Those that have been following along have seen the Kickstarter posts I did here, here and here. Feel free to go catch up, I’ll wait…

THE THEORY: The hardest part of book publishing is getting the first 10,000 copies of a book read. After that, the book either resonates or it doesn’t. It’s talked about, handed from person to person, used as an example in a book group–or it’s not. Sure, you can add more hype, but at that point, you’re pushing water uphill. I’ve always focused on how my books do their second month on sale, not the first month. The first month is a testament to the author’s ability to self promote, which is far less interesting.

THE TACTIC: Kickstarter seems custom made to solve the 10,000 copy problem. The author with a tribe can reach out to her readers, activate them and make an offer: if enough of you agree to buy this book today, I’ll write it and send it to you just before a publisher puts it on sale…

Book publishers are smart enough to see the powerful marketing leverage that this creates. When the author has done the hard work of finding those readers in advance, the risk the publisher faces is significantly less. Sure, there’s the risk that the book itself might not be great, that the word might not spread beyond the first circle, but at least the first circle is secured. Most of what a publisher does (in terms of effort, cost and risk) is aimed at that first circle, after all.

IN PRACTICE: The Kickstarter platform is a bit of a nightmare for the independent author. I’m not sure I could find the intestinal fortitude to use it again. There are significant structural flaws in the way information is collected and used that virtually guarantee that 5% of the readers who use it will end up disappointed or need a lot of handholding. What should be consistent and coordinated ends up failing at both. And the cost of fulfillment and international shipping is high enough that it’s likely no money will be made (which is fine if the other elements fall into place).

The good news is that the enthusiasm and support that early adopters bring to the table is extraordinary. This is an untapped human need, and people (some people, anyway) really enjoy the role of patron and early supporter. Others, of course, magnify the impact of their investment and are hard to please, but I found that the vast majority of my readers fell into the first camp.

AND THE PUNCHLINE: The book goes on sale today. You can see the reviews that have been posted already–by readers who paid their money for the book months ago. And Barnes & Noble will be making the book easy to find, directly as a result of the fan base coordinated via Kickstarter.

But, it’s also clear that other books launched today without this pre-seeding are going to do far better in their early sales, because they are satisfying pent up demand, whereas my strategy exhausted pent up demand among those most likely to buy it instantly. And I think that’s a smart trade to make, or at least I hope it is.

I won’t be the last person to try this pre-coordination approach. I think it’s particularly attractive as we enter a digital-only world.

Article by seth godin

Seth Godin is the founder of The Domino Project and has written twelve books that have been translated into more than thirty languages. Every one has been a bestseller. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything.

The single most fascinating Kickstarter stat is this:

The odds of succeeding with your campaign are ten times higher once you reach about half of your goal.

While this is somewhat self-fulfilling (only popular campaigns get that far anyway), it actually points to an irrational part of human nature: we don’t want to back a loser.

Irrational because it costs nothing to pledge to a campaign that doesn’t meet its goal, any more than it costs anything to vote for a political candidate who loses.

The cost isn’t money–the cost is heartbreak. Once you’ve committed, cognitive dissonance gets louder, and if a campaign ultimately doesn’t work, it hurts.

Two lessons:
1. It’s important to create inevitability around the projects you launch, wherever you launch them.
and
2. One way to appear inevitable is to set a lower minimum threshold for success. Setting a huge number feels bold and even macho, but it’s clear that your fans would prefer to pile on after you’ve reached your goal, not sweat or be begged to be sure you reach it in the first place.

Article by seth godin

Seth Godin is the founder of The Domino Project and has written twelve books that have been translated into more than thirty languages. Every one has been a bestseller. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything.

We remove shelf space as a limiting factor in books.

We remove the cost of polycarbonate as a cost factor in CDs.

We remove paper as an expense in magazines.

We remove the number of channels as a limiter in the broadcast of TV.

These are not small changes. These are revolutionary shifts in what’s scarce and what’s not.

If you are still organized around them, you will fail. If you embrace their removal, you’ve got a chance.

Article by seth godin

Seth Godin is the founder of The Domino Project and has written twelve books that have been translated into more than thirty languages. Every one has been a bestseller. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything.

Yesterday’s post about the halfway mark got a few responses from people who thought I was selling books short. “There has not ever been, nor will there ever be, a “halfway point” for cultural achievements,” one wrote.

Let me try again, with more detail.

We can probably all agree that more than half of the culturally important cookbooks printed on paper have already been printed. From the Joy of Cooking to Julia Child to The Thrill of the Grill, there are some essential cookbooks that have laid a foundation for most that followed. Now that the original cookbook market has been decimated by TV, by free recipes online and by the growth of the ios app, it’s hard for me to imagine the pile of cookbook titles that millions read and trust to dramatically increase in size.

Or, if you grew up with science fiction, we ought to be able to agree that Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury, Atwood, Lem, Zelazny, LeGuin, Doctorow and (early) Stephenson are quite a touchstone, and if we look at the future of all books on paper, it’s hard to imagine a new generation of science fiction books being as widely embraced as they were twenty or forty years ago.

