Why I’m Kickstarting my
book
I’m Mocha, author
of The Angel at the Devil’s Gate, a
psychological suspense, which I’m hoping to raise enough funding through
Kickstarter to self-publish. My novel is about Eli Nunn, a troubled teen who is
moved back to Kansas City following the aftermath of a violent drug deal.
Returning to a school where his ruthless reputation still thrives, Eli
encounters and instantly connects with Angel, a beautiful and mysterious
black-clad orphan. Their flourishing romance begins to grow darker when Eli
learns details of Angel’s chilling past. Conflicted with alarm and intrigue,
Eli accepts a proposal from Angel that puts both their relationship, and lives, in danger.
The concept to my novel materialized while
watching an all-day marathon of true crime investigations on the ID channel.
After watching three or four episodes, I was eager to write a novel based
around a well-plotted murder, but I didn't want to the novel’s main character to
be a detective who is using his expertise to solve the murder. I wanted the
novel’s leads to be the murderers.
What is
Kickstarter? Launched in 2009, Kickstarter is a crowd-funding site with a
mission to help creative projects, like art, design and literature, come to
life. Since Kickstarter has launched, the company has helped successfully fund
over 200,000 projects. In 2014, 22 million dollars went into publishing projects,
making them the third most funded projects on Kickstarter that year.
My favorite thing
about Kickstarter is that the people who donate money to a project do not walk
away empty-handed. Backers receive rewards as a “thank you” from the project’s
creator. All the backers who donate to my project will receive my novel in one
of its various formats. Among other rewards, I’ll be giving away bookmarks, postcards,
one-on-one interviews, posters, and the upper-level backers will receive my
next novel upon its completion.
Why Kickstarter? I
believe Kickstarter is a perfect recourse for authors who want to self-publishing
their work, but they do not have the finances to really give their novel the
treatment it deserves. A lot of money goes into producing a successful
self-published novel. Professional copy-editors and designers are not only
expensive but they’re essential. A main factor to a self-published novel’s
success is discoverability. Without your novel actually being discovered and
easy to find on the market, the chances of it finding the eyes of readers are
very slim. How does one make their novel visible? Promotion. Social media
campaigning, Google Search Program, Press Releases and NetGalley (a book
reviewing site used by publishing insiders) are among the tools that can help
promote a novel and find its audience, and like copy-editors and designers,
they can be expensive.
My goal is to raise
$6,500 to cover all production and promotional cost as well as the cost to
print my novel and to ship it along with all the rewards to my backers. If my
project becomes overfunded, I plan to add more rewards for my backers, and
depending on how overfunded I am, I’d love to an audio version of my novel.
My project will be
live from June 1st – July 10th. If you have any questions
or concerns, I’d love to hear from you. Send me a tweet @Mocha_Writer. If you’d
like to learn more about my project, see a detailed outline of how I plan to
use the funding or to make a pledge, drop by my Kickstarter page, you can also
contact me on there.
Many thanks to Mocha & Good luck on the Kickstarter - go and check it out!
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