KickstarterForum.org

[Wild Voices]

Hi!

My name is Diane and I am masterminding a fundraising campaign for a book and card set called "wild Voices" and I am hoping to raise enough money to get 50 super special, limited edition versions as well as 50 standard versions made up and printed.

I'm really hesitant to put this question out here and totally confident the information I am looking for is right under my nose - but bear with me please and I promise not to use the "I'm a creative" lame ass excuse.

So, what's boggling my brain - left and right hemispheres - is setting my funding goal when I have more than one pledge incentive gift, many combinations and 12 pledging levels. If I am needing to raise $9000 to pay for the project and I can make available $28000 worth for funding in order to raise the $9000, I really need to be 100% funded when my PROFIT is $9000. The problem is that because of the different profit margins per pledge level and not knowing the success of each level, the gross income to generate will vary and be impossible to accurately calculate beforehand.

Again - I apologize if this question has been addressed many times, or if this is all very just common sense - but I would very much appreciate a heads up.

Thanks!

[MichaelTumey]

I'm thinking that you've arranged a limited print run of 50 books for 2 different versions of your book. Why limit it to 50 books? I'm not sure with whom you've arranged your print book through, but there are many printing house options that wouldn't have a 50 book limit, or a reason to maintain a 50 book limit.

I've pre-arranged printing at 2 different printing houses - in case undue delays with one, I can work with the other to meet my deadlines. CreateSpace is owned by Amazon, and Lightning Source a major printer for tabletop gaming industry are the companies I am working with, both have very reasonable long run, short run and print-on-demand setups. Of course POD is the most expensive, but has almost no administrative requirements - you post it to Amazon and other online book selling sites, if an order is placed, a book is printed, one at a time. You make the least money with POD, but there is little you need to do, other than making it available. Short and long run printing is cheaper, but a lot more risky since you have to prepay for an amount of books, you may not sell.

Since selling books at a bookstore requires that at least 45% of the cover price is profit for the seller, which means cost to print and ship, plus your profit comes out of the other 55%. Basically whatever the cost to print and ship the book should be 1/4 the cover price, with 1/4 going to you as profit. Whatever the print and shipping cost of a single book from the printing house, multiply by 4 to get your retail cover price, as a good standard to work with.

What I'm saying is, I think working with a limited print run of 50 books is not the way to approach a book creation Kickstarter project. Figure out your costs, look to POD if there are few Kickstarter patrons, depending on the number of sign ups, you can always go for short run printing to accomodate, but you don't have to decide until you get actual pledges made to cover the costs.

My Kickstarter is producing 3 different books, possibly 4 if the last gets funded in time, all soft cover, full color interior print books of an estimated 248 pages each. Because it's a map tutorials guide, using full color interior is important, but also far more costly, which means a 248 page book sold in a bookstore needs to be no less than $39.99 to cover it's cost (my profit is $9.51 each). So far, based on pledges made, I have to produce 70 soft cover books, 14 soft cover versions of the 2 other funded books, 14 hard cover books (higher pledge to gain), all other customers are getting digital files as PDFs of the books only.

Once the books are ready for print runs, I will use Gamerati (game industry PR company) to put my books into their distribution catalog (both print and online versions), so they work as book distributors to get it into the system, so they can be sold from brick-and-mortar bookstore locations.

I say let your customers determine how many books you need, then pick your best printing house and go from there.

[inflexionUSA]

Hi Diane,

There are many variables that come into play when establishing rewards and pricing. The more options you add the more complicated it becomes. I would suggest a "less is more" approach to start as it will be easier and safer to set up and better for backers to make decisions. There's a lot to be said for limiting options. Remember that you can always add reward tiers later.

What you hope to gain from this should have a large impact on your decisions. Are you looking to maximize profit or backers? While there is no right or wrong answer, how you set up your rewards can favor one over the other.

The safest way to set up rewards, in my opinion, is to work from your cost basis forward, keeping in mind that given the quantities you are seeking, you are more likely to have higher rather than lower than expected costs. Remember to include shipping, fees, and other incidental costs. Also add a small % for the unknown and margin of error.

Once you have your cost add your profit. I think Michael gave you some good insight as to book pricing in the competitive marketplace for bookstores. This may serve as useful guide for pricing your books. I would price your books at better than market value.

I would also begin with limited quantities in your reward tiers. Again, you can always add more later. Success can be a double edge sword, so be careful. 100 books at an initial reward level may serve you well, 1,000 perhaps not.

Early bird rewards, incidental rewards and other tiers should be used to support not compete with your primary goal. You should base them on cost and adjust according to what you want them to achieve. A lower profit margin in exchange for momentum is probably a good thing. However use this with discretion and keep it limited. You do not want early bird pricing to have to great an impact on the overall project's bottom line.

One final note Kickstarter is all or nothing. Indiegogo also offers flexible funding. If you are going the flexible funding route, keep in mind that your project may close without enough revenue to meet production minimums. In which case you have taken on an obligation that cannot be satisfied by your project's success.

James

[Wild Voices]

Thank you for your feedback Michael and James. Much to ponder and to consider. So it seems it is not an exact science and there is no handy formula??

