How DID That Kickstarter Campaign Work?

Since running a successful Kickstarter campaign to develop a new iteration of Beatrice, I’ve been noticing more and more people talking about what makes these things work—posts in the “9 essential tips” or “5 Kickstarter champs share their secrets” vein. Some of the advice resonates with me more than other bits; for example, I would agree that the pre-planning stage was absolutely crucial. Because I took the time to think through my project in great detail, I was able to tell people exactly what I wanted to do with the money they were contributing, not just threaten to make something cool, and I “knew” exactly how much I’d need to ask for to make it happen.

Conventional wisdom, to the extent that you can have conventional wisdom about a service that’s only been in existence for four years, says that you really ought to create a video for your Kickstarter pitch—that it’s a direct, engaging way of telling your story to potential backers. But I wouldn’t call it a universal necessity. I gave it a whirl, stuck my Flip on its tripod, pointed it at my nice chair, then sat down and talked about my goals. I couldn’t quite get as comfortable as I wanted to with it, though, so I ended up scrapping all the footage and just going with a text-and-pictures presentation.

(Part of the problem, in retrospect, was that “a guy sitting in a chair telling you about his Kickstarter project” just isn’t my idea of dynamic filmmaking. If I ever do another Kickstarter, I’ll have to see if I can come up with a more lively scenario for a video pitch—something like Neal Stephenson’s CLANG promo or Peter Riegert’s concept reel for his documentary about Prospect Cemetery.)

So what did work for me?

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13 June 2012 | theory |

More Notes Towards an Ambassador of Literature

At the beginning of 2012, I wrote out some ideas I’d been having about an “ambassador of literature,” essentially a “paid spokeperson for awesome books” who could use online and offline platforms to encourage people to read more—with some specific recommendations, sure, but at a fundamental level simply promoting reading itself as a thing worth doing. I talked about NPR’s Nancy Pearl as a possible model for how that could work, and I think Amazon.com came up with another interesting approach, hiring Sara Nelson as the editorial director of the store’s book section.

For those of you who don’t know who Sara is, here’s a quick rundown: She’s a former editor-in-chief at Publishers Weekly, and used to run the books section at O Magazine; she’s also the author of So Many Books, So Little Time, a memoir detailing her attempt to read a book a week for an entire year. Although I never reported directly to Sara when I was writing for PW, I did have a fair amount of contact with her, and I’d also see her regularly at book fairs and writers’ conferences—in some cases, we’d be speaking on the same panels about making it in today’s book world… or, for that matter, whether today’s book world is going to make it. She loves books, and from what I’ve seen, she recognizes that books depend upon a thriving publishing industry, and a thriving retail market, if they’re going to flourish.