So those are the like, big, big guys.

[00:21:38] Oriana Leckert: I don't think, you know, I say that as a sort of to dazzle the audience with what's possible if you are, but you know, not everybody is going to raise 400, 000. Not everybody should raise that much money or would even know what to do with it. So a few others. That I wanted to mention. And just before we go on 

[00:21:58] Teddy Smith: to the next ones, because those ones, I just wanted to see those big ones.

[00:22:01] Teddy Smith: But so those ones have they were like 400 to over a million dollars. So they really are asking for quite a lot of money. Now, what were the rewards? What sort of rewards were they offering? In terms of not just the book or what, cause I know they're obviously you could buy the book or you're getting a very special edition, but some people might have just been offering less money for part of the campaign as well.

[00:22:21] Teddy Smith: So, yeah, well, so 

[00:22:22] Oriana Leckert: golly. So I pulled up Will White's, his are very streamlined. He's basically just offering the books in sets. Let me, let me get another one. I can talk about. And so for them. 

[00:22:37] Teddy Smith: So for something like that, where you're offering the book, how much money are you usually expecting from backers?

[00:22:43] Oriana Leckert: Let's see. So one book in the cradle project is 45 and you could get three, all three for 150. That was really it. Those were the two tiers. And then he had a larger number of add ons, which you could do after he has key chains and. Coasters, little badges, swaggy stuff like that. That's relevant to the plot of his books.

[00:23:11] Oriana Leckert: So I'm guessing cause 

[00:23:12] Teddy Smith: they're 45. They must be like really high quality. They're deluxe leather bound. Right. Yeah. Totally. 

[00:23:19] Oriana Leckert: With the black rose auction. So this was a series. It looks like they didn't, they might've had with add ons, but I don't think in base rewards, they had individual titles. You could get three of the paperbacks for 75, three of the hardcovers for 125.

[00:23:34] Oriana Leckert: They also had a whole swag box. There was a swag box for the paperbacks and a swag box for the hardcovers. And what was in the swag box? swag boxes. They've got a foiled slip case. They've got stickers. I talked about the vellum art. They have art cards. I think if not this campaign, some of their campaigns, yeah, they have selections of art that are either not safe for work or safe for work depending on what else I see.

[00:23:59] Oriana Leckert: You would like your art. They've got notebooks, metal bookmarks, candles, book sleeves, digital wallpapers, collectible coins, all sorts of again, like, Merchie stuff that is directly related to the projects that they're making. 

[00:24:12] Teddy Smith: That's, that's really interesting. Obviously that's really inspiring because those things are obviously going to be bought by super fans.

[00:24:17] Teddy Smith: Like. I, none of the people who buy my books would pay 50 for one copy of them. So, yeah, so that is really for people who wants to get the book before it's gone out to the general public and it's going to be in a really special edition. That's the sort of, so it's, we're looking at people. 

[00:24:34] Oriana Leckert: Yeah, that's the sort of the FOMO of the limited exclusive additions that you can only get.

[00:24:38] Oriana Leckert: I mean, that was the Brandon Sanderson tactic, which I think has kind of reshaped a little bit of how people are thinking about these projects. You know, his campaign highest funded crowdfunding campaign of all time, he raised 42 million and the deal was those were Limited editions of four of his new novels and his deal with tour, his traditional publisher under Penguin Random House was that six months after those limited series editions were fulfilled through the Kickstarter tour would bring out the books in paperback edition.

[00:25:08] Oriana Leckert: So of course anybody could get the books later, but you couldn't get. The special deluxe signs numbered fancy additions. Those were only available during the Kickstarter campaign. Wow. 

[00:25:18] Teddy Smith: I have to get Brandon Sonsen on the podcast. That was my next stretch goal.

[00:25:24] Teddy Smith: So obviously those are amazing and that is really inspiring for people who are, you know, Aiming to get bigger for, I think you're about to go on to them, but some of the people who are just starting out, or maybe they're self publishers and currently they're just published on Amazon.

[00:25:37] Teddy Smith: What are some of those smaller campaigns that have done really well? 

[00:25:40] Oriana Leckert: Yeah. So the one thing that I would say for anybody listening, if you are even a little bit Kickstarter curious, the best thing you can do for yourself is back some campaigns, just for your dollar. Find and follow the creators out in the world and watch what other people are doing.

[00:25:54] Oriana Leckert: I wind up saying this in almost every talk or presentation I give, but I'm an expert in Kickstarter because I stare at Kickstarter all day long. You too can stare at Kickstarter all day long. You can find all the best tricks and you can take them for yourself. There's nothing wrong with doing that.

[00:26:10] Oriana Leckert: There are also a lot of mentorship and guidance type groups out in the world. I know there's a very popular Facebook group. run by Anthea Sharp and Thorne Coyle. I think it's just called Kickstarter for authors. You have to apply for membership. There are about 6, 000 authors in there just talking to each other all day long about where do you get your books printed?

[00:26:29] Oriana Leckert: What are some interesting rewards? What are your strategies for outreach? This, that, and the other. There are a number of books and there are a number of books and, and, uh, Why can't I? There are a number of other groups where you can work with people who are experienced Kickstarter creators on how to run your project.

[00:26:46] Oriana Leckert: Incubators, that's what I was trying to say. Russell Nolte and Monica Lionel run one. So yeah, there are plenty of places to talk to other people who are doing this. And exchange tips with them, which I think is stronger than anything else that I could tell you. Yeah. Anyway, Russell's got a 

[00:27:00] Teddy Smith: really good book about how to sell on Kickstarter as well, which 

[00:27:03] Oriana Leckert: absolutely does.

[00:27:03] Oriana Leckert: And Thea Sharp has another book about how to, how to use Kickstarter for authors. I was going to bring up Russell. So Russell has run 34 campaigns under his own profile. He's done others through writer MBA with Monica. One of the most experienced Kickstarter creators around absolutely study his projects.

[00:27:23] Oriana Leckert: I've got one of his recent Obsidian Spindle Saga campaigns pulled up. His campaign pages are well developed. He's got, Excellent art. He's got book specs. He's got all sorts of information about who he is. He's got spoilers. If you want to read them absolutely somebody to study. And of course, he's got lots and lots and lots of book tier of reward tiers.

[00:27:45] Oriana Leckert: Some of these are for physical items. You can get coins, you can get, choose any paperback, you can get whole series, the current series he's funding or other of his series. He also, um, Does a lot more with add ons. You can get all sorts of other volumes. Yeah, I mean, he's someone who's got a robust backlist, so that's not going to be true for everybody, but these are all excellent ways to sort of get people excited, not just for this one book, but everything else that you have done.

[00:28:15] Oriana Leckert: Yeah. And Thea runs her campaigns under fiddlehead press. She's another one to study all of her. Her pages look excellent. Her art is really well done. She's got her collaborators. She's got everybody's headshots. She links out to all their websites. She's got stretch goals. She's got add ons, you know, um, Really just looking around the site at what other people are doing is the best way to figure out how to run a good campaign.

[00:28:40] Teddy Smith: Yeah, we'll put links to the campaigns you mentioned today in the show notes when we can see them. But so basically what you're saying is just look at what's working well and replicate it. Absolutely. Yeah. 

[00:28:51] Oriana Leckert: Well, and not even replicated, but like, think about what that means for you. You know, somebody, the bonkers romance, they've got not safe for work art.

[00:28:59] Oriana Leckert: Maybe you don't have art like that, but what's your version of the thing that they're doing? Some of these campaigns, you know, have key chains and candles, but maybe your work lends itself better to enamel pins and, Purses, whatever it is, you know, I, I was just talking to someone yesterday who does business books and he was like, well, you know, what can I use from what these fiction authors are doing in, you know, my nonfiction world?

[00:29:24] Oriana Leckert: And I said, what's your version of that? We'll name the dragon after your dog. What's your version of, you know, annotated deleted scenes? You know, there are always things that you can think of in the context of what you're doing that other people have done, but that are going to make more sense. And look, you can also talk to your audience.

[00:29:42] Oriana Leckert: I mean, a lot of this is about getting more direct contact with the people who most support your work. So you can say to them, Hey, if we, you know, raise If we want to add a stretch goal for 2, 000, would you rather have a, you know, a limited edition reversible dust jacket or a tote bag? Would you rather have an editorial consultation or a book club?

[00:30:06] Oriana Leckert: See what people are looking for and then figure out a way to give it to them. 

[00:30:10] Teddy Smith: Yeah, that's really good advice. Now, obviously you've seen. Hundreds of campaigns on Kickstarter, not just for books, but for everything. Are there any common mistakes you've seen people make and have you got any advice for helping people avoid them?

[00:30:22] Oriana Leckert: You know, the biggest mistake is not really understanding is being sort of overly ambitious is not really understanding kind of where you are in your career, what your connection is with your audience. And, yeah, you know, being too aspirational, which again, in an all or nothing framework. Is not really going to work out well for you.

[00:30:40] Oriana Leckert: And you know, the truth is I know almost everything that's going on in the books category and not that much about what's going on everywhere else. It's a lot. There's between one and 200 projects launching each week. Well, publishing and comics and and journalism. So that's a lot to keep tracking.

[00:30:56] Oriana Leckert: Yeah. There's so much more in games and gadgets and film and music. Oh, that's 200. 

[00:31:01] Teddy Smith: That's just you're responsible for. 

[00:31:03] Oriana Leckert: Yeah. 

[00:31:03] Teddy Smith: Oh, wow. That's you a busy lady. 

[00:31:05] Oriana Leckert: It's huge. Lots and lots and lots of campaigns. So, um, but you know, I mean, that's, it's a good tech. It's a good tip too. If you're backing projects back.

[00:31:15] Oriana Leckert: You know, a fiction book, a nonfiction book, a game a suitcase and, you know, a film and see what the difference is between how all of these people run their projects. And again, like what, what you can use from somebody who's opening up a cupcake shop, like what of that would apply to the books that you're writing and how can you make that your own?

[00:31:37] Teddy Smith: Now, if there's people who have. Just started writing maybe, and they've got a new book. Maybe they are just first time they've self published a book. It's could be non fiction or fiction. So they don't have that network around them such as a social media list, or they don't have a newsletter list. They don't have that network of people they can rely on to try and get that first bit of traffic.

[00:31:54] Teddy Smith: Have you got any good tips for them, uh, how they can promote their Kickstarter so they can get it in front of 

[00:32:01] Oriana Leckert: You know, I think do if, if a person has. No following whatsoever. I think it's probably a bit too early to run a Kickstarter campaign. I mean, everybody has, you know, their people, you've got your inner circle for your first project, you know.

[00:32:16] Oriana Leckert: You'll send it to your friends and family and hopefully that will get you some part of the way, but I think it could be worth spending some time doing audience building, community generating work before you run the campaign, just so that you're not going to find yourself disappointed, uh, if, you know, the only people who find out about it and back it are your family and your next door neighbor.

[00:32:38] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Okay. That's good advice. So maybe Kickstarter is a slightly more advanced tactic than for right for very, very good. 

[00:32:45] Oriana Leckert: I think it's probably a good idea to spend time building your audience first before you get on the platform. Yeah. 

[00:32:50] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Brilliant. Well, this has been such good information. I mean, I think it, you know, it's quite a mysterious world for people who haven't really been involved in it before because it feels.

[00:32:59] Teddy Smith: Unobtainable, but you've made it sound quite simple. So, if people are thinking about doing this the first time, where's the best place to start? 

[00:33:06] Oriana Leckert: Yeah. Kickstarter. com slash publishing. Go and back some campaigns. watch what people are doing. you can sign up for, there's all sorts of Kickstarter newsletters.

[00:33:15] Oriana Leckert: Kickstarter's got all of our own social channels so that you can see these campaigns. all over the world, wherever you are, and connect with other writers. I mean, it shouldn't be a deterrent, me saying that you should build your community first, you know, talk to other people who are doing this. Building your community isn't just finding people who will one day pay you money for your creative work.

[00:33:35] Oriana Leckert: It's also other people who are on the same journey with you at points, maybe ahead or behind where you are, so that you can share tips, so that you can help each other out, so you can lift each other up. I think that's crucial work for you. Anybody in any creative discipline for any reason and of course it will also help you when it comes time to do your kickstarter 

[00:33:51] Teddy Smith: Yeah, of course.

[00:33:52] Teddy Smith: That's great advice. Thank you very much. Well, thank you very much. Thanks so much for joining me It's been great chatting to you It's lovely having these huge businesses come on not just other authors and to speak about some of the the tools So it's pretty great. So just before we go Could you give us one book that you're reading that you think everyone should be reading?

[00:34:09] Oriana Leckert: Yeah, I actually am like so intimidated by this question. I don't think there's one book that everybody should be reading at all. I don't think that's the way that reading works. You know, once you're, once you're older than like 12 there's probably no universal book that is going to appeal to every single person.

[00:34:25] Oriana Leckert: A book that I just finished a couple of weeks ago, which is worth noting is Matt Dinaman's Dungeon Crawler Carl. That book is, and that author, certainly having a moment. Uh, he did. Run a Kickstarter campaign for that book last year, maybe earlier this year, but I think it was last year. And he's at the sort of like, the most popular edge of lit RPG, which is becoming a more and more talked about genre.

[00:34:50] Oriana Leckert: I'm going to be doing a lot of work in, or I guess it's not technically a genre, but it's like an area of writing. Uh, I'll be going to Gen Con next year for the first time, talk to a bunch of lit RPG writers. So dungeon crawler, Carl. Dungeon Crawler Carl is excellent. It's very accessible. When I saw Matt at AuthorNation, he told me that for LitRPG broadly, both the readership and the authorship is like 80 percent male, but the demographics that read his books is much more 50 50 male to female.

[00:35:20] Oriana Leckert: So it's an excellent introduction. It's great. It's quite accessible, even if you, like me, are not like a lifelong gamer. It's funny. It's fun. And yeah, so that's, that is a book that I will recommend for some people. If that sounded like an appealing description, pick it up. If not, there's lots of other books in the world that you can find for you.

[00:35:41] Teddy Smith: Well thank you very much. That's a really good, you're right about lit RPG. Everyone seems to be talking about it at the moment and loads of people have said, I don't Let's RPG books as their recommendation. So I have to go and check it out. Do you get company? Yeah. Well, thanks for joining me and we'll speak again soon.

[00:35:56] Oriana Leckert: Yeah. Such a delight. Thank you so much for having me, Teddy. 

[00:35:59] Teddy Smith: Thank you so much for tuning in to the publishing performance podcast. I really hope you found today's episode inspiring. I love chatting to authors, writers, and people in the publishing world. Now, just before we wrap up, let me tell you about some of the.

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