Michael - re. printing only 50 of each instead of a 100 - I agree totally and am making 78 books of the special edition version available as pledge gifts so that brings the total to 128 books to be printed. The 50 not available as pledge gifts will be used to test the retail market with. This goes for the standard version of Wild Voices as well, but will include a box for packaging the standard version in.

James - re. your comment about keeping it simple. Yes to that as well - funding gifts include an ebook, gift ebooks, card set, card pouch, journal, t-shirt - (different combos of these of course) then the higher levels offering hardcopy book versions and the final level original artwork +.

As we have to date just worked on budgets and have not incurred costs (except for my work in creating the design and artwork and the author's work), this is how I see things:
1. Kickstarter is one helluva good platform for testing and marketing your product - that's got to be worth a whole lot, and
2. as long as you have got the cost of pledge gifts covered with a reasonable amount of profit coming into the coffers -
3. if 100% funded decisions will have to be made where the profits left over from making the pledge gifts gets spent, meaning we might actually not be able to pay a website designer, ourselves - BUT
4. if we work our butts off with promoting Wild Voices we stand to make much, much more as there is $28000 worth of potential funding available.

So a bit of a gamble from beginning to end - makes it all very exciting and if cleverly played, even if we lose we still get to testing the market and getting some valuable feedback - and have our creative egos tested to the max

Of course if I have not jumped to the right conclusions - please do jump in and let me know.

Thanks!

[inflexionUSA]

Hi Diane,

I suspect that some of the conclusions you are reaching may be incomplete, incorrect or both. While it's true that Kickstarter can be a valuable test ground for products or ideas, many project creators never actually benefit from this potential. The overwhelming reason for this I believe is that most enter KS with incorrect assumptions and are unprepared in key ways that are necessary not only to succeed, but also to make the this a valuable and worthwhile learning experience.

I have included a link below to Seth Godin's Kickstarter project as well a podcast interview he did on "Funding the Dream". I would suggest taking a look at these links to hear Seth's perspective on these matters.

kickstarter http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/297 ... o?ref=live

podcast http://www.thegamewhisperer.com/2012/06 ... godin.html

Good luck and keep working it.

James

[Wild Voices]

Thanks again James!

I am familiar with Seth Godin's campaign as he is "up there" in the ranks of successful fundraisers.

Just to clarify - not hoping to recruit new followers as in "Kickstarter is not a good place to recruit new followers." http://www.thegamewhisperer.com/2012/06 ... odin.html- the author Anne Keating and I have been working on this project for years and she has been running successful workshops using the Wild Voices material, so we have been working hard at growing the tribe. We have also approached many publishers and been turned down - they are wary of book and card sets - and that is why we are taking this "hero's journey".

It's going to be telling what pledge levels get funded, is what I mean about market research. The old ebook versus realbook as well as standard version versus special edition version.

But thank you for your concern and response. Much appreciated!

[inflexionUSA]

Hi Diane,

It sounds as though you will be coming into KS strong and with a following. With that you should be able to do quite well. I do think you can gain quite a few backers from Kickstarter independent of your tribe. But it will be because of you existing tribe and the enthusiasm and momentum they create.

I think many are looking for a step by step magical formula for success. I do not believe that exists. To illustrate my point, any thoughts that I can espouse or share with you concerning your project is based solely on the information that I know about you and your project. As this is limited, my thoughts in general can only be that general. To me smart, well thought out and proven paths to success can provide the basis for which one can build there own plan. In the end however, it is the nuances and execution of one's own plan dynamically adjusted along the way that I believe is the best path to success.

With that said, tactical decisions can also greatly influence your chances of success. Testing ideas with others, as you have been doing, before your launch, gives you insight into what others are thinking and how they perceive presentation.

Seems like you've got that.

James

[MichaelTumey]

Indeed, I spent about 2 months developing my "tribe", and once the project started going, I'd say, more than half the contributors were brand new to me, having no connection to me prior to the start of the campaign. I think Kickstarter is a tremendous place to recruit new fans to your project. Really only about 20 pledgers knew me prior to the start.

My Kickstarter is nearing it's end of funding with 32 hour left, and as I said previously, my Kickstarter is about funding books - 5 books in my case, plus some extra digital content for map-makers. My book series are tutorial guides teaching people to use most standard graphics applications to create maps for their roleplaying games.

At this point, I have to have 200 soft cover, full color interior books to deliver, and about 20 soft cover books of each of the other 4 guides, and 4 hard cover versions - the rest of my contributors are getting digital content only, as in the books as PDF download files.

Final stats for 30 day funding period - with 32 hours left (Aug 2nd - Sep 1st):
346 backers, 432% funded, $16,203 pledged, 865 video views, 45.09% viewed entire video, 139 Facebook shares, 3 stretch goals funded, and last stretch goal only $297 away.

I hope your project is just as successful as mine has been!

[Wild Voices]

Whoop!! Whoop!! Well done Michael!!!! All the best with the rest of your journey and Yes!! would love our Wild Voices campaign to be as successful as yours!!!

[MichaelTumey]

Thanks, Wild Voices - I did even better than I would have guessed by funding end. Total pledges: $23,289 (almost $20K over original goal, $6800 over last stretch goal!), I gained almost $10K in the last 3 days, 456 backers, some of my backers pledged as much as $290 and one pledged $1.10...? It was a great experience!

Michael