How To Use Kickstarter to Fund Your Publishing Project

By Jason Boog 

We feature a new Kickstarter publishing project every week on GalleyCat, a series that began by interviewing SocialTimes editor Devon Glenn about her now-completed Black Wave Project.

Glenn met her fundraising goal, and shared practical tips that will still help writers use Kickstarter–advice ranging from free video-making tools to choosing the best fundraising amount. The website Kickstarter has become a powerful new resource for publishing projects–helping writers and publishers raise the funds to start working on their artistic dreams.

Want to see more publishing projects on Kickstarter? Check out Writing & Publishing category, the Comics category and the Journalism category for more inspiration.

Five Tips for Using Kickstarter to Fund Your Publishing Project

1. Confine your project to the word limit–choose description carefully but give readers a clear visualization of what you are doing.

2. Glenn used a number of free online tools to create her author video. She used free audio tools like Audacity to record herself singing a four-part opera piece, SoundCloud to upload the music track, and the Prelinger Archives for public domain video footage.

3.  Create interesting rewards for your sponsors. Glenn will give donors a copy of her book, name characters after some of her donors, and send a postcard from a ghost to some of her donors.

4. Choose your fundraising amount carefully. Glenn chose $1,500 because it would be enough to get the project off the ground without setting an impossible fundraising goal.

5. Use Twitter, Facebook, blogs, email, and your whole network to spread the word–this is a great chance to show your friends and family what you are working on.

Press play below to listen to the entire encore interview with Glenn.