Promoting your books and boosting direct book sales via a Kickstarter campaign can be both fun and lucrative – and also a lot of work. Most publishing related Kickstarter campaigns, if done well, have a strong start and an even more powerful finish. The creator puts a ton of effort and resources into the launch and then brings in a big burst of energy as the project’s clock winds down at the end. A key to maximizing backers and surpassing your funding goals is to ensure the middle of the campaign period carries its weight, too.
As a writer, you may be familiar with the saggy middle of a book. It’s when we lose momentum in our writing as we trudge through the murk that takes us from the exciting beginning to the big climax – and if we aren’t careful, our own low energy reflects in the story itself. We may have a superb opening hook and a powerful ending, but we have to keep the story moving and interesting throughout every chapter and scene.
A Kickstarter campaign is similar – after all the work and energy you give to launching it, it’s tempting to relax once the project is live. If you do, though, you’ll lose momentum and so will your funding. Don’t rely on a rally at the end of your campaign to meet your goals. Let those last-minute backers be a bonus to everything you’ve accomplished along the way.
How to Solve the Saggy Middle of Your Kickstarter Campaign
Here are some ideas to keep the momentum going throughout your project. Notice how most of these ideas give you access to an audience beyond your own:
- Participate in a Kickstarter promo swap with other authors who also have running campaigns. You each promote the other’s project in your newsletter and to your online platform. You can find groups of authors who do these swaps on Facebook.
- While you’re in the planning stages of your project, schedule guest podcast interviews and blog posts that will go live during the middle of your campaign. Besides reaching the host’s audience, this gives you something new to share with your own reader base besides “back my campaign.”
- Schedule a CraveBooks Kickstarter promotion for the middle of your campaign, notifying thousands of our reader-subscribers who otherwise may never know about your project.
- Offer limited time rewards or add a new reward level, then be sure to send out a Kickstarter update to your followers and a newsletter to your readers. Author Rose Garcia, who has executed multiple successful Kickstarter projects, did this and says, “I also planned for a flash sale to get my backers excited and to also target my campaign followers in hopes of getting them to convert.”
Many authors running their first Kickstarter project worry about “bugging” their readers too often in such a short period of time, which is why they focus on the beginning and the end. By adding something new to the campaign during the middle, such as a bonus or new stretch goal, you have something new that’s of value to share with them – it’s real news, rather than repeating the same pitch.
“Don’t underestimate the impact of your updates to your backers,” Garcia says. “If you are excited, they will be excited. And in that same spirit, keep posting about your campaign all over your social media outlets. Readers are watching, and you never know what will grab them and convert them into a backer.”
When your promoting to your own reader base and while expanding your reach by exploring other opportunities outside of your own audience, as suggested above, the key is to maintain your own enthusiasm throughout. As with most things in life, your attitude and approach from start to finish is what will make the difference to boosting your final funding numbers.
Have you run any Kickstarter campaigns to promote your books? What did you do to solve the saggy middle? We and our readers would love to know what’s worked for you!
