As of this writing, podcasting author Mur Lafferty has earned $11,000 more than she originally sought for her self-publishing project on Kickstarter. With 11 days to go, she already has more than 164 backers for her book.
Lafferty explained her how she calculated her goal in an interview with Nathan Bransford: “I took in my costs: $1,600 for the ebook conversion, but I had to remember there would be costs for Kickstarter (They get 5% if you’re successful) and the cost of the rewards (more about that later.) I also needed some software to transcribe Book 3, because I’ve lost that manuscript and have only the audio file. Lastly, I had to remember postage for reward fulfillment. OK, so I figured I’d shoot for $2,000, counting on the fact that I could probably make more than that because of my established audience who wanted the books, in case my math was wrong.”
Welcome to our Kickstarter Publishing Project of the Week, a feature exploring how authors and publishers are using the fundraising site to raise money for book projects. If you want to start your own project, check out How To Use Kickstarter to Fund Your Publishing Project.
Editor’s note: this post has been updated as the story evolved.