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The official podcast from the team at BookFunnel, hosted by Jack Shilkaitis, Kelli Tanzi, and Emma Alisyn, featuring guest interviews, self-publishing industry discussions, and tips for using BookFunnel to build an author business.
0:00: And super fans said, shut up and take my money, like $42 million.
0:04: We didn't even know what the titles of the books were.
0:07: Like, that's what super fans show up for, right?
0:10: I, I don't care.
0:12: Did Brandon write it?
0:13: Did he put it on a napkin?
0:14: Great, I don't care.
0:15: Give it to me.
0:15: I'll, I'll take my money and I'll read it, right?
0:18: You can mean a little bit to a lot of people, you know, I, I think of that as like really wide trough but like really shallow or.
0:24: You could build a deep trench where you're like the perfect thing to one person on earth.
0:28: It's way better to be the best thing to one person on earth, because it's a heck of a lot easier finding another person who's a half a click different than that person, and then you have two people who like live and breathe what you do, and then 3 people and 4 people, versus getting people who sort of are like, whatever to care more is so much harder.
0:48: Hey folks, welcome to the Book Funnel podcast, where authors get real-world advice on writing, publishing, and growing a career on their own terms.
0:57: Whether you're just starting out or you're deep into your author journey, we're here to help you build your readership, boost your book sales, and connect with your audience.
1:04: Each episode, we aim to bring you insights from authors, experts, and industry insiders who have been there, done that, and then some.
1:12: For this episode, I'll be passing off hosting duties with our CEO Damon Courtney, and we are joined by the CEO of Backer Kit, Max.
1:21: So Damon, go ahead and take it away.
1:23: All right, so Max, first, thank you all.
1:26: Thanks for coming on.
1:27: I think thanks for having me.
1:28: Yeah, so if you've seen the podcast before or if my, my folks explained the rules, you already know the rules of CEO Thunderdome.
1:36: two men enter, one man leaves.
1:37: So.
1:38: No, I'm just kidding.
1:39: Let's go.
1:40: Yeah, let's go.
1:41: So, yeah, everybody, just because I think probably a lot of people in the audience know about Backer Kit, but maybe don't know about you.
1:47: Just give me like an introduction of yourself, how you started Backer Kit, where everything sort of came in, right?
1:52: Yeah, thanks so much.
1:53: Yeah, really excited to be here and just chat and talk shop with you here today, Damon.
1:57: Yeah, so my kind of crowdfunding journey actually started with, I actually ran the first six-figure Kickstarter project ever back in 2010.
2:04: And so this is ancient history ago, I guess like 16 years ago, and Backergate basically came out of, we kind of realized we had the world's greatest problem on Earth, which is thousands of dollars from thousands of people for something we hadn't finished inventing yet.
2:19: And it turns out crowdfunding was this new sort of wonderful thing, but it turns out you need a lot of tools to actually help you do the hard part, which is actually make the dang thing and get it to the Thousands of people who are really excited, yeah, kind of maybe similar to how, you know, Book Funnel came to be, but that's exactly how we started.
2:37: Yeah, so, so really for the first, you know, 10 years of Backer kit we were really focused on kind of being that back end of crowdfunding, and, you know, we managed up to like 30 to 40% of the total dollars raised on Kickstarter in that time just kind of becoming, you know, kind of the back of the house every successful project and he has similar problems.
2:56: In 2022 we actually decided to, I guess in the period of 10 years we also just started building more and more tools.
3:02: Creators needed help with running their marketing.
3:05: They needed help with fulfillment.
3:06: They needed help with, with performance marketing.
3:08: We kind of have done everything in sort of the crowdfunder's life cycle journey except for the crowdfunding platform.
3:14: And kind of it was interesting because it kind of was our customers kind of came to us and they're sort of like, Max, you do everything else and you just sort of please complete the circle and then I could do everything under one roof and you know it's really interesting because obviously I started Backer Kick because we were really excited about crowdfunding and Kickstarter, you know, it's part of our story, but we really just saw this opportunity.
3:36: That crowdfunding actually really evolved from when I first did it, certainly for sure, and you know we just kind of saw that there was sort of a new world that we could actually help people with if we just decided to kind of take our take on what crowdfunding kind of should be.
3:51: And so yeah, we started in 2022 and we've been just growing like a weed ever since and we've been able to build a lot of cool new tools and push crowdfunding forward.
4:00: I think specifically, you know, who it can be.
4:03: For and what it can enable for them.
4:04: We can get into more of that hopefully, but and yeah, it's been super great and you know, the reason we're talking here too is that you know we've had a huge explosion of interest from the publishing sector among many other categories.
4:16: Aggregate is crowdfunding for all sorts of different categories, so it's not just publishing, but publishing is a big focus for us just because we see the type of creators that authors are really fit, I think, that model of what crowdfunding should.
4:29: You know, who should serve.
4:30: Yeah, we're seeing a lot more of that.
4:32: So what's, what's really interesting is that, you know, you and I've met before, but we haven't actually talked.
4:36: So your villain origin story is honestly like so, so similar to Book Funnels in that.
4:41: I mean, even down to the, oh, well, now I've done this thing, which in my case I'd written a book, and now I need to deliver this thing, and that didn't exist.
4:48: And so I was like, oh, well, I'll just go and do it for myself, and then like, hey, I, I think it's kind of cool and other people might want to use it too.
4:55: And then, yes, in the 10 years that we've been around, cause we launched in 2015.
4:59: It has been a, you know, at first it was just like, oh, well, here, here's how people can download books and get them onto their Kindles.
5:04: And then it was like, well, can you guys do the signup pages so that we build, it's, well, yeah, we can build that.
5:10: And then, well, I really want to send out my advanced reader copies, and can you guys do that?
5:13: Like, oh, sure, we can do that.
5:14: And so just like adding on more and more tools as people came in, as authors came in, and it really is one of those things, you know, you know, as a software engineer, like, once they know you can do something, it's like, well, couldn't you do this thing too?
5:29: you know, we really would love it if you could do that thing.
5:31: So, so then crowdfunding on Backer kit really launched in 2022.
5:36: I, I'm sure I don't have to tell you, you even mentioned like, crowdfunding has become much bigger in the publishing space.
5:41: It's become a, a really big talked about topic.
5:44: I, I go to a lot of conferences, and I usually get up and I give a talk, and I, I try to, you know, I try to make my talks really informative, always entertaining, you know, but the sort of two things that Book Funnel has always pushed is, is kind of a message is, You know, which relates back to Book Funnel, obviously, but like, I truly believe that the future for, for most authors who want a long-term sustainable career going forward is always gonna be about direct connection with readers.
6:09: I just got back from the self-publishing show live in London, and one of the, you know, the big topic, you can't avoid it is AI.
6:16: Everybody's sort of talking about AI and, and good or bad, I'm not here to talk about that.
6:19: What I can say though is that, like, you're never gonna make a mistake.
6:24: in your career if you're making connections with readers.
6:27: And so, I've always sort of pushed the direct connection with your readers, meaning like a newsletter or a mailing list, some way to contact and communicate with your readers.
6:35: And then for us, at least, I, I've seen, we've seen the explosive growth in direct sales, right?
6:41: So, so, being able to sell directly to readers, which really, crowdfunding, I try to tell people was like crowdfunding is direct sales, it's just using a slightly different model.
6:50: You guys have, have scored some Some really big wins in the publishing space.
6:55: Brandon Sanderson is doing his campaigns on Backer Kit now, I know, because I'm a super fan and I back all of Brandon's campaigns.
7:01: And then Bonkers Romance, who are, for those of you who don't know, they're an amazing group.
7:05: You guys, Backerkit actually did a webinar with them just a few weeks ago.
7:08: If you can go seek that out cause it's amazing.
7:11: I'll get Jack to put it in the show notes.
7:12: Jack, put it in the show notes.
7:14: He's like those people that do that cause I'm here doing podcasts all the time.
7:17: And like, these are some really Big campaigns, obviously, like Brandon, really big, but bonkers romance, and, and then we've seen a lot more of these sort of campaigns coming along.
7:26: And I'm sort of trying to get authors to understand that crowdfunding is really becoming the sort of third leg of the stool of an author's career, because those three things, the direct, you know, mail, you know, direct connections with readers, selling direct to readers, and then crowdfunding, which is selling direct, but in a very different kind of way, I think is gonna be really, really important.
7:45: And we're seeing so much.
7:46: Much growth in that, in that sector.
7:49: So, obviously you guys are seeing publishing.
7:51: What does publishing look like on Backer Kit now, like in, in terms of what you guys are seeing with campaigns?