I’m not arguing that Scalzi and Doctorow and others won’t write great books going forward. I’m pointing out that most of those books are going to be read on ereaders, and thanks to the shifting economics, few of them will reach as widespread an audience.

Forty years ago, it wasn’t unusual for a typical bestseller to stay on the bestseller list for months or even years. Now, the typical book lasts for two weeks. More titles, more churn means less cultural achievement.

Consider what blogs did to the magazine article. Not long ago, a Time cover story was read by everyone you knew. Today, that attention has been replaced by 500 different blogs, and no one reads all of them.

The same thing already happened to pop music albums. We all used to listen to the same thing, now we don’t. We used to buy albums, now we don’t. Sure, there will be more music made my more musicians going forward than ever before. And much of it will be fabulous. But the chances that we’ll see mass phenomena like the Beatles or even Elton (times 100 because that’s how deep the hits bench was) are slim indeed.

I’m bullish on ideas, on innovation and on individuals who have something to say, saying it. But it’s clear to me and to many in the industry that we’re well past the halfway mark (given that we started 400 years ago) in terms of creating the essential library of touchstone cultural achievements that every single smart person has either read or is aware of.

Article by seth godin

Seth Godin is the founder of The Domino Project and has written twelve books that have been translated into more than thirty languages. Every one has been a bestseller. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything.

What happens when we reach the halfway point, when most of the great books have already been published?  Just as most of the great TV shows have probably already been made, and most of the great classical music recordings have already been recorded. Golden ages don’t last forever, and it’s entirely possible that we’ve reached that moment in the printed book world.

When that happens, the backlist becomes far more important than it already is. Instead of always being focused on ‘what’s new’, we may end up thinking about, ‘what haven’t I read yet?’

This feels like a significant opportunity, particularly when it comes to ebooks that are easy to keep in stock. There are books from decades ago that are no longer in print but easy to create digitally. What’s missing isn’t the mechanics, it’s the marketing and attention that is necessary to bring a great book to the attention of someone who would love to read it. It requires a cultural shift as well, one in which an author is happy to promote and discuss a book she wrote fifteen years ago instead of always being asked about the next one.

We’re just at the beginning of a rethinking of how we can help readers discover lost treasures of our written heritage.

Article by seth godin

Seth Godin is the founder of The Domino Project and has written twelve books that have been translated into more than thirty languages. Every one has been a bestseller. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything.

In 1776, the USA was more than 40 days across. It took over a month to ride on a horse from one end to the other.

Today, it takes less than a second.

And yet just about all of our systems are built around the slow build, the slow transfer of information and the slow acceptance of an idea by the market.

When 10,000 people contact Congress on the same day, it’s a very big deal. When 1,000 people walk into a B&N and buy a book on the same day, it makes waves.

It takes preparation to coordinate this many people, sometimes many years. But once prepared, the percussive impact of that many coordinated footfalls is huge.

Article by seth godin

Seth Godin is the founder of The Domino Project and has written twelve books that have been translated into more than thirty languages. Every one has been a bestseller. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything.

I’ve written a few posts about how I’d maximize the value of e-readers. Here’s the first and the second.

Four years later, one of the things I’ve been agitating for–using the knowledge of how much time people spend reading a book and how many finish it–is starting to become real. Phil found this article in the WSJ.

Wouldn’t it be great if you knew what percentage of people who bought a book, finished it?

Also interesting: my theory about non-fiction books is validated. When they’re electronic, people vastly prefer short ones. I think holding the book in your hand gives you one measure of value (heavy!) while reading a short one electronically gives you the satisfaction of knowing you finished it.

Article by seth godin

Seth Godin is the founder of The Domino Project and has written twelve books that have been translated into more than thirty languages. Every one has been a bestseller. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything.

I did a show at the NBC headquarters in NY a few weeks ago. I’m guessing that it costs them about $6,000 a minute to make a news show in the studio. That counts the painters, the set guys, the three camera operators and their assistants, the lighting guys, the producer, the executive producer, the on air talent, the make up people, etc. etc. all working from some of the most expensive real estate in the world.

Cable shows cost less. Some are estimating a reality show might cost $4000 a minute by the time it gets on the air.

And now online shows are being made by people like Demand Media for the cost of about $2000 a minute.

Video podcasts and professional YouTube stuff is down to, I’m guessing here, less than $500 a minute.

What happens to the market leaders when there’s no restriction on what gets “on the air” and when the competitors have a cost basis that’s 10% of yours?

The same thing just happened to books. A New York City publisher probably needs $2000 a page to acquire, edit, typeset, print and distribute a book (making up a number from thin air). A self-published ebook author needs $1 a page.

That’s not a cost-efficiency. That’s a totally different industry. But the if the viewer/reader doesn’t treat the two products as fundamentally different, if reading or watching one is a replacement for the other, then a crisis is right around the corner.

