Kickstarter For Authors With Oriana Leckert

How can you use Kickstarter to help bring your creative vision into reality? What are some of the biggest mistakes authors make? What are some tips to ensure your campaign is a success? Oriana Leckert shares her expertise. In the intro, AI-narrated audiobooks from ElevenLabs will now be accepted on Spotify through FindawayVoices; A Midwinter Sacrifice by J.F. Penn with my voice clone for the Author's Note on Spotify; BookVault introduce boxsets and slipcases; Managing your finances [Becca Syme]; How to write non-fiction [EOLU Podcast]; Thoughts on the Berlin film market; Death Valley – A Thriller. Today's show is sponsored by my patrons! Join my community and get access to extra videos on writing craft, author business, AI and behind the scenes info, plus an extra Q&A show a month where I answer Patron questions. It's about the same as a black coffee a month! Join the community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Oriana Leckert is the head of publishing at Kickstarter, as well as an author, freelance writer, editor, and consultant. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Types of Kickstarter campaigns for authorsUnique rewards to offer your backersBiggest mistakes authors make for a campaign that doesn't fundBringing your own backers vs. discovery from KickstarterTips for creating a visually pleasing pageThe importance of a pre-launch pageMaking sure your Kickstarter gets approvedCreating a detailed budget for your rewards You can find Oriana and more about Kickstarter at Kickstarter.com/creators/publishing and Kickstarter.com/publishing. Transcript of Interview with Oriana Leckert Joanna: Oriana Leckert is the head of publishing at Kickstarter, as well as an author, freelance writer, editor, and consultant. So welcome to the show, Oriana. Oriana: Jo, I'm so excited to be here talking with you. Thank you so much for having me. Joanna: It's great to have you on the show. So first up, just in case— What is Kickstarter, for anyone who doesn't know? What is your role there? How did you become involved in the publishing side of things? Oriana: Absolutely. So Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform. We are unique in the crowdfunding landscape for a few reasons. We are only for creative projects, so you can't use Kickstarter for medical bills, investment funding, charitable donations. Every Kickstarter project has to create something new to share with the world. Kickstarter is also a public benefit corporation, which is a sort of legal and business charter that turns us basically into a mission-driven for-profit organization. So our mission is to bring creative projects to life. Everything we do comes back to bringing more creativity into the world through that structure. We are also quite a progressive company. We do 5% after-tax profit donations every year to organizations fighting systemic inequality and doing music and arts education. We are very transparent about our tax contributions, the salary difference between our CEO and the median staff salary. So we do all sorts of things that make us, what I believe, a really ethical place to be and a force for hopefully good in the world. My role is head of publishing. So I've been a Kickstarter six years, which is the longest I've been at any company, actually. I came here to grow our journalism category at the very end of 2018. I have done journalism, I've done comics, I've done publishing. It, sort of unexpected to me, is the best job I've ever had. Which is slightly corny, but worth saying. I can't believe I get to do this work all the time. My background is about half and half digital media and traditional publishing, so I've spent most of my career fully focused on books and the written word in one way or another. I generally describe my job here as one part literary industry expert, one part crowdfunding consultant, one part life coach, and one part cheerleader. So those are the various roles I get to play for my creators. I also get to be out in the world all the time doing wonderful things like this, just kind of talking about Kickstarter and helping people get a better understanding of what it's for, how you can use it, the benefit for authors and creative people of all stripes. Joanna: Oh, that's great. You are a cheerleader. I love your energy. You bring such a great energy. I do feel like Kickstarter, obviously, is a company, but it does have that very creative feel. So I really appreciate that. I've also met you a couple of times in Vegas over the last few years, and so I thought we'd start there. What have you seen in terms of the changes in the author community over the last few years? What are the types of Kickstarter campaigns that authors do? Obviously, we're not all Brandon Sanderson (whose campaign made over $41 million!). Oriana: That's a great question. It's been pretty exciting. So I was hired by Margot Atwell, ...