7:57: Well, I think one of the key things just to kind of, I really like your idea of the sort of three legs of, of authors, and obviously we think about, we do use the word creator, and obviously that means things in different niches, kind of, but yeah, I'm totally with you that it, that coveting is about a creating.
8:14: Sort of non-mediated way to kind of talk to your fans, but maybe even more specifically like build something for your super fans, right?
8:23: And I think that that it doesn't matter whether you're just starting out or you're Brandon Sanderson, like kind of a way you can almost measure your mossball as it's growing, even from when you're starting to when you're giant, you know, how, you know, dense is that sort of super fan faction.
8:39: And so obviously authors have great direct to consumer.
8:42: Sales that are about the marketplace, you know, whether it's on Kindle or on their store directly, but crowdfunding is this great, you know, commerce event that also, I think, at the same time of being like, hey, you get to put something new into the world, maybe something more audacious, then you probably try to just put on some mass market version of whatever you're trying to do.
9:01: But it lets you almost, you know, test your kind of that core audience to sort of measure how it grows.
9:06: And yeah, I think that's why it's been so potent.
9:08: And then to go back to Something that you said that reminds us about how we kind of view the world a little bit.
9:14: I, you know, crowdfunding did start.
9:16: It was literally in the name.
9:17: It was about kickstarting.
9:18: It was just about starting, and I think that's kind of why V 0 of crowdfunding sort of evolved the way that it did.
9:25: I think Kick Backer kit's kind of key belief and insight is that we're trying to help the creators.
9:31: We're trying to help them build their career.
9:33: We're trying to help them see that this crowdfunding project is actually potentially setting up your next crowdfunding project and your next crowdfunding project in.
9:40: Next crowdfunding project versus sometimes people are just like this is Groundhog Day.
9:45: I do a project.
9:46: I ship a thing.
9:47: People are happy, but I'm sort of back to square one, and I think that that's, it's hard to build a creative driven business kind of thinking about that way.
9:55: And, and so that's, you know, when we think about crowdfunding, it's like it is so important that there's always the current thing is the current thing, but you know, getting people to realize that the audience that they're building, the relationships that they're doing.
10:07: The reputation that they're building is about that long term journey across whatever you're going to do, whether it's just your first book or your 5th book or your 10th book.
10:16: And so that's really kind of how we've thought about growing and the result of that is we've attracted a bunch of great publishing folks who are in very different parts of their, you know, journey as becoming sort of established authors, but I think what's interesting is that model still scales down even if Just starting.
10:34: It's kind of that mentality of am I trying to just write a book once?
10:37: OK, you know, there's ways that if you just want to like experience writing a book and that's what you're trying to do, I have a lot of respect for that and that's cool.
10:44: I think if you are trying to make this something that you're sort of growing into, that's where Backer Kit is a crowdfunding platform, you know, shines.
10:52: Yeah, and I, I, so I meet a lot of authors.
10:55: I go to conferences and, and, you know, if you were out there and your goal was to publish your memoir.
11:00: so that you could put it out into the world and maybe your grandkids could read it someday or something like that.
11:05: I would tell you, you probably don't need crowdfunding, right?
11:07: It's like, that's, if that's the only book you ever plan to write, then you're probably good to just put that book out there into the world, maybe have, you know, somebody print off a few copies, and then, you know, hand them out as Christmas gifts.
11:17: That's not really what the platforms are designed for.
11:20: But most of the authors that I meet when I go, if you paid for a ticket to come to a conference, I generally assume that Most of you are here because you want to make a career out of this.
11:28: You want to be a full-time author, even if you don't want to just, you know, because I meet authors who are like, oh no, I love my job.
11:35: I plan to stay with my job, but I also like writing and I like putting books out into the world.
11:39: So I don't want to like write as a full-time job, but I do plan to write series and, and keep putting books out into the world.
11:45: And for any of those authors, absolutely, we have the whole talk that I give, or the one that I just gave in London, it really was talking about.
11:53: You should absolutely be looking into crowdfunding because it is going to be, it's already important for the authors who have figured it out.
12:01: Oftentimes at these conferences, I'm talking to a lot of newer authors, many who don't have their first book out.
12:05: And I would say, you know, a question comes up, oh, should I be crowdfunding my first book?
12:09: Probably not, right?
12:10: Like, no one knows who you are.
12:12: And what's crazy is back in the day, in 2012, that was a thing that we would see a lot more of.
12:18: We would see people who were literally, they were doing a crowdfunding.
12:21: Campaign to get enough money to just get the book out into the world.
12:26: Most of what we see in publishing now is, no, I already have the book done.
12:30: Like, it's, it's, I'm either crowdfunding because I wanna do a really beautiful leather-bound special edition, which I don't have the money for to, to get, you know, cause you gotta do a 250 print run if you're gonna buy them out of China, or I really wanna get an audiobook.
12:44: The narrator that I want is gonna cost $6000 to get this thing made, and I, I don't have that kind of scrap.
12:50: Scratch.
12:51: So I'm, I'm turning to crowdfunding to get the fans who already love my book to maybe get that audiobook over the finish line.
12:58: So, what kind of campaigns are you guys seeing in, in the publishing category?
13:02: I know that there's a lot of growth going on, but like, what do you see going on in, in publishing right now with Backer Kit?
13:08: Yeah, I mean, I think obviously you sort of hit on that like, you know, there's the sort of like marquee thing of doing special editions, and I think one thing that's cool is, yeah, obviously Brandon Sanderson.
13:19: And only, right, but at the same time, I actually think there's a lot to learn from his mentality.
13:24: I mean, obviously he has a cool story that he's been able to, even though he's a mass market success, retain sort of a disproportionate amount of rights to a lot of his different stuff, which I think is like a great model and obviously like him sort of going first as a giant wedge to the industry that I think everyone coming back, you know, behind him like truly benefits from, and it's really cool to see also that some of the people who came up from You know, the grassroots are starting to see unbelievable success, and, you know, look, authors having more control over their stuff is only a definitive in my book, right, always a good thing, yeah, from our perspective.
13:59: But I think, you know, so yeah, there are certain things he can do because obviously his audience is huge and the numbers get super eye popping, but I actually think if you sort of scale some of his strategy down, it's Still something emulatable if you have 100 super fans or 1000 super fans and to say that, OK, it's that leather-bound premium edition.
14:18: I think what's cool about that, and that I think is what crowdfunding is great for is like how do you make something that there's a community that wants this but would be totally non-viable in this sort of other world.
14:30: So it's like, you know, yeah, well, who knows, maybe a Barnes and Noble at this point might carry one Sanderson leather bound given how many he's moved, but, you know, to say that like because he's Sanderson, right?
14:42: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
14:43: But, but obviously like he probably also couldn't convince his publisher to make that many of them just because it would be too hard to sell them.
14:52: You know, through sort of the traditional channels, but he's able to sort of just make something that's basically the ultimate celebration of the work for the people who it truly means something for him, and I think that that's, that to me is where I think kind of crowdfunding is actually at the best when we sort of make these objects.
15:08: That would never be have no business being made in sort of the old world, right?
15:12: And it's not trying to be for everyone.
15:14: It's not like, hey, have you heard about Brandon Sanderson?
15:17: Here's a $400 beautiful handmade leather bound, right?
15:20: Like no one's like, you know, borrowing this one to get or I don't know.
15:24: Maybe it is.
15:25: Who knows that if anybody could do it, he could, but, you know what I'm saying.
15:28: I think this premium edition thing is really interesting.
15:31: There's also something really cool that it's so premium that publishers are generally letting authors have the rights in order to do this.
15:38: Like that's cool.
15:39: Like maybe this.
15:41: Me just more geeking out on the sort of business side of it that it's like they're carving out this niche that they can own even if maybe they do have a traditional publisher situation.
15:50: So I think that's very interesting.
15:51: I think on the other side, and this is kind of what Bunker's Romance is doing, is, and it's something Backer Kit has really been An idea that Backerquet really believes is that actually one of the best ways to sort of grow your audience might be to just like have a peer group of other people.
16:06: I mean, one thing that's true in a lot of different categories, although not all categories, but it's true of publishing, is that like, Backers are not zero-sum.
16:16: So if you have a book and it's similar and you can write one book a year, which I think would make you pretty prolific, it sounds pretty prolific to me.
16:24: You maybe know better than I think some people write a heck of a lot more, but that still sounds like a lot, you know, you don't have something to talk about all the time, and one of the things we've learned about is like a good thing to do as an author, you don't have a book coming out, might be to like lend a hand to someone else who you admire who maybe is in the same category.
16:41: Because you know in a world where social media is kind of definitely a big question mark, I think we are also a team like nothing better than an email.
16:49: Followers can be cool, but that is, we've found a lot of variants to the effectiveness when it comes to actually driving some sort of sale, but But yeah, I think this can be this other way that it's like it's not maybe just about you growing your audience, but it might also kind of be building, building kind of community.