Article by seth godin

Seth Godin is the founder of The Domino Project and has written twelve books that have been translated into more than thirty languages. Every one has been a bestseller. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything.

Having had a ball using Kickstarter, I couldn’t help but notice ways I’d like to improve it. Here are my top tweaks:

1. Allow backers to get more than one reward. Right now, you need to open two accounts to fund two rewards. This is silly and helps no one.
2. Allow organizers to load balance after the project launches. If there are 250 things in this reward and 100 in that one and the first is close to selling out, let me move some of them around. Again, it hurts no one and just makes sense.
3. Allow creators to end a campaign early. If it’s doing really poorly (or doing really well) and you’ve learned your lesson or made your point, what’s the harm in saying, “okay, we’re done here”? In my case, since I limited the rewards, that’s sort of happening automatically.
4. Allow the organizer to decide which metric will be most prominently displayed. It might be audience members found, profit made, revenue (which is the key number now) or even units to be distributed. People maximize the most popular metrics, so picking what’s focused on matters a lot.
5. Don’t require that the rewards be listed in ascending financial order. Let the organizer list them in priority order instead, from best first…
6. Offer a simple way to mark items where international shipping will cost extra, and have it automatically added based on the location of the backer.
7. Make it easy for an organizer to show one page to a new visitor and a different page to a return visitor. This is easy technically and totally worth it for a platform like this.
8. [updated a few months later with even more serious concerns] The fact that there’s no way to easily handle overseas shipping charges is an urgent pitfall that anyone who offers this service ought to be aware of (#6). In order to offer everyone a consistent deal on my Kickstarter, I ended up investing $100,000 in unrecouped shipping costs.
9. The survey process is truly broken. With multiple levels, if someone submits survey data later than you expect, you have to redownload every single level in order to get the latest data. In addition, there’s no cutoff, ever, into the next millenium.
10. Messaging is untrackable and unverifiable. For larger campaigns, this, combined with #9 can be logistically overwhelming.

Article by seth godin

Seth Godin is the founder of The Domino Project and has written twelve books that have been translated into more than thirty languages. Every one has been a bestseller. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything.

Kickstarter campaigns fail when the tribe of people who believe in the idea is too small

It’s worth taking a moment to parse that out–it will help you understand how the whole thing works and where some campaigns fail. You either need more belief or a bigger/louder/more influential tribe.

Kickstarter appears to be a great way to find fans for your work. You put up a great video clip and a story and wait for people who will love it to find you.

But that’s not what happens. What happens is that people who ALREADY have a tribe, like Amanda Palmer, use Kickstarter to organize and activate that tribe. Kickstarter is the last step, not the first one.

There are some outliers that are clever and lucky enough to go viral among strangers, but out of the huge number of projects posted (increasing all the time) this is as likely as writing a blog post that gets you on the front page of Hacker News.

Kevin Kelly has a loyal following of true fans, so when he launches a Kickstarter on a topic that’s outside of his known sweet spot, it still gets off to a good start.

The second part of the sentence is the word “believe.” In Kevin’s case, the abundant free samples dramatically increase the chances that people will not be skeptical about what’s on offer. But even more important is the sense that it’s going to work… The now obvious fact about Kickstarter campaigns is that if you get to 60% of the goal, it’s almost certainly going to get to 100% and probably beyond. People don’t want to back a campaign that’s not going to work, even if it costs them nothing to do so.

Stop for a second and consider that. Kickstarter was founded to make it possible for artists of every kind to find people who would take a chance on something that might not work. It has quickly become a site where fans of the arts and innovative items can buy things that will work.

This is irrational, because you get just as much joy in the moment from backing a project that ultimately doesn’t work, plus you get to keep your money and do it again for a different project tomorrow. But humans aren’t rational creatures.

In the case of the jellyfish tank and the Pebble watch (and to a lesser extent, Amanda’s record) we see that Kickstarter actually hits its sweet spot AFTER the minimum is met and success is assured. In those cases, people aren’t using Kickstarter to fund a project, they’re using it to shop for products that are certain to ship and that are already popular.

One way to think about this: some rewards are clearly worth less than what they cost, making up the difference with the psychic satisfaction of being a backer. But the popular rewards in most kickstarters are worth more than what they cost, giving the backer the discount that comes from having a direct and inexpensive marketing vehicle at work.

This isn’t what the founders set out to do, but it’s what the market has clearly said they want. If you give your tribe something to believe in as well as a reward that’s easy to talk about, you’ve done two things right.

To summarize this part of this short series: Build your tribe before you need it, give the tribe something that they want, and make it easy for them to believe it’s actually going to work. Kickstarter looks like a shortcut. It’s not. It’s a maximizer.

Article by seth godin

Seth Godin is the founder of The Domino Project and has written twelve books that have been translated into more than thirty languages. Every one has been a bestseller. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything.