TL;DR: Please pre-order my book via Kickstarter.
The majority (56 percent) of all Kickstarter projects fail. So it really should have come as no surprise when the Kickstarter to publish my debut photography book Beauty Hunting failed last summer. I only managed to raise 32 percent of the money I needed to print a fairly modest run of 250 books.
Before I launched it, I spent a lot of time researching. I looked at photography book projects that succeeded and projects that failed. I spent time deducing what went right and wrong for those projects. And of course I knew I had a real chance of not reaching my goal and therefore not getting any money at all (Kickstarter is an “all or nothing” fundraising platform - so if you don’t reach the funding goal you set, you get nothing at all and your backers don’t get charged).
And yet, I still decided to go for it. Doing so gave me a good opportunity to reach out to people and talk about my work (something I find incredibly hard to do when it comes to my personal creative practice). And of course having an actual deadline and a powerful visual of the fundraising goal to reach always helps to get people excited and propelled into action - we all know this one.
Still, it hit me incredibly hard when Beauty Hunting - a very personal project I spent over two years working - and crying - on failed to reach the relatively modest target I set.
Now, over 6 months later, I can finally look back and think about what went wrong - and learn from it. Because guess what, I’m going to try again.
I’m going to try again even though at the time it failed I literally wrote down the following:
“Doing a Kickstarter sucks, big time. If you don’t have thick skin or - like many neurodivergents - have rejection sensitive dysphoria, then DO NOT DO IT.”
So, then, what did I learn? Four things.
Lesson one: ask for help (duh - but it’s not easy).
Supporting your project is not the top of people’s to do list (it’s true of the vast majority of things you do in your business or creative practice). It’s a hard slog getting people’s attention, and you’ll have to ask everyone you know for their help getting the word out.
And here’s the thing with me: asking for help is something I absolutely loathe doing and often simply can’t make myself reach out. If I do reach out and I don’t get a response, I immediately assume it’s about me and the person I asked for help must hate my guts and I should never ever ask anyone for help again. Ever.
Yes, it’s SO over the top dramatic but this is literally what goes through my head.
In a nutshell: asking for help is an uncomfortable thing for me and I avoid it at all costs - including even simple things like asking someone to share a link. This is not great when you’re trying to promote a time-limited Kickstarter AND fighting a social media blackout (see below).
Lesson two: social media sucks (duh again).
I mean, I know this one. I PREACH it. And yet I fell into the trap anyway. And - surprise! - it didn’t work. Duh.
Let me share the line of thinking that led me there to this pitfall. I have about 800 people on my mailing list and over 3,000 followers on Instagram. I needed approximately 160 backers for my first Kickstarter to get funded.
I figured that 160 is less than 5% of my total audience, so it shouldn’t be THAT hard to reach the goal… but then Instagram blackout hit. My posts were not reaching ANYONE at all, the the vast majority of backers I got came from personal connections, and people on my mailing list. I got 45 backers when all was said and done. Five percent of 800 is 40. Sounds about right.
Lesson three: prepare your audience.
I’m mainly known as a documentary family photographer and a people photographer. Yet for my first book I was going with a rather introspective, conceptual body of work that focused on nature photography.
It was totally left field and I do think some people got pretty confused. While my core fans, friends and supporters where happy to go with me on that journey, I think it felt like a stretch a bit too far for the majority of my audience.
Lesson four: timing is everything.
After procrastinating for a while (and also really struggling to make choices about paper and finding a book printer I felt I could rely on - this whole process has at times felt like self-directed Masters degree in book publishing), I ended up trying to squeeze my project launch in right before the summer holidays so that I could deliver the printed books by Christmas.
It was a bad, bad move. I did my research about the best time to launch and finish (from the time of year to the day of the week and time of the day), and yet I thought that since I wasn’t trying to raise a HUGE amount I’d be fine.
I wasn’t. That first bit about everyone being too busy? It’s even worse when people are trying to finish up work before going away on holiday, dealing with children off from school, trying to take advantage of good weather for once, and who knows what else.
All this leads me to… trying again.
After letting myself sulk for a quite a while (the Kickstarter blow coincided with a series of other rejections I wrote about), I’m finally ready to try again. I really do hope that you support my second attempt - and that this time we’ll reach the goal.
I did consider trying a different platform this time round - somewhere without the “all or nothing” approach, or with the ability to extend the deadline.
But, I decided against it for many different reasons (mostly, because I do need a raise a minimum amount so if I can’t do that I can’t print the book - and to be honest figuring out another platform felt just a little bit too much for me right now).
I’m also trying to learn from my mistakes and so I’m doing a few things differently this time.
Before, I was trying to raise almost £6,000 - enough to print 250 copies which was the minimum I needed to go offset, with the expensive paper and the fabric cover I wanted. It is still a fairly small amount in the grand scheme of things (I’ve seen books raising £30-40k) but clearly still a stretch too far for someone pretty unknown.
This time, I’m setting my sights way, way lower.
I honestly I don’t think I can handle the stress of aiming for a higher amount again, so instead I decided that the final edition size and the paper specs will be determined by how much money I raise. I will still be a beautiful and tactile book, but I don’t have to get the super fancy Arena paper or Wibalin covers and GF Smith endpapers. In the ideal world we’d get to the perfect amount to do all that anyway, but my priority to get this book printed and into the world - and, frankly, out of my head. So that’s what I’m doing.
I’m also simplifying my rewards.
Again, this is something I researched a lot, know (and teach) about “less is being more” and yet somehow I still ended up overcomplicating things (even though I didn’t think I was). Most people supporting a book project just want to get the book (and that’s what 90% of my previous backers picked), so this is what it’s going to be. One book or two books, or an option for a discounted mentoring session with me. It also keeps it simple for me on the back end.
Another thing I’m changing is giving myself more time.
Most of the advice about running Kickstarter projects says that the shorter the run, the more are your chances of success. I know I’m ignoring good advice but I’m realising now that for me it just adds too much pressure to do ALL.THE.THINGS in just a few weeks.
I know myself and I’m unable to be constantly on, hustling for support and backers, so this time I’m giving myself the maximum amount of time to raise the money - just under 60 days so I can finish it before the Easter holidays. This longer timeframe means I can take a break if I need to and regroup. It also means that people have more time to get around to supporting it (here’s hoping anyway, ha).