17:07: And so when you actually look at what Bunker's Romance did, they kind of banded together a lot of like-minded creators sort of both structurally in their campaigns, but I think what that has this sort of added effect that it sort of creates.
17:18: Even more of an event by sort of everyone being a bit more sum of their parts, and the reality is folks can buy multiple books and whatnot, you know, it's not just like my community is my community, it's like my community is my community, but it's an asset that both loves what I do, but I also might be able to share some of the glow over here.
17:39: And I'll say, you know, you even see that obviously since Brandon Sanderson and Dragonste are very sort of earnest and kind of sharing the light, I think actually in a lot of ways.
17:47: And, and the thing that's interesting is again that scales down, it builds up, you know, good social capital with your peer group, but it also is kind of turns people on to new audiences.
17:57: And so that's something we've been trying to build into the platform, different ways for people to sort of, you know, loosely collaborate because certainly if you don't have anything coming out right now, you, you know, it's sort of marketing 101 and that can be hard when all you love to do is write books, but it's like, hey, you should talk to your people like once a month or once a quarter.
18:16: You may not have a book update about that, but so a perfectly valid thing could be like, and my friend Damon is about to ship, you know, like that's actually good content.
18:25: People want to hear from you.
18:26: They love you, the creator, and so, you know, you know, you've got to choose wisely.
18:30: But so that's one other sort of huge thing, and I think we've been seeing that work really well.
18:34: And with people who have, you know, are doing their first or second book, and, you know, they're not necessarily trying to raise, you know, they're trying to get to that 250 number, you know, in their project, but it turns out you band together, you have 4 or 5 folks like that, it can really be one of the most effective kind of marketing channels, but it's also just very robust and, I mean, I know you have my book funnel has a cool like people can band together and sort of have different like, you know, big drops, right?
19:02: So, you know, I, I think it's the similar idea of like, you know, if I love an author, I'm gonna take their book recommendations, right?
19:09: So right, I'm reading your books because I love your books and, and you write the kinds of books that I love.
19:14: So if you tell me that this other book is great, chances are pretty good I'm gonna like that, right?
19:19: And, and most of the books.
19:21: You know, it's back in the early days of self-publishing, I would occasionally, like, I would find just random books because I would stumble upon them.
19:28: Now, it, it really almost has to be a, an, a recommendation either, or, or it's an author that I'm already a super fan of, and it's sort of like, oh, I'm gonna buy all their books anyway.
19:36: The other ones are like, I meet other people.
19:38: If you, if you listen to me either on other podcasts or you come see me in a comics, it, it takes about 5 seconds for you to learn that I love fantasy, and that's what I read.
19:45: That's my primary read.
19:46: And so, I love when people come up and give me fantasy books.
19:49: Recommendations.
19:50: There's never been a time in my life where I had too many books to read.
19:53: And, and, but there have been times where I've like, I've actually run out of books, and then I go, well, now what I'm gonna, what, what am I gonna read, you know?
20:00: and, and I then I have to sort of go scour the internet and find them.
20:03: And so, I do, the funny thing is, is like, I do follow.
20:07: I am on the mailing list of the authors that I love the most in the world, this world, and you're right, there are, I know authors that are out there that can literally publish like a book a month.
20:16: Most authors.
20:17: Why not?
20:17: And honestly, you talk about the once a month thing.
20:19: Like this is the thing that, that, it happens a lot of people ask me like, what mistakes should I be avoiding while using Book Funnel?
20:26: Biggest mistake we see on Book Funnel, Jack can attest to this, building a mailing list and then never mailing them, never actually reaching out or only reaching out when you have a book to sell them.
20:36: Like that's literally the worst thing.
20:38: You would be better off just not mailing them at all than mailing them once a year to say, hey, I've got a new book, go buy it.
20:45: Right?
20:46: if you, if you read, we always recommend Tammy Lebreck's newsletter, Ninja, which is a fantastic book, but she talks about gives versus asks, right?
20:53: And it's a, it's a fantastic book because it's not about how to build a mail, how to set up a mailing list, anything like that.
20:57: It really is, how do you talk to people and not sound sleazy and salesy.
21:02: And the number one is like 3 or 4 gives, if you're gonna have an ask.
21:06: If you know that your book's gonna be coming out 6 months from now, you should be hitting them every month with a, hey, what do you guys reading?
21:13: What are you doing?
21:14: Oh my God, I started watching Silo on Apple TV.
21:16: It's incredible.
21:17: Like, like, talk about the things that interest you, because you're on my list, which means you read my books, which means you like geeky nerdery fantasy stuff, just like I do.
21:26: And so, like, coming on here and saying, oh my God, my son and I started watching the show from on, on MGM, which you probably don't have the MGM map because nobody does, but you should go get it because this show is crazy cool.
21:38: If you liked Lost, but then you actually wanted something that's It seemed like it was gonna make sense in the end, you should go check out from.
21:43: And like, just talking about that stuff, you get responses.
21:47: First of all, you're building engagement.
21:48: Readers will reply to that.
21:49: Oh my God, I'm watching that show too.
21:51: That right there, that level of interaction, that is how you build the super fans.
21:56: I, I have a talk that I've given before, and, and one of my favorite things to do is like, we all love to point to Brandon because, of course, he's the, you know, he's Brandon Sanderson.
22:04: And I say this again, I'm a Brandon super super fan, so I'm gonna talk about him anyway.
22:08: But Like, his campaigns are obviously huge, gigantic, but I have examples of dozens and more campaigns where people got $8000 on their, like, funded for $8000 and they only had 48 backers, or they got funded for $10,000 and they had $120,000 you know, where we talk about the sort of 1000 true fans thing, and I would love to point and they go, that's 120 people.
22:34: Like, does anybody in this room, does anybody listening to this podcast think that they, they could just never, it's impossible, I could never reach 120 fans.
22:43: Like, sure, maybe we can't all reach, you know, Brandon Sanderson's storied heights, but, like, I, even I could go, I bet I could get to 120.
22:51: I, I, I could get to 120 fans who would actually be willing to pay money to buy something directly.
22:57: For me, I think I could get to that goal.
22:58: Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean this even reminds me of, we're both engineers by trade too, so obviously we're, I mean, one of the things even when we were first building Backer kit or just one of my principles that I think aligns how we've been thinking about Backer kit and honestly any creative journey, which is like I think people try to look at Brandon and then they like get totally smushed down by being like, oh my God.
23:19: God, how the heck am I ever going to get to like $100,000 you know, $300 leather bounds, and it's like, OK, like, you know, it's kind of like that artist.
23:27: You've got to eat the plain one bite at a time, you know, it's like your first goal is to get 10 people, you know, if you only have one person or if you have zero people, your goal is one person.
23:36: If you have one person, your goal is 10 people.
23:38: If you have 10 people, your goal is now 100 people, so on and so forth.
23:42: And certainly even in my own journey, it's like it's both like calming to figure out like of course you could get to the next phase always, you know, and it's, it's, I don't know, I always kind of tell this metaphor of like, you know, to see the big crest of the mountain, you've got to get through 3 hills that you need to sort of just focus on climbing and so like, yeah, if you've never done a crowdfunding project, you know, make your first goal 100 people.
24:04: Again, you want your mentality that like, yeah, we're here to go figure out how we get 100, 500.
24:11: 1000 people later, but, you know, the engine that you build to sort of get to 100 is, you know, do not pass go, do not collect $200 don't overcomplicate it, right?
24:21: I think a lot of people are like, I need to have a plan that could, you know, totally scale, and I think it's like, if you haven't gotten there yet, give yourself some grace too that like you got to start the mossball, right?
24:33: I mean, I think this is one of, you know, one of our advisers even said, again this is now more for software, but something that I feel is still true for creators is like, you know, there's two ways you can build a product or build a following, you know, you can be an inch, like mean a little bit to a lot of people, you know, I think of that as like a really wide trough but like really shallow, or you could build a deep.
24:53: Trench where you're like the perfect thing to one person on earth.
24:57: And, we've always, or I believe, sort of 100% of my being, it's like, it's way better to be the best thing to one person on earth, because it's a heck of a lot easier finding another person who's a half a click different than that person, and then you have two people who like live and breathe.
25:14: What you do and then 3 people and 4 people versus getting people who sort of are like whatever to care more is so much harder and I think sometimes people are like thinking about it like how do I get a bajillion sales and I guess that's why I think crowdfunding is such a great way to try to find, you know, who you are, because it turns out by like going deeper and deeper and deeper.
25:34: You know, it's like the walls of the trench just slowly start getting wider and wider too, and so, you know, that that's why I'm like really excited about a lot of the creators who've had success because I think I haven't directly talked to them with whether it's the Sanderson Dennemans, but that's been my understanding of their story is like they just kept building their weird thing and they did find like That one group of people who just loved it, but it turns out like the effect basically is other people who are like those people see that you've put these people in a frenzy and they want to be a part of it too.
26:08: And like, go ahead, yeah, yeah, and I just think like crowdfunding is so good for that.
26:12: So you know that's why I say like, yeah, it's important, like go have your project that's 100 people.
26:16: Don't, don't overcomplicate it.
26:18: Like find out who those 100 people are, because, well, you won't find 1000 people if you can't find 100 people.
26:23: So you know, set an achievable goal.
26:27: But you know, but my chances are the thing that helped you get to 100 people, there's the kernel of truth that will help you just extrapolate that out to 1000 people.
26:35: But don't try to, you know.
26:37: They'd be tried to write a book as a final draft, the first time, you know.
26:40: Yeah, exactly, yeah.
26:42: Well, and Brandon famously, like, he's Brandon Sanderson now, but if you, if you've ever, if you listen to his podcast or if you've ever listened to his origin story, like he spent years, I mean, he still goes to tons of conferences now, of course, he's, you know, he does things very differently, but back in the day, just like, so Jack goes to, to, conferences and he takes his books and he puts out his table.
27:04: And he meets people one by one, and he sells them on his books.
27:08: And Brandon used to stand there and handsell those books out to everybody.
27:12: And like anybody you meet who's met him personally, what do they say?
27:16: I was like, oh, he's just such a nice guy.
27:17: He's so nice, right?
27:19: And once you meet somebody in, it has been our experience, you know, as more authors have moved into sort of live event selling and things like that, when you meet somebody face to face, and you put your book in their hand and say, I think you're really gonna like this, like, They're gonna go home and they're gonna read it.
27:33: Now, maybe it's not their cup of tea, but generally, your chances of finding those readers are gonna be much, much better meeting people that way.
27:41: And that's, like, you know, sure, now he's got hundreds of thousands of people that back his campaigns, but he didn't start that way.
27:47: Like that's, nobody starts that way.
27:50: Everybody who starts with that 1 starts with that 10, you know, in software, we, we have this phrase is that do things that don't scale, and that's especially when you're in the startup business.
27:59: When you're first starting out, like, you think about it, if you had 100 fans on your mailing list, and they were emailing you, you know, emailed you every once in a while, or replied to your emails, like, oh yeah, I'm watching, you know, Silo 2.
28:10: What a great show.
28:11: I, this episode was great.
28:13: You should reply to every single one of those emails, every single one, because you have 100 fans.
28:19: I promise you, you can reply to all those emails.
28:21: I have ADHD so your brain goes, no, I can't possibly, but you actually can.
28:25: And that's the, those are the things that don't scale.
28:27: Now, when you have 100,000 fans, no.
28:29: You, you, you've reached a point where like, it is, it is physically impossible for you to reply to all of your emails.
28:34: Now you've got staff and you've got people who do those sort of things.
28:37: And yet, the only way that you get to 100,000 is, is not necessarily hand-selling books at a, at a conference, but that, that idea of selling, meeting readers one by one, and doing something that makes them feel like, that guy was really nice.
28:51: I emailed him and he actually replied to me.
28:53: Right?
28:53: That's, that's when I was a kid growing up, I, I've been a lifelong reader.
28:57: When I was a kid growing up, if I had thought for even a second, when we didn't have email when I was a kid, but like, if I could have emailed my favorite author and then they'd actually reply to me, oh my, I would have fangirled so hard, I would be like, oh my God, they actually replied, they said something back to me.
29:12: Like, be that author for somebody.
29:13: You can actually be that creator for somebody who are just, oh my God, I can't believe they actually responded to me.
29:20: I, I.
29:20: 1,000% agree and you know I totally agree with you on do things that don't scale.
29:26: Two things that have been like, you know, because sometimes it's the mental hijack of before you start, you think you couldn't do it and then sometimes, and we still talk about this just internally at Berg sometimes, there are still a few things that I, we probably started doing really early on.
29:41: We're like, well, we'll never be able to do this in a couple of years, but let's just start.
29:45: And it turns out we've just like figured out how to still do it.
29:48: Yeah, it just keeps, you know, we're a lot bigger and it's like, wow, one, I didn't see how we would ever do that at this scale, but sometimes if it's important, you'll figure it out and I think that that's, you know, I mean maybe that started to get does get distilled of like don't be afraid to do something that you know that you feel like you couldn't do.
30:08: in the future, but I don't know.
30:10: I've kind of found it's like some of that is, you know, checking your ego at the door and like accepting that you might get there and be like, yep, I was right.
30:18: But let me tell you, there's a lot of times I'm like, yep, I was totally wrong, we're good, you know, and you know it's been some point of emphasis or something people love about Backer Kit or something that we became known for, and it's like, yeah, it would have been a real bummer to just be afraid to have not.
30:32: Done it at all because we like thought when we had a million people it wasn't possible.
30:37: So and you know, I think certainly Brandon's fans probably feel like they're close to him and he's found ways to, you know, whether it's again not saying you need a beautifully published weekly podcast, but you know, people probably feel like they have a closeness to him and he's figured out how to develop that and you know, but he didn't have to do all those fancy things at the beginning to achieve the same thing.
30:57: Yeah, so speaking about fear, cause this, this comes up a lot, we see a lot of imposter syndrome, a lot of fear in the community, and, what would, what about somebody who's really just kind of doing their first crowdfunding campaign?
31:09: I see this a lot when I go to conferences and I talk to authors.
31:12: There is like a general, like din of fear.
31:16: Of, of crowdfunding.
31:18: And I think it's probably because it's very public.
31:21: It's like public failure if you put your campaign out there and you're like, I'm trying to raise $1000 and then you didn't hit $1000 like everybody sees it, right?
31:29: Everybody that you messaged on Facebook, every, like, everybody.
31:32: They can see your, your terrible public failures.
31:35: And so, which is really scary, right?
31:37: Like, that, that's the general vibe that I get from most most authors.
31:41: And that's where the imposter syndrome kicks in because they're like, oh, well, nobody wants to, if I put out a special edition, who wants that?
31:46: No, nobody wants my special editions.
31:48: And I'm like, they probably do.
31:50: If, if you're, if you're well enough into your journey that you have the idea of maybe having a special edition, it's probably don't need a special edition on your first book, just for everybody.
31:58: But like, if somebody was starting off and they're doing their first, a new authors coming in, they're doing their first crowdfunding campaign, what, what do, what do you and your team recommend?
32:07: What do you see other authors doing that would be like good, sort of just like bullet list?
32:11: Of, yeah, yeah, you should definitely be doing these things, especially for authors who are like really on low budget, so maybe they don't have thousands of dollars to throw into advertising.
32:19: Yeah, I mean, well, obviously, and I think Book bundle is 100% giving you the right advice.
32:24: Like your mailing list is, is your key, right?
32:27: So that, that is the first thing, right, because it's like if you can't get 100 people on a mailing list, you're certainly not gonna get 100 people to buy a special edition.
32:34: Right, it's a heck of a lot easier to get an email, and you know, not just because you have 1000 emails, you still need to sort of test that hypothesis that you're ready to sell however many you need to, but just, you know, think about that a little bit.
32:47: So that definitely is the number one thing, like make sure you're collecting emails, sending emails, even if it's, you know, warming, warming the audience up, right?
32:56: Yeah, yeah.
32:57: If you can just get in that loop, you know, whether it's diaries or just, you know, whatever feels good to you, but I think you just need to like be just top of mind always, you know, for the people who really love you, and, you know, you can start to pull out lots of understanding.
33:09: I think on the, on the topic of fear and crowdfunding, this is actually something my team has been thinking about a lot because, yeah, it's totally scary to sort of release something and then obviously a goal is a really, well, kind of legacy part.
33:24: Of crowdfunding to some degree because it's like and you know it's also a real thing when we're talking about a special edition you need to hit that 250 copy mark or else this isn't viable and I'll say my one PSA and then I think what, how are we in the future.
33:38: I always thought actually failure was a good feature of crowdfunding in the old school, and this is because it's like if you can't get 250 people to do it, you a little bit need to figure out how do you get 250 people to do it and you've identified your first problem.
33:52: Yeah, yeah, exactly, and you know, maybe this was true in a world where people like weren't writing the book or something beforehand, but it's like, which doesn't maybe make that much sense, but like let's say you want to make a gadget or something traditional sense, it's like you as a creative person don't want to spend 2 years of your life trying to figure out how to make this thing only to find out you couldn't figure out how to find people who want it.
