| |

I’m an author, journalist and one of the UK’s social media pioneers. Here I write about publishing, self-publishing and crowdfunding. I am also the author of Argleton, a novelette about a mysterious town that appears on digital maps but doesn’t exist in reality. I self-published via Kickstarter and Amazon Kindle, and am negotiating my way through the publishing world and exploring new business models for entrepreneurial authors along the way. As a freelance journalist, I have written about social media and technology for FirstPost.com, The Guardian, CIO Magazine and Computer Weekly.

Contact Suw Charman-Anderson

The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.

Loading...
Business 18,727 views

Million Dollar Book Proves Kickstarter Model, Now Authors Just Need The Reach

Continued from page 1

Why don’t authors have bigger networks? Is it because authors simply aren’t used to the idea of talking directly to their audience? For centuries, the model has been to sell to agents and/or publishers and let them deal with the public, but for crowdfunding to really work, authors have to start making direct connections with their readers.

I think this is why Amazon’s model is so appealing for authors and small-publishers: Their recommendation algorithm does at least some of the heavy lifting when it comes to getting your book in front of readers. If you’re starting from zero you do have to do a fair amount of promotional work to get to the point where the recommendation algorithm kicks in, but you can probably let it evolve over time. It doesn’t have a deadline like Kickstarter.

But to really explore the opportunities that authors have in this online, networked, social world of ours, we have to rethink the very basic. It’s not enough to write good stories. You need to manage a mailing list of fans, be on Twitter and/or Facebook, have a blog, and be willing to put in the hard graft required to build an audience. Only then can you take advantage of the opportunities provided by revolutionary new business models like Kickstarter.

  • Page 2 / 2

Post Your Comment

Please or sign up to comment.

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

  • “But to really explore the opportunities that authors have in this online, networked, social world of ours, we have to rethink the very basic. It’s not enough to write good stories. You need to manage a mailing list of fans, be on Twitter and/or Facebook, have a blog, and be willing to put in the hard graft required to build an audience.”

    Except that Rich Burlew, your primary example, doesn’t have a mailing list of fans, isn’t on Twitter, isn’t on Facebook (although a fan started running a page for Order of the Stick there), and doesn’t really have a blog (giantitp.com has a News feed, but at best, it averages one post a month, and sometimes goes quiet for four months at a time.) He certainly did build an audience through hard work, though.

  • Suw Charman-Anderson Suw Charman-Anderson, Contributor 3 years ago

    Rich Burlew has been building his community for nine years and when he started out Twitter and Facebook didn’t exist. Twitter launched in 2006, Facebook launched in 2004 but didn’t open to the public until 2006, so his readership predates the key social tools currently in use and people tend to stick with what they know.

    That doesn’t invalidate the advice. For people currently working to build a fanbase, social tools are really important as they allow the people in your network to easily pass on links and recommendations to their friends, and their friends’ friends.

  • Order of the Stick has a bulletin board besides the comic. The bulletin board has about 160,000 30-day unique site visitors. That’s where the audience is.

    I interpreted the article as “author has to have a community”, not that it has to be one of those four explicit social media: mailing list, twitter, facebook, blog.

  • Suw Charman-Anderson Suw Charman-Anderson, Contributor 3 years ago

    Absolutely! Although I’d add that for authors without a community at the moment, those four tools are probably easy places to start. Forums really only work when you already have a critical mass of readers and there’s nothing more off-putting than an empty forum. On the other hand a small newsletter-style mailing list looks exactly the same as a big one, and a rarely-read blog looks pretty similar to a widely trafficked one, except for comments and they don’t matter if your content’s good.

  • I wish my Kickstarter
    http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/channelm/princess-lucinda-short-film
    would revive that kind of love.

    Still A heartfelt congrats to a talented man!

  • Suw Charman-Anderson Suw Charman-Anderson, Contributor 3 years ago

    Malcolm, I had a quick look at your project, and my advice would be to revisit your reward levels. They are a bit confusing, and there’s very little of real value to the supporter in the lower price ranges, and none of them seem to include the film!

    Remember that most people like to pledge under $50, but they want more than a thank you card and a credit. There are loads of rewards you could do: digital download of the film, HD digital download, DVD, wallpapers for your computer, book and ebook of art from the film, etc. etc.

    Rich Burlew gave people something that they really wanted – copies of his main products (the comic in book form) either digitally or in print, and then a bunch of other goodies that they can’t get elsewhere. What are you giving your supporters that they really, really want?

  • Caesar Wong Caesar Wong 3 years ago

    If you look closely, you can see an example of precisely how Burlew looks after his fans – his 26 updates and continual tweaking of the Kickstarter reward levels exemplifies audience engagement, even within the Kickstarter framework.

  • Suw Charman-Anderson Suw Charman-Anderson, Contributor 3 years ago

    Yes, absolutely. I actually think that his engagement with his audience on Kickstarter is almost more important than the continual tweaking of reward levels. That said, the way that he continually gives people a reason to increase their reward level has almost certainly contributed to his success. He’s been particularly smart with the use of digital rewards, giving people more and more digital stuff as the project goes on.

  • Mark Smith Mark Smith 3 years ago

    An excellent, article that highlights the reality of doing Kickstarter. Author’s have to extend their reach and build their networks much more to find success like this. I think it will gradually become easier and help comics a lot.

  • ceyhun ceyhun 3 years ago

    Very good article, yes authors needs a good fanbase and community. This should be a good example that you can earn money without big publishers. (Also a warning to “old media”) Internet is so big, there can be really bad content but there are people like Rich and i’m really happy to see their success. As a fan of order of the stick it is also good to know that Rich saw the power of his art. He will continue to create good stuff and we will continue to watch him.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/suwcharmananderson/2012/02/20/million-dollar-book-proves-kickstarter-model-now-authors-just-need-the-reach/2/
www.forbes.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2015-18
90052
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:E46DMLKRDEYZRHFKBUDWJG4TY72C5JBU
<urn:uuid:479d4698-75ff-43a2-adf4-2e99f0119de7>
2015-04-25T18:59:17Z
68.177.32.8
sha1:H5P5SLIWFHGIKGROB7XGFJFRC3525PM3
<urn:uuid:1f49495a-bc08-462f-95cc-5242488abaa6>
http://www.forbes.com/sites/suwcharmananderson/2012/02/20/million-dollar-book-proves-kickstarter-model-now-authors-just-need-the-reach/2/
response
<urn:uuid:045c13ed-b3d7-4887-8e24-c9c2c579df3d>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-235-10-82.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2015-18
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for April 2015
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf