{"id":9255,"date":"2016-10-19T10:30:00","date_gmt":"2016-10-19T15:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewritelife.com\/?p=9255"},"modified":"2017-01-27T08:27:34","modified_gmt":"2017-01-27T13:27:34","slug":"crowdfunding-book-good-bad-awkward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritelife.com\/?p=9255","title":{"rendered":"Crowdfunding a Book: The Good, the Bad, and the Awkward"},"content":{"rendered":"

What would it be like to fund your first novel with a <\/span>crowdfunding platform<\/span><\/a> like Kickstarter? <\/span><\/p>\n

A blog post on author <\/span>Josh Fruhlinge<\/span><\/a>r\u2019s site has the scoop. <\/span><\/p>\n

Kickstarting a debut novel<\/b><\/h2>\n

Fruhlinger\u2019s debut novel,<\/span> The Enthusiast,<\/span><\/i> came out in late 2015. It has more than 80 ratings and 20+ reviews on Goodreads. It\u2019s available in hardcover, paperback and as an ebook… <\/span>and it was funded by a very successful Kickstarter campaign.<\/b><\/p>\n

Fruhlinger\u2019s blog post says it all: \u201cI Kickstarted my first novel, sold 1,319 books and made $4,369.14 (so far) \u2014 and so can you (maybe) (under fairly specific circumstances).\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

His initial goal was to pay himself for his time writing the novel, since it would, in theory, eat into his potential freelance-writing earnings time. He was more than successful in this endeavor, and his goal of $6,666 was met \u2013 and far exceeded, totalling more than $20,000. Fruhlinger was able to put this extra cash toward tasks like printing costs, editorial assistance, design and promotion.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dealing with unexpected emotions from crowdfunding<\/b><\/h2>\n

However, this influx of cash from patrons almost immediately led to some <\/span>major guilt<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe actual process of writing the novel took a lot longer than I thought,\u201d wrote Fruhlinger. \u201cThis was very stressful to me; I felt like I was letting all my backers down, and with the very, very large amount of money I raised being very, very public, I worried that people would think I had scammed everyone out of an awful lot of cash.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Still, he finished his book, and is happy with the final product. <\/span><\/p>\n

In his post, he offered some learned lessons to those who might be interested in trying their own campaign to fund their novel.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lessons learned from Kickstarting a book<\/b><\/h2>\n