Indiegogo Campaign Postmortem

Backers to my Shining Tomorrow Volume 1 audiobook Indiegogo campaign should have received notification of refunds. I issued those myself once I saw that the campaign wouldn’t fund in time; even though it was Fixed Funding, I didn’t want there to be any hiccups in people getting their money back.

Now, I’m going to explore why I believe the campaign failed.

No sense of urgency. Although I explicitly stated that the funds were for an audio edition, I assured potential backers that the book would come out regardless of the campaign’s success or failure. I believe that this was a bad move on my part, since anyone reading could be sure that the book would see the light of day in some form. Since the book was sure to come out, there was no real need to pay into anything.

Anemic promotion. I didn’t spend too much time promoting the campaign; at most, I said a bunch of stuff on Facebook and Twitter near the beginning, then dropped off sharply to work on the next book. Putting the campaign at the end of blog posts didn’t help at all; maybe I got one or two contributors this way, but that was it. Those who succeed at this have to hustle constantly to get new contributors, and I didn’t do that. It even ties into the above — I knew that I could get the book out regardless of how the campaign did, so I had no sense of urgency either.

Lack of a proven track record. Let’s be honest — big names have an easier time at crowdfunding than unknowns. However, this isn’t unfair or wrong — the big names are where they are because they’ve proved that they could deliver. For example, my colleague Brian Niemeier was on his fifth book when he started crowdfunding; he had already published a decently selling four-book series prior to starting on Combat Frame Xseed. I, on the other hand, have only published a small novella that remains obscure. While the above two conditions are an issue, I have to admit that I’m not yet at the level where I can crowdfund.

This campaign has been humbling, but also educational. It shows that while I’ve come far, I still have a long way to go before I can crowdfund credibly.

But rest assured that work on the e-book and print versions is nearly complete and will be ready by May.