When I launched our new campaign for our latest anthology, Cthulhu is Hard to Spell: The Terrible Twos, we were able to raise over $12,700 in 48 hours, and I thought I would talk a bit about what it took to get here.
Granted, I’ve had a lot of success on Kickstarter and have accumulated thousands of backers, but there’s no reason why you can’t use this same, or a similar strategy, with your own launches, even if you can’t follow them exactly.
If you don’t have an anthology, you can still build a group of creators to help you launch, and treat them like I treat the creators on this book.
- Starting in January of 2020, I compiled the book, including a full build AND a preview, and sent it out to the team of creators. I told the creators, of which there were 70, to read the full build of the book so they could talk about it intelligently.
- I put a preview of the book up on Bookfunnel, and told the creators to personally send the preview to 3-5 people who they thought would enjoy the preview and possibly back the book. In order to download the book, they needed to give me their email, which meant by the time of launch I had over 100 people who had downloaded the book.
- I reached out to all my press contacts, and asked my creators to contact 1-3 press outlets to do reviews in the middle of January 2020. I usually like to give the press three months, but with how this campaign came together I simply didn’t have the time.
- In early February of 2020, I finished the initial build of the campaign, and again I sent that off to the creators for notes and approval. I then submitted it for approval and made the landing page. By the time we launched I had over 200 people who signed up to get notified when the book launched.
- Because I had a previous campaign of the same name, I sent the ENTIRE book to people who backed at the physical tier, and the preview to anybody who backed at the digital tier. I have been doing this since the first anthology. My feeling is that the physical people won’t want the digital, and getting them the book will get them excited about it.
- Four weeks before launch, I sent the book to a group of 150+ creators who always get my comics for free in order to give notes and such.
- Every week leading up to the campaign I sent an email to my list talking about the book, from 4 weeks out until the book launched. Every week I told them a different story about the book, and why I loved it.
- Two weeks before launch, after I had gathered the feedback from the creators, I sent my list an email titled “Can you help me?” where I asked them for feedback on the campaign page. Since these are the real buyers, their feedback is invaluable, and I always find some things to add to the page from them that tightens it up.
- One week before launch, I sent my list all of the early bird perks we were giving away during the first week of the campaign. I spent the previous month gathering perks from my creators, collaborators, and friends to use as a big early bird bundle for backers who backed early, and I wanted to give them a week to look it over.
- Every day the week before launch, I would share about the anthology, but every day was a different share. So one day I would talk about the history of the book, and the next I would talk about my story, and the third I would call out another great story, and another day I would discuss the quality of the book. Each day was different. I had been posting a little bit about the book on social media, but I mostly kept it confined to my mailing list and reader group until the week before launch.
- The day of the launch, I send three emails. One around 8 am PT. My campaigns always launch at 6 am PT, which gives me enough time to get everything else set for the campaign. Then, I send one around 12 pm PT, with a special extra first-day bonus. Then, at 6 pm PT, I send a final email when the first-day bonus closes. Meanwhile, I’m sharing all about the book on social media, in my previous campaigns, and coordinating with the other creators.
Lots of big campaigns don’t launch that well, and I have learned how to launch big using the general guides above. I hope it helps for you.
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