34:14: Like that's just wasteful in the creative, like, you know, creative sphere of.
34:20: Just like your emotional investment as a human being, right?
34:24: And so like I always thought it was kind of efficient to sort of say like, yeah, crowdfunding was about trying to assess demand before you actually need to fully make everything.
34:32: And so you know that's kind of a positive.
34:33: It's definitely like a little besmirch on your ego, but like maybe in the universe a good thing, right, to not chase something that you maybe haven't quite figured out an essential prerequisite for.
34:45: But one of the ways that we have actually seen A rap money change and it's one of the also kind of the key things both for the projects that are going totally bananas, but also I think for the projects that are having success because to say creators have, I think our success rate is, you know, 80 or 90% right now for projects.
35:04: Yeah, well, that's great.
35:05: And one of the reasons why, well, one, Backerki will sort of tell you if we think you don't see the light at the.
35:10: The tunnel, I mean that's partially because we really have this big emphasis on sort of the pre-live phase, and I know that sounds kind of weird to sort of say that like, you know, because it's one of those things like if you need to sell 200 copies and you're drawing 250 emails, you should not launch your project, right?
35:26: Like you're not ready yet.
35:27: You're not ready yet, and that's not like trying to be mean, but it is trying to sort of be like, you know.
35:34: So one of the things we're telling people, and this is people who have six figure goals and people who have 3 figure goals, is you should know based on how your pre-live sort of audience building exercise that happened on Bakerkit whether you're going to this project is going to fund or not, right?
35:50: Give a, give a brief explanation of pre-live for anybody who has not, has not backed a bunch of campaigns or hasn't done crowdfunding before.
35:56: No, I mean, so it's Basically, you know, just you need to put a landing page up and you want to start to drag people saying, hey, I'm going to have my thing.
36:04: It's going to be a $100 version of my book or a $25 you know, it doesn't have to be a premium edition, but whatever it is, there's a few different ways.
36:11: Generally an email or a follow is on the page with explicitly about like, you want to support my book.
36:18: Obviously not everybody's going to convert, but basically.
36:21: Aggregate, we've built all this stuff so we sort of know, hey, what is for the market for similar categories with you, how many leads do you think you need to get to hit whatever you set your goal list?
36:30: And that way you can kind of see that like, hey, you have eyes and, and certainly people come when your project is live and start to hear about it, like come from out of the woodwork, but the idea is you should have some critical mass of people kind of lined up on day one.
36:44: To go.
36:45: And again, even if you're trying to get to 100 people, it's like I bet you know 30 of those people or something like this.
36:50: And I guess certainly putting yourself out there, you're going to need to get good at that marketing side of, you know, it's a bit if you want this to be a business, you know, that is a piece of it.
36:59: You want to be a creator, you're going to have to, you're going to have to fit with that, yeah.
37:03: And so, so yeah, so I think that's one of those things, and that's kind of what we're telling creators like.
37:09: And it's interesting because it's like I also want to say for the impostor syndrome, it's not just the people who are trying to sell 100 copy of the books.
37:15: I talked to people who like, you know, never ran less than a six figure project, but they're still scared they can get to a half a million, right, because that's what they really want, but they're nervous.
37:25: They're not going to do it and you know what is the optics so like that fear doesn't go away, let me tell you, no matter how big you get of how it can be and I think what we've just learned is it doesn't have to be that way.
37:37: You have to sort of change sort of I think some of your orientation and expectation a little bit, but Yeah, it's kind of in, so it's interesting, it's, it's kind of the game before the actual project.
37:48: I think a lot of people thought it was like put your projects out there, see who shows up, but I don't know, that's kind of like putting a quarter in a slot machine and pulling the lever, hoping that it pays out, versus like there are things we know how to do now just in crowdfunding evolving so much in the past 15 years that you can kind of know more or less the stratosphere of what you're going to get, get.
38:09: to, and you know there's variance to some degree, but, but you can take the scariness out of it.
38:15: The other thing that's nice about pre-live is like, you know, you don't have to publish how many people are on your list, and if you try to do a big push and it doesn't work and you only get 5 emails and you needed 50, nobody knows, right?
38:26: And I, I, which like I think that's another thing that's so important again, maybe this is from the product world, you know, if you launch something and nobody says anything, you can just launch again because nobody heard about it.
38:37: Yeah, I guess no one heard it the first time.
38:39: Yeah, no one heard if you totally fell on your face, it's like, great, nobody knows this because that was actually the problem.
38:44: So yeah, I think that that's, you know, that's important.
38:48: I, I don't know why that feels nonintuitive, but, but in so many different things we've learned, you know, you kind of need to tell people again and again, and even your best fans actually, I mean.
38:57: That's, I think, another thing we even teach some of the biggest names.
39:02: We will not name any specific people, but some of the biggest names, you know, it's like you actually need to repeat yourself a lot, even for the people who are Damon level super fans, you know, because sometimes people just miss stuff too.
39:15: Like I think sometimes people are like, Well, I sent an email and nobody clicked it.
39:18: It's like you need to send 8 emails before I'm like pretty sure they don't want this, you know, cause yeah, I mean even for the biggest creators, one of the things feedback we get is like, oh my God, I felt like we like screamed into the void for 30 days straight and someone just emailed me telling me they had no idea that this was happening.
39:38: Yeah, exactly.
39:39: is like still a thing, and I think that is true and it does so you know that's the other piece of it is pre-live helps extend the time that you're talking about your campaign because that would be another mistake I think is people think they need to save their touch points or save their like this person.
39:56: Said they'd post about me, you know, they like save it for when it's live, which I understand actually in a weird way that makes sense, but we've just sort of found that that's actually like one of two things happens.
40:08: That person posts and it just does really well and congratulations, you know, you were lucky.
40:14: Yeah, but you also like left it to a single inflection point because let me say I've also seen a bunch of people being like, oh this is great, my publisher is going to post about it and they have a bajillion people on their list, and then they're like, my publisher posted it the first day and I got 7 pledges.
40:29: What do I do?
40:30: And you're like, one, can't have a singular sort of strategy, but the goal for things like that is you need to know how much can I bank from these.
40:37: Different things and so to come back, that's what Prelab lets you do.
40:40: It's like you ask who are your friends who post or you know your own list or your followers on Facebook or X or whatever wherever your people live.
40:51: You want to see what they do pre-live because you kind of need to know, OK, my Facebook group is actually good for this many and this friend is good for this many and This smelling, you know, this influencer is good for this many because, you know, I, you know, I can't tell you how many times people thought for sure something was going to work and then it didn't, but then something that surprised them ended up working and so it's, it's about just trying different things.
41:15: So yeah, when it comes to fear, I think it's about how do we like lower the temperature and that very much is like build up that audience and that mossball in that pre-life phase because it's a bit more private, but then you can kind of know what where it's going to go.
41:28: Before you actually launch.
41:29: Yeah, well, it's amazing to me how, I mean, like, you know, indie publishing has really, we're, we're going on a little over 1516 years now, which in the span of the world of publishing is, you know, small, tiny, right?
41:42: but it still surprises me sometimes how many indie authors are out there, just sort of discovering the things that advertisers have known for hundreds of years.
41:52: And it's like, yes, sending one email.
41:55: And going, hey, I hope you back my Kickstarter, bye.
41:59: And then, and then running away from everybody.
42:01: Yeah, that's not gonna cut it, right?
42:02: I, I actually just backed a campaign today that was almost over, and it started weeks ago, and I, I genuinely was like, how the hell did I not know this was going on?
42:13: And I'm, I thankfully got in, although now, like there are tools, you know, on Backer kit, you can go in, you can actually buy items after the fact, even after the campaign closes.
42:21: So thankfully for like us laggards.
42:23: Or for the ADHD people, it's like, oh, I totally meant to back it.
42:26: We get that.
42:27: I see that all the time from authors who are like, the campaign was open for 30 days.
42:32: I emailed everybody and told them, and then without fail, the minute it closes, why is it closed?
42:38: I can't back it now.
42:39: I, I, I just found out about it.
42:41: So, yes, the more that you can talk about it, don't be annoying.
42:45: Don't be like, you know, constantly just hammering people on it, but don't ever assume that just because You sent that one email, or you posted that one time on Facebook, that, that everybody who actually wanted to see it, actually saw it.
42:58: Like you, you, you need to put a little bit more into it than that.
43:01: But on that, I, I wanna ask cause I know authors are gonna ask about this cause this always comes up.
43:06: In the, the, so in the webinar that you guys did with Bonkers romance a few weeks ago, which again, if you haven't seen that, you should go check it out.
43:14: They, they actually talked about, I, I wanna say the statistic was something like Like 50 to 60% of the backers on their most recent campaign had never backed one of their previous campaigns, which is, is wild, because I think, I think most authors assume that the only people that are gonna show up to their campaign are their super fans.
