Ripley Patton's Blog, page 41

WE DID IT!
The publication of Ghost Hand as been successfully funded on Kickstarter.
Thank you so much for your support. Thank you for backing the project 112%. It was an amazing experience for me to see the money rolling in from family, friends, fans, and even people I didn’t know.
MORE THAN GENEROUS
Over the course of the project, not only did you fund the money I needed to make Ghost Hand a real book, many of you offered to donate your skills and talents as well.
I now have someone copy editing Ghost Hand for free, someone preparing the the print lay-out for free and someone converted all the e-book files for free. These are all tasks I was originally going to have to pay for, which means even more of my Kickstarter funds can go toward promotion and print production of Ghost Hand, as well as research for book two. And yes, that means I will be able to afford that trip to Indianapolis for setting research, even though we didn’t make that final stretch goal.
A special thank you goes out to those who have offered to help make Ghost Hand a reality in such a hands-on way.
SO WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
First, it takes about two weeks for the Kickstarter pledges to be processed and finalized to my account, so I won’t see the funds until early September. While I’m waiting, I will be going over Ghost Hand one last time, polishing it to a gleaming shine before sending it out for a professional edit.
A professional edit can take up to four weeks, so that puts us into early October before I get it back to make corrections and changes to the manuscript.
Meanwhile, I will be ordering ISBNs for the print and e-book versions, and the good news is they come in batches of 10 for $250, which means I will have covered my ISBN needs for four future books as well.
Once the edit is done and changes have been made, Ghost Hand will be formatted for e-book and paperback and will go to print. This will take about two weeks, which puts us to mid-October.
I will also be making plans for a special Ghost Hand Launch in November, just in time to buy it for the holidays for all your YA-loving kin.
Thank you for making the reality of Ghost Hand possible.

 

At the recent GeekGirlCon in Seattle, I attended a panel on Kickstarter. The panelists were Tristan J. Tarwater and Caytlin Vilbrant. Tristan has done several Kickstarters for her fantasy novel series, and Caytlin is a comic artist who has also done multiple Kickstarters.
INDIEGOGO VERSUS KICKSTARTER
The first thing the panelists discussed was the difference between Indiegogo and Kickstarter. While Indiegogo is open to international projects, for Kickstarter you must be located in the US to run a project. Internationals can back a KS project, they just can’t create one. Indiegogo also does not use the “all of nothing” backing method that Kickstarter does. With Indiegogo, you get whatever funds you raise regardless of your initial goal. Indiegogo allows charity or “fund your life” projects, whereas Kickstarter only allows projects that result in a creative outcome or product. However, Indiegogo does take a larger cut of the funds raised (7% plus 3-5% Amazon charges) whereas Kickstarter only charges 5% plus the 3-5% Amazon charges. In the end, both panelists chose Kickstarter based on its lower fees and its popularity as it is currently the number one crowdfunding website in the world with approximately 6 million hits a day. Less cost and more exposure is hard to argue with.
GAUGING YOUR AUDIENCE
In order to run a successful Kickstarter project, it is crucial to have an existing audience or clientele for your creative project. Unless you are already a well-known artist, your first project will primarily be backed by friends, family, and people who are already aware of your art. It is a good idea to sit down BEFORE you create your project and make a list of your potential backers. Include family, friends, co-workers, acquaintances, Facebook friends, and anyone who has shown a previous interest in your work. This list will guide you as you promote your project before and once it starts. Be aware that only about 10-20% of those on your list will actually fund you.
GAUGING YOUR FUNDING GOAL
With Kickstarter, setting a realistic funding goal is important because if you don’t make your goal, you don’t get anything. It is better to set a lower goal and overfund, than a higher goal and get nothing. However, it is best to look at your project and estimate the costs involved to make it. Don’t forget to calculate in the fees mentioned above, production and shipping of any rewards, and taxes on your Kickstarter income.
CREATING THE PROJECT
Suggestions the panelists offered about creating your project.
1)      Make sure you have a video.
2)      Break up your text with visuals. Include mock-ups of the product and rewards, art work, and heading borders.
3)      Don’t have too many reward tiers, but make sure you hit the most popular level- $25, and have a variety, including $5 for those who just want to test the KS waters.
4)      Involve other creative friends and artists in your project. This gives you more options for rewards, broadens your backer base, and helps support your fellow artists by including their work and links to it.
5)      It is good to create a short press release with a blurb and visuals and send it out to appropriate blogs, websites and media outlets before you start your project.
6)      Be sure to use the update feature to keep the project current and your backers excited.
THE DOWNSIDE OF OVERFUNDING
In many cases, Kickstarter projects overfund, meaning they meet their goal and then go beyond it. This is both a blessing and a curse. It is good, because it means you have more money to make your project better. It is a curse because it puts pressure on you to offer bigger and better stretch goal and rewards.  The more backers give, the more you can produce, but creating extra rewards takes time and effort and may delay your original delivery estimate. Be careful when choosing stretch rewards. Both Tristan and Caytlin suggested making your stretch rewards digital (perhaps an e-version or an mp3) so they are much easier to produce and cost no extra shipping.
FUNDING THROUGH AMAZON
One thing the panelists talked about briefly is the fact that Kickstarter processes all its pledges through Amazon, and only Amazon. Your pledge is linked to your Amazon account (or one you create, if you don’t have one yet), and a hold is put on your credit card, but you are not actually charged until the project makes its goal. If it doesn’t make it, you are never charged.
During my Kickstarter project some people have asked about this and wondered why Kickstarter doesn’t use PayPal or other forms of payment. The reason Kickstarter doesn’t use PayPal is because PayPal requires the delivery of goods within 30 days or the purchaser can demand a full refund. Obviously, this doesn’t work for a Kickstarter where the project often is not finished in 30 days, and one would not suddenly want to see one’s funding pulled from the project 30 days into the process.
KICKSTARTER FATIGUE
As the creator, after your Kickstarter ends you will be exhausted. Running a KS project is similar to running a marathon, and after you cross the finish line you may wonder what possessed you to do it in the first place. And you may be sure you will never do it again. The good news is, just like marathon running, there is something addictive about Kickstarter. You will probably find yourself, sometime in the future, contemplating running another project. And then the question arises,”Are your backers weary?” Have they been tapped out or have you burst the giving bubble. The answer might surprise you.
Caytlin Vilbrandt actually pollled her previous backers to see if they were tired of her asking for money through Kickstarter, or if they would rather she fund her project some other way. They almost unanimously responded, “Do another Kickstarter.” You see, Kickstarter is not just addictive to those who create projects. It is also addictive to those who back them.
Another surprising statistic that both Caytlin and Tristan shared was that on their first KS, their backers were primarily people they knew or who already knew them. The figure they gave was over 50%. But on their second and subsequent projects, the people they knew comprised only about 5% of their backing. The rest came from people they didn’t know. This shows that Kickstarter is a viable promotional tool. It actively broadens your fan base and artistic audience. It also shows that backer fatigue may exist, but it doesn’t really matter. Your second and third project are going to tap into a new demographic of people who haven’t backed you yet. And it also shows that the more you utilize KS, the better you get at it, and the more credibility you build in the KS community. People can see that you’ve had a previous project succeed and you delivered the goods.
Thank you to Tristan and Caytlin for sharing your KS wisdom, and for letting me hand out my Ghost Hand Kickstarter cards.
Like this article?  Show your support by backing my Ghost Hand Kickstarter project HERE, and help send an Indie to Indy. 

Want to be part of launching the next new Young Adult Paranormal Thriller series by an award-winning author? Get in on the ground floor and pre-order Ghost Hand on my  Kickstarter Project. With only four days left, I have already reached my $2500 goal and I am now working toward a stretch goal to fund travel to the location of Ghost Hand book 2, exotic Indianapolis, Indiana.

WHAT ARE PEOPLE SAYING ABOUT GHOST HAND?
“As an adult reading GHOST HAND, I was struck by how much I wanted to be Olivia Black. Ripley Patton’s passion for teens and skill at writing is revealed in Olivia’s sassy, smart personality.”  - Angel McCoy, Editor of Wily Writers Audible Fiction and horror writer extraordinaire.
“In Ghost Hand the characters talk like real teens, mainly because I made mom take out words like ‘goomba’, ‘buzz off’ and ‘scared the tar out of me.’ So, yeah, she owes me one.”  - Valerie Patton, fourteen-year-old daughter of Ripley Patton
“I keep telling her it needs more swearing. And more guns.”  - Soren Patton, sixteen-year-old son of Ripley Patton
“She’s done with that thing? Does this mean I get her lap back?” - Jet, the Patton family cat.
“Ripley Patton knows how to deliver a coming-of-age story packed with realistic, rounded characters.”  - Edwina Harvey, Editor of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Freelance editor, and author of the YA science fiction novel, The Whale’s Tale.
WHAT IS GHOST HAND ABOUT?
There are secrets we keep hidden deep inside of us. Secrets of abuse and abandonment and self-harm. No one can see them. No one can find them. No one can touch us there. 
Until now.
Olivia Black just discovered that her ghost hand, a genetic defect, can do more than light up a room. It can reach into people and pull things out. Things from the darkest depths of the human psyche never meant to exist in this world. 
Olivia can pickpocket the soul. 
But she can’t control her ability, or the strange items it extracts, and the only thing between Olivia and the men bent on taking the power of her hand is a boy she barely knows and doesn’t trust. 

Ghost Hand will have a release date of November 2012,  just in time for the Christmas season. You can listen to the first chapter of Ghost Hand on StarShipSofa, read by Ripley herself.  Then go check it out on Kickstarter and pre-order your copy by backing the project today.

As an indie or self-pubbed author, you have to promote yourself. You don’t have a publisher, or an editor, or a marketing team working for you. You will be the only one putting yourself forward to the world. And that takes guts.
Now, if you are like me and most of the writers I know, you are an introvert. You don’t like to go to parties or talk to strangers, let alone promote yourself loudly and on a regular basis. You just want to go hide inside your stories. Sadly, I read an article recently that proposed that introverts shouldn’t even bother being indie writers, because we will inevitably fail without all those extrovert traits.
But I don’t believe this is true. I believe that even an introvert can learn the skills needed to promote their writing without forsaking their personality, especially with the handy new tool we have at our disposal known as the internet (also known as “the introvert’s best friend”). The reason I believe this is because I have done it. But it isn’t easy and it takes a bit of practice and conditioning.
When someone joins the military, they condition them at boot camp, breaking them down and building them back up over a concentrated time-period for their new role and environment. Well, I think I recently found the indie equivalent of boot camp- something called Kickstarter.
Kickstarter is the world’s most popular crowdfunding site. It is a way to raise funds for creative projects. For example, I am currently running a Kickstarter to help publish my YA paranormal thriller, Ghost Hand.
If you want a window into what it is going to be like to be your own publicist for life, I encourage you to try running a Kickstarter project. Just setting one up is a good lesson in marketing. What is your book’s selling point? What makes it different than all the other Kickstarter fiction projects? Is your cover appealing enough to snare people who don’t know you or your book? How do you promote your creative vision in a video and on-line presence? What is a reasonable price point? Oh, and don’t forget to include shipping and overhead costs in that price.
But setting up your project is only the beginning of your boot camp experience.
When your project begins, that is really what separates the recruits from the seasoned soldiers. You now have 30 days (or the time-frame you choose) to get in shape, because with Kickstarter you don’t get your funds unless you raise your entire goal. During that crazy 30-day run, you are going to get an idea of what being an indie writer is about. The part where you aren’t writing but are promoting and selling what you have written, a piece that is just as important as the writing because it is what pays the bills so you can keep writing.
What does Kickstarter boot camp include?
 1)      Meta-Data Crunches  - Here is where you get to play with various blurbs, excerpts, appeals, content and visuals to see what does or doesn’t sell your book. You can change things on your project daily if you want (except for your goal and time-frame). This is similar to what you can do on an e-book vender page, changing and testing your meta-data to see what draws buyers in and what doesn’t.
2)      Internet Marketing Push-ups  - Helps you discover what marketing tactics work best for you and your fan-base. Is it Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, e-mail, blogging, website content, print and paper promotion, personal connection or some combination? What are you best at and what gets the most response?
3)      Marketing Push Drill  - Helps you learn how to do concentrated, time-specific marketing pushes and blog tours, like when preparing for a book launch. If you can keep up the energy and enthusiasm over the course of a Kickstarter project, you will know you can do it again when needed.
4)      Fan Briefings  - Helps you learn to compose regular, positive updates for your friends, family and fans about your work and its progress. Gives you a window into the importance of keeping your fans involved and engaged in your creative process.
5)      Tactical Creative Promotions  – Helps you learn to think outside the box for promotions, using everything from give-aways, rewards, swag, and contests. Challenges you to explore new ways to reach people with your product.
6)      Goal-setting Platoon March  - Gives you a specific goal to shoot for within a specific time frame, a good model to follow when coming up with future marketing plans and projects.
7)      Bravery Training  - Helps you learn to be bold about telling those around you what you do. During my Kickstarter, I have been carrying around project post cards that I give to people when the topic comes up. I do not hard sell my project, but I did sneak around my apartment complex slipping post cards under neighbor’s doors with a note that one of their neighbors had written a book. This is something that is way outside of my comfort zone, but I find myself growing in bravery daily.
8)      Fan-base Formations  – Helps you find out who your true fans are, and challenges you to seek new ones. Kickstarter causes you to ask the question, “Where else can I find people who want what I have written?” At some point in your Kickstarter project you may tap out your fan base, and you will have to get creative on how and where to connect with new readers you can carry forward to your next project and beyond.
Think of Kickstarter as your own personal indie boot camp obstacle course. Something you can learn from and train on, and maybe even fail a few times at, but that will ultimately allow you to be a better writer/promoter of your own work when you finally hit those real trenches.
Like this article and want to know EVEN MORE about Kickstarter?  Read my blog post series: Crowdfunding: What it is and Why it Matters, Hands-On Kickstarter: 12 things I learned by building a project,  Twelve things I bet you didn’t know about Kickstarter, Using Story to Drive Your Kickstarter, Keeping the Charity out of Kickstarter, and 8 reasons I didn’t back your Kickstarter.