I’m launching a Kickstarter campaign!

Guess who’s gonna launch a Kickstarter campaign to help get her children’s book off the ground?

I’ll give you three guesses. :)

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I’ve never published a children’s book before. I know very little about Kickstarter other than some cool people have done some cool things with it. I’ve never created a video before that didn’t involve me simply sitting in front of a camera, pushing record, and talking in one big long take.

But I’m gonna do this thing anyway.

I have now used the word gonna twice in this post already. Maybe I should start over?

Ahem.

Hubs suggested a few months ago that I consider using Kickstarter to cover the funds to get my children’s book illustrated and published, and I promptly ignored him.

I wrote the book over a year ago, edited it several times, and hired a self publishing consultant that was amazing in teaching me all about ISBN’s (the “serial numbers” that all books are assigned) and self publishing websites and book sizes and fonts and color schemes, and a million other tiny details that are involved in publishing a book that I didn’t know and didn’t really care to become an expert on. Together we defined a ton of details about the book (paperback, 5″ by 8″, secondary colors, etc) and requested samples from half a dozen illustrators. I selected an illustrator and then…did nothing. I had done as much work as I could before having to really fork over the bulk of the cost in producing the book, and we were moving and remodeling and expecting our second child, and when is it ever really convenient to lay down several thousand dollars to illustrate and publish your little pet project of a book, you know? It’s not that we technically couldn’t afford it, I just couldn’t get myself to pull the trigger.

Anyway, in a (I’d like to think, rare) moment of complaining last month about never getting this book published, Hubs mentioned Kickstarter again and asked why I hadn’t really considered it. My answer was that…I didn’t have an answer.

Why hadn’t I really considered it?

So I was all, “Uhhh” and “Hmmm” and “Well, you see…” and he was all, “Yup, that’s what I thought, let’s do it.” and I was like, “Yeah, okay.”

And then there was this long pause. I looked at Hubs and he looked at me. And then I looked back at him and he looked back at me. And then I sighed and was all, “Okay, fine, I’ll say it: You were right. I should have considered Kickstarter when you first mentioned it ages ago. Happy?” And then he simply smiled and walked away.

I kinda like that guy.

So I guess what I’m saying is, I’ve been delaying progress on my children’s book for more than half a year for no real reason, and two weeks ago I finally decided to take Hubs’s idea seriously and kick things into high gear with Kickstarter. (Kick into gear with Kickstarter. Like what I did there?)

Last week I reached out to a local videographer to assist in the production of the video I will use for the campaign and did a bundle of research on how to (and how not to) use the Kickstarter platform.

A few days later I met with the video guy and we began planning my video.

This week I sent him the latest version of my book in text form, along with my draft of the script for the video. We’ll be recording soon!

I’ve never done any of this before, but we’re just gonna rip off that Band-Aid and go for it. So I guess this is just my little note to all 79 of you readers to say…thank you! I can’t wait to share this journey with you. I’m sure the road to a finished, published book will jostle us around a little bit, but it will be worth it in the end.

And, hopefully, this first project for my silly little children’s book will be the first of many. I have notebooks filled with ideas and outlines and text snippets of possible books. It’s about time I get a’workin’ on those. The first one will be the hardest, so it’s time to just do it already.

Stay tuned for more! And thank you thank you thank you for being here!

(Anyone have any Kickstarter tips? Experiences? Success stories? Horror stories?)

In book geekery,

AS

Tagged as: books, children's books, marketing, publishing, self-publishing, writing