43:34: Like, there's not a chance that anyone else is ever gonna buy my book or buy this special edition or anything like that.
43:40: So, what are you, what is Backerkit seeing in terms of, like, readership showing up?
43:44: Obviously, Like, list is king, right?
43:46: That you're gonna, you're gonna, we're book funnel, you're gonna hear us talk about that all the time.
43:49: But your list is king, your fans should show up.
43:53: And that's like, to, to the point you were making.
43:55: If your fans aren't showing up, it might be because they don't know what's going on.
43:59: So, don't be afraid to like reach out again and just remind them that this thing is going on.
44:04: But what are you guys at Bakerkit seeing?
44:06: And then what tools does Backerkit have that directly help bring, maybe bring some traffic.
44:12: And bring a little bit of that discovery to an author's campaign.
44:15: Yeah, well, one thing that bonkers did really well, and I think this is kind of like maybe the next layer, like, OK, you've got a good email list, you're willing to press send, you know, that sort of, you know, the low, that's the baseline, yeah, yeah, it's all in the creator of Maslow's hierarchy of needs like you've achieved the first step, you know, pressing the send button.
44:34: I think one of the other things we try to tell creators, especially with budding fandoms, is, you know, You want the campaign to be the extension of why people love you.
44:44: I think a lot of people make mistakes saying this is just going to be like a pre-sale thing for my book or my special edition or my next book or whatnot, and they're sort of like, come and get it 30 days, get a deal or something.
44:55: The reality is, especially when it comes to indie publishing, like the readers you love are sort of extensions.
45:01: Of your identity, right?
45:02: Like people get swept up in these, and, and even if you're small, it's still like this relationship that they feel is an extension of them.
45:09: So they probably want, they're buying your specialization because they want more surface area with your world, with you, with whatever you're building, and I think what Bonkers Romance did really, really well is like two things one, they're able to Make and that was we have a feature that lets people either do like a trivia challenge or a choose your own adventure and this isn't just like a fun thing.
45:29: This is so the community around you can be like a feature of why people love your books or or whatnot and like obviously we're here with hopefully fantasy authors making crazy worlds and, you know, wonderful things that hopefully this is.
45:43: You know, speaks to them.
45:44: I mean, again, this is sort of using the shining example, but I think it's emulatable as, you know, with the recent like Dungeon Crawler Carl, they weren't even actually books on Baker kit, but they were able to sort of use some of these features to make the campaign feel like canon extensions that were like participatory of those books and people were like hanging out there because like, well, in the case of those books, which I'm obsessed with them right now, but you know there's only 8 to So it's like if you want your fix, we've got to like, you know, the community is kind of like that next biggest thing.
46:16: So, you know, if you make your campaign sort of a center of your community for at least the 30 days you're having a party, what does that do?
46:23: Well, you know, you only need a critical amount of people maybe participating in that.
46:27: It's not like we think every single person is going to like spend their whole month, but it turns out if you get a critical mass of people, that's where I think people who are sort of looking of like, hey, is there something special?
46:37: Here and they just see people having a great time like doing something and engaging with this.
46:42: It's kind of like that SpongeBob meme of whatever squid word looking at SpongeBob having a great time, you know, it's just like it creates that like, hey, there's something here that maybe I need to be participating in.
46:52: So that's on one hand I think like, you know, how you want to think about your crowdfunding campaigns that they should be like extensions in the sense that, you know, whether you have one book, 2 books, 3 books, like for your super fans, that's maybe the end of where Could give you money, you know, and the campaign can sort of be, you know, how to deepen that expression past that.
47:10: The other thing that I think bonkers did a great job of is, again, I think that they have a great sort of just community focus of where, where they sit in this romance world to some degree, and they really leveraged other creators that they were friends, whether it's like, you know, getting them to collaborate with them or making space where they all So talk with them.
47:32: Just this idea that actually your peers can be great sources of pockets of new fans.
47:38: I mean, I think traditionally everyone's like, Oh, if I could get published in whatever the big news outlet is, that's going to be a great thing.
47:44: Increasingly we've seen that like not actually that work for the superfan thing, but getting a mention by like some other author that people who like your book also like, those have just been great, and it's one of those things where it's kind of no skin.
47:57: Of everybody's back to go back to what we were talking about before, it's like, you know, if you could find a light group, and I think people make this, this, you know, I'll use just again two huge offers like, but it's probably true, you know, oh, just because people know Brandon Sanderson they know Matt Deneman, or just because they know Matt Denneman they know Brandon Sanderson, it's like, I don't know, the world is big.
48:17: You'd be surprised that the Venn diagram is healthy, but it's not like this, right?
48:23: And even for the big.
48:25: Names that are like, you know, don't have problems with having their name out there, that's still true.
48:29: And so, you know, someone who you feel like is a peer group in your genre or whatnot might be a great person to like try to figure out on a lightweight way, you know, how do you collide your worlds a little bit because that's where you're going to potentially find a lot of new readers and, and I think they use their campaigns, Bunkers Romance does, to kind of do that, and I think that that's an emulatable trick.
48:52: Mhm.
48:52: You know, and you know, it's like if you're just starting out, yeah, you're not going to get a collab with Brandon Sanderson, but there might be someone who's like a clique around you or whatnot, you know, and there's, I don't know, the other thing too that we see this, and again it's something we're trying to build these mechanics into the platform, and I think we're still figuring it out, and we also have this concept of like group collabs, so There are these like campaigns that are actually like a month-long campaign of campaigns, so a bunch of different authors will sort of launch that the whole thing has a goal, but we also have all these incentives that if people back 5 or more projects from different creators or creators can partner together and say if you back my partner at the same time, you'll also get, you know, extra dust jacket or something like this, and it's Idea of kind of building in this cross collab discovery network because truly at the end of the day a creator who is a couple of clicks different from you might actually be your best next marketing channel for both of you and it's a lot easier than trying to get some press mention or you know we saw, we saw our customers spend so much time trying to go after public.
50:01: Whatever news or this big blog and then it's like you got 72 clicks and 4 people, you know, it didn't work that well and then it's like, well, here's this other creator who's only sold like, you know, 30% more books than me but it drove him 100 pledges, you know, and it's like, OK, this is very interesting, you know, that that's a different type of work.
50:19: There's a hustle that needs to go with that, but it's like achievable and it's kind of how I mean I like.
50:25: The story too, because it's another way that your captive audience is like something.
50:30: I don't know what's a good way to put this, you know, this is also an asset you're building that you can help shine it on other people and it, it, it can be kind of like that gift that you're sort of saying because it's also going to come around to you too, because then you're building up a network of people who are also, you know, when you need to call upon them, call upon the banners.
50:49: Yeah, they, they, they can show up for you.
50:51: And there's nothing like in, in, especially in, you know, back in the traditional publishing days, there very much was a zero-sum game.
50:58: Like if, if, if Jack and I both went to Tor and we were trying to sell our books, Tor is only gonna publish so many books this year, and if they buy Jack's book, they didn't buy my book, right?
51:07: That, it, that doesn't exist in the indie world.
51:09: I've never met a reader who was like, well, I've already read my book for the year, so I guess I'm just not buying anything else.
51:15: Maybe I'll check you out in January.
51:16: Like, no.
51:16: If I finish this book and you recommend some other book, I'm going to go check that one out, right?
51:22: It's not zero sum, at least in the indie world, and I, I, I think not even in the publishing in broadly.
51:28: Go ahead.
51:28: What were you gonna say?
51:29: Yeah, no, 100% that is like unequivocally true.
51:32: The thing that is actually funny that I think even publishing worlds, you could even say the same thing about different editions of books, right?
51:39: It's like I feel like the special edition is like, oh wait, super fans will buy 4 copies of a book.
51:44: Book they already own and it's like 100% they will, right?
51:48: And that's not right.
51:50: I mean, I think that took a lot of people being wild enough to try to do it to see that that's totally a viable thing, right?
51:57: But I mean if you're not a super fan, it doesn't make that much sense if you already have a copy of a book to read a copy of a book.
52:03: But you know, any, anybody who's a voracious reader, I guarantee you, owns many copies of their favorite book for whatever reason, you know, and so, you know, I think it's You know, that was maybe never as true as anyone thought it was, and they're even finding out it doesn't even matter a lot sometimes about the book, you know.
52:19: I think people are discovering more and more that super fans are super.
52:24: Like, we will absolutely show up and we will buy whatever you've got.
52:29: You know, my, my favorite thing about Brandon's big campaign, the one where he sold his four secret projects, it's not, you know, sure, it made $42 million.
52:36: And again, it's like, people see that number and most like indie authors would be like, well, I could never do a campaign like that.
52:41: Like, no, that's the interesting thing to me about that campaign and that I point to when.
52:46: When I reference it is, that was a campaign where Brandon showed up and said, I have 4 novels.
52:52: I'm not gonna tell you the titles, I'm not gonna tell you what they're about, just know that I wrote them and that they're in my universe.
53:00: And superfans said, shut up and take my money.
53:03: Like, $42 million.
53:05: We didn't even know what the titles of the books were.
53:08: Like, that's what super fans show up for, right?
53:11: I, I don't.
53:12: Care.
53:12: Did Brandon write it?
53:13: Did he put it on a napkin?
53:15: Great, I don't care.
53:16: Give it to me.
53:16: I'll, I'll take my money and I'll read it, right?
53:18: And, and I, I am not a super fan of every author that I read.
53:23: There are plenty that I'm reading.
53:23: I'm like, yeah, I enjoy those books.
53:25: They're, they're nice.
53:26: But the ones where I have reached, I, I've told the story before, but Michael J.
53:29: Sullivan is another fantasy author, if you, if you haven't read him, and I recommend him to everybody.
53:34: When, when I first started backing his Kickstarters, he would always have like the $10.
53:38: e-book level.
53:39: And, and the reward was, you would get the book 3 to 4 months before everybody else would, right?
53:44: And you get your name in the back, which is kind of cute, but really, I, I just wanted to read the book early.
53:48: And I would say probably the 1st 3 campaigns that he did, that's all I did.
53:52: I would back the $10 level.
53:54: And, and I was like, I was a pretty big fan, but I don't really read paper anymore.
53:58: I read everything digitally, so I'm just like, well, I really just need the e-book.
54:02: And then somewhere around like his 4th campaign, I was like, It's a really pretty book, and I know I'm not gonna read it, but it sure would look nice on my shelf.
54:10: So now, yeah, no, hands down.
54:11: I back all of his all the way up to the leather-bound special edition.
54:15: I'm not going to read it.
54:16: Like, I show my kids, and I'm like, look at how beautiful this book, don't touch it.
54:19: And then I put it up on my shelf, and that's where it stays.
54:22: And then I go read the e-book that I got 3 or 4 months early.
54:24: But we tell authors, like, as you're, especially as you're building your campaign, build in those, those lower-level tier, because I have backed campaigns where I was not even A super fan, but I liked it, and it's like, I'll kick $10 to that.
54:39: Like, I, I, I wasn't, I'm not there yet where I'm willing to lay out $150 for your super special edition cause I like your stuff, but maybe not yet.
54:48: But every fan that, that likes you enough to back you for $10 they, they just haven't gotten to that, that $80 level yet.
54:55: But, but they'll get there, right?
54:57: They, if you keep working on them, they'll get there.
54:59: So, having those lower-level tiers where people can join in, and like you said, if it looks like everybody's Having a good time.
55:05: And it seems like, wow, there's a really great party over here.
55:08: you know, you're talking about the, the bonkers campaign.
55:10: If, if the other, so one of the other things that I love about crowdfunding is, it's, it's, it's all there like an archaeological dig.
55:17: You can, if you just go Google right now, like bonkers romance Packer Kid, you will find their most recent campaign.
55:21: You can see every update, every stretch goal, every reward.
55:24: You can, you can literally like take it apart and see everything that they did.
55:28: But one of the things that they did was like you were talking about this choose your own adventure thing.
55:31: Well, and they, they would publish weekly.
55:34: Episodes, and then they would put out polls where they would ask the readers, where should the story go next?
55:40: Well, guess what?
55:40: If you didn't back the campaign, you can't vote in the poll, like you're, you're not, you're not part of this yet.
55:46: But if you join in, and you could, you can back their campaign and just do the e-book level, and that's, that's one of their lower tiers, you get all the e-books, and you don't have to back the super special edition.
55:56: But if you do, well, now you're, now you're part of the party.
55:58: Now you can come in and you can do the polls, and you can read the choose your own, you can read the story as it's laid out, as it's happening.
56:03: And so there is, like you gotta, we gotta, we gotta lean into that FOMO, that fear of missing out.
56:08: I was like, oh my God, there's so much fun going on over there, and I think I'm not a part of it.
56:12: Yeah, I mean, it's a perfect, I mean, it's the shining example of just like, yeah, they extended their cannon through the campaign, right?
56:19: And so if people love Of what they do, then participating in the campaign quite literally is an extension of that.
56:26: So if you read all the stuff and you're really waiting for the next thing, it's like, well, you might as well also come hang out here and, you know, find other like, like, like minded folks who sort of want the same thing and Yeah, and so it's a perfect example of like, yeah, they thought about that campaign anything but a preorder, right?
56:43: It very much was just a celebration of the source material, an extension of the source material, and just a place for the people who love it the most to be as close as you possibly can get.
56:53: So that to me is what's kind of an awesome way to buy something because the folks who participated got an experience in addition to something.
57:01: Hey, they're gonna love looking at on top of the shelf.
57:03: Well, you, you get the, the campaign itself becomes a product you are selling.
57:10: So like, I mean, obviously, you know, coming in back the campaign, so you get the physical, you get the thing at the end of the campaign, but you're, you're actually buying the things along the way too.
57:19: And so the campaign becomes a part of the, the product that you're selling, which you're not gonna get.
57:24: I mean, like you could try to replicate that on your own website, maybe, you know, if you're, if you are Matt Denneman, his.
57:30: Patreon has, you know, 10s of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of subscribers at this point, cause he posts new chapters as he writes them.
57:37: And he does, he goes in and, and he lets people comment, and he takes ideas, like people were like, man, this should happen next.
57:45: And he'll go, he'll weave that into the story, like he uses that.
57:48: So those people feel like they're part of a thing.
57:50: I, I made no secret of the fact that I'm a huge Taylor Swift fan.
57:53: I'm a, I'm a Swifty.
57:54: And so, like, the reason that people love her so much, it's not just that she puts out great art, which she does.
58:00: And, and for any of you listening who are like, oh, Taylor Swift is, is terrible, no, youngest artist ever inducted into the Songwriting Hall of Fame, so you can just, but she, when I went to her, the heiress tour, I, I went in and everybody that was there made me feel welcome and made me, even though I'm a 6'4, very large bearded dude, definitely not your typical Taylor Swift fan, and yet everybody there made me.
58:25: I feel like I belong to the point that when I left, I was a bigger fan leaving her concert than when I showed up.
58:31: And that is why, and I think a campaign can work the same way.
58:34: I guarantee you people go into, went into that most recent bonkers campaign, back the books because they were like, yeah, these look like good books, right?
58:42: And then by the end of the campaign, they were like, well, this is really cool.
58:45: Like I, I feel like I'm a part of something.
58:46: Everybody wants to feel like they're a part of a tribe or something.
58:50: Yeah, and, and just to speak to that too, cause that's absolutely it, right?
58:54: It's like you, you're, you're not to get too metaphysical, but you know, it's like people want to feel that connection, especially in a, you know, you know, we're not gonna talk about AI, but you know, in a world where just like stuff can get made and it's just like we're just gonna get more stuff, right, definitively everyone's here, then it's like the stuff that means something to you is gonna mean more.
59:12: And so that means that we need to figure out ways to get people more surface area to the stuff they actually care about because That's going to matter more in a world of more noise, or that's just something I guess I believe.
59:24: One other thing I'll say that's been super interesting is we've like kind of looked at on the back end the sort of brass tacks of that, you know, we've seen this amazing lift too because just because there is this great, this awesome bonkers romantic experience doesn't mean that every single person who's showing up is like full and participating, right?
59:42: It's like, again, it comes back to that.
59:44: Well, we have this super fan first mentality.
59:46: It's like, yeah, it's like.
59:48: 10 to 20% of the people are just going bananas for it, which is great.
59:52: It turns out that if you have a community where 10 to 20% of your people can just like have a party, you know, it doesn't mean every single person will participate, but the things that we do see is that conversion rates of those casual people starts to go up because it just feels authentic.
1:00:09: It gives it more mystique.
1:00:11: Yeah, maybe people are just lurking but not participating.
1:00:13: So it's this interesting thing where it's like just, you know, I think sometimes you see creators being like, I don't know, I never do any of that stuff, and it's like, well, actually making sure you have surface area and then it and that the party is happening is actually also just, you know, a thermometer into just, you know, how dialed in is this community, which, you know, has this glow effect, you know, so, so that the metric for when we look at a lot of that community engagement stuff, not is like, well, Only 98% of people clicked on the thing and like liked it.
1:00:42: It's like, no, no, no, did we get to like critical mass?
1:00:45: And then all of a sudden you just start to see like that's when they start getting new people or people who would have been more fringe to do it are just deciding to dive in.
1:00:53: They're maybe not participating, but they, you know, they still notice that it's real.
1:00:57: Yeah, they might be standing out on the fringes, but like if you were at a party, if you were standing on the outside of a party looking in and no one's dancing.
1:01:06: You're probably not gonna be like, dang, we should definitely go in there.
1:01:08: It seems like a real rager going on.
1:01:10: Whereas if like everybody's dancing and having a good time, even if you're not wanna dance, but you're just like, well, I'll stand over here and bob my head a little bit, you know, I don't, I don't, you know, I'm not a, I'm not necessarily a joiner by nature, so I, I think I'm just gonna stand over here and watch.
1:01:23: But if nobody's dancing at all, you're like, this looks like a pretty lame.
1:01:26: Party.
1:01:26: Maybe we don't want to go to this one.
1:01:28: Yeah, exactly.
1:01:29: So, you know, I, I think that that's also the other thing too is like, again, coming back to that what I was saying about that deep trench mentality of design it for the people that love you the most and you'll be surprised at how many people that might actually be.
1:01:41: but don't, don't be afraid.
1:01:42: Don't water it down and don't like, you know, fly your flag, you know, so.
1:01:47: Yeah, I think that that's also something they just, they do an amazing job of and it's super fun, and we're excited to do some more fun stuff, I think, in the fall with the Bonkers team too.
1:01:55: Yeah, be your authentic self, because you're, you're going to attract your super fans, and then, those super fans, even though, like, sure, let's say you get to 100 super fans, which is, you know, maybe not enough to sustain your career, but those 100 super fans, those are going to be the ones that go out and evangelize you to everyone else.
1:02:13: Like, in, in the course of this.
1:02:15: Podcast, if you haven't already figured out, I'm a swifty, I'm a Brandon Sanderson super fan, and I'm a Michael J.
1:02:20: Sullivan super fan.
1:02:21: Meet me at a conference and ask me about a book recommendation.
1:02:24: I promise you're gonna get a Michael J.
1:02:26: Sullivan or a Brandon Sanderson because they, I, I absolutely love their books, and I would recommend them to anybody.
1:02:31: And that's where you're gonna, that's what you're gonna get from your super fans.
1:02:34: So we're always trying to build more people into those super fans, but don't think that the super fans are the only people that are gonna show up.
1:02:40: Yeah, absolutely.
1:02:41: It's like the proof that.
1:02:42: You can get them is proof that you're like doing something right, and a bunch of positive things happen in the wake.
1:02:48: But if you can only focus on one thing, focus on them because the downstream effect will be, you know, start at 100, get to 500, get to 1000, you know, just don't think about it, you know, if you, if you had to just horse blinders to one thing, I would guess that's, you know, your best bang for your buck.
1:03:05: Yeah, they will, they will be the ones who bring the crowd to your crowdfunding, right?
1:03:10: And it's also just proof that it's cool, right?
1:03:12: Like I mean they they're your validation that you made something that someone really cares about, right, because, yeah, again, if, if a bunch of people just feel whatever, it's hard, it's hard to build that the audience that way.
1:03:24: Yeah, what's the, what's the saying, nobody goes there anymore, it's too popular.
1:03:27: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
1:03:28: Right, so, well, thank you, Max.
1:03:30: I really appreciate your time and, and coming on.
1:03:32: Do you have, I, I think that's probably just like a great last thought to leave it on, which is really just like if you work on building the super fans, the rest will take care of itself.
1:03:41: They, they, they really will.
1:03:42: The, the crowd will, will show up.
1:03:44: Well, we didn't talk about the book funnel integration.
1:03:46: It's the only thing we missed.
1:03:48: Well, this is the book funnel podcast, so it's like, yeah, so for anybody who missed it, we, we actually, Backer Kit and Book Funnel had a joint announcement just a few weeks ago, where we have integrated Book Funnel with Backer Kit for instant delivery of e-books and audiobooks for instant rewards.
1:04:03: So, talk about just really briefly, what that feature means, not the book funnel part, that everybody who's listening probably already knows what the book funnel part is, which is we go off and we deliver the thing to readers.
1:04:13: But like, what do, what are, what are instant rewards?
1:04:16: How do authors use them, and how does that play in?
1:04:18: To your existing campaign and then how you work on going back to that pre-live thing that we talked about like building up the sort of momentum for the campaign.
1:04:27: Yeah, so instant access rewards, kind of like how it sounds.
1:04:30: It basically means on some sort of triggered action, this is way too technical of an explanation, but when someone follows your campaign, they give you the email or they do a reservation, which we didn't talk about, but it's sort of a more up funnel thing if you have a bit higher.
1:04:44: Cost item or if they make a pledge, you can give the backer something instantly.
1:04:50: So in the case of a book funnel, it's probably like maybe something, you know, out of your back catalog or maybe you have some supplemental material that's ready for the book you're trying to fund or the world's your oyster, I guess.
1:05:01: We see it as a way where creators can leverage maybe their back catalog to try to drive interest in whatever the new cool thing that they're trying to do and and to.
1:05:10: Its point, yes, I think specifically we're really thinking about this as like a reward.
1:05:14: Like please follow my project for my new leather band that's coming out in 2 months.
1:05:19: You're going to get my first book for free if you give me your email now or something like this.
1:05:25: And I think what's powerful is that it gets, you know, someone gets something right away.
1:05:31: So obviously it's like give and get, and obviously it can be good for the people.
1:05:36: I guess one other thing too that we also try to tell people is like even though you have an email list, it is really good to actually tell your email list to go to your crowdfunding page and follow again because again you're trying to understand what is my interest for this particular thing, but you can kind of sweeten the deal but potentially they get a little something something.
1:05:54: Maybe it rounds out their collection or maybe it's alternative cover.
1:05:58: For all sorts of fun things.
1:06:00: Who knows?
1:06:00: One day we're going to, we're going to figure out how to build that cool instant signing thing into instant access rewards too that I know you guys are doing something like this, right?
1:06:07: So it's just this idea of like both in the follow thing, making sure people get something right away that they can sort of chew on and get excited about, can also be used in the pledge too, like maybe, you know, rather than having to wait for actually the thing to be fulfilled and 6 months or whatever, you could actually have a piece of it that they get right away.
1:06:26: So, you know, it just kind of helps, you know, we definitely want to partner with Book Funnel because obviously you guys, obviously so many different backers have their library, so they're excited to just, you know, get it in the place where all their other indie books are there, but also just that, you know.
1:06:41: You know, it makes so much sense that, you know, you, you want to kind of like, you know, I know every book has kind of a life cycle to some degree, and it might be a way to sort of like gain value to help continue to build future fans by, you know, and not just selling it, but leveraging your sort of back catalog to sort of help build your future a little bit.
1:06:59: So obviously it's, it's a really, I think, great awesome experience because it's like both gets people hyped for the next thing, but you can also You know, they feel like they get a great value out of like letting you email them about this project, but again, I, I think it also, in that same token, like, Helps kind of build your fandom a little bit too, because they get an extra short story or obviously whatever is tenable for you to offer, you know, it just kind of does, does double duty, I think.
1:07:26: So, yeah, we're really excited about it.
1:07:29: Obviously publishing is a huge prior for us and, you know, but, you know, definitely we want to say anyone who's been building up their following and they're, you know, making sure all their books are on Book funnel, like we wanna make sure you can leverage all that momentum you have there and, you know.
1:07:43: Yeah, you probably should be doing crowdfunding projects to help figure out how to continue to make your audience, you know, even more super.
1:07:50: I think that's a great thing to end on.
1:07:51: Again, thanks for, for coming on and chatting with us.
1:07:53: And yes, check out Packer Kit.
1:07:55: Check out Book Funnel.
1:07:56: Check out all the places.
1:07:57: I'll hand it over to Jack.
1:07:58: He does all this stuff.
1:07:59: Yeah, he is.
1:08:00: Thank you, of course, to Damon for hosting today and thank you to Max for joining us.
1:08:06: And of course, thank you to you, our viewers.
1:08:09: If you're watching here on YouTube.
1:08:10: Make sure you're subscribed to the channel and you like this video.
1:08:14: Also, while you're there, leave a comment, maybe your#1 or 2 or 3 takeaways.
1:08:18: There's a lot of takeaways you probably get from this episode of the podcast.
1:08:23: And if you're listening to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or anywhere else, please follow us there and leave a review.
1:08:30: It really does help.
1:08:32: From all of us here at Book Funnel, I want to thank you for watching and listening, and we will see you all in the next one.
1:08:37: Thank you for watching.
1:08:39: Check out these other videos from Book Funnel, and don't forget to subscribe to the channel.