Erin S. Evan liked the forum thread, Geek N Sundry Contest Entrants: Crowd Funding Guide!
great tips from master @Rick Heinz  :-) follow them all, I mean it. 

The only thing I would like to add is, don’t be afraid to follow up with people multiple times. When someone says "yes, I’ll pre-order" and then they don’t the most likely reason is that they forgot, so they will be thankful when you remind them. During my campaign, I had to remind people 2,3 times and every time the answer was "dude, I’m so sorry I just keep forgetting" and it makes sense, we are not their priority and everybody has a lot going on.

I hear a lot in the forums "I don’t want to annoy people. Keeping my friends is more important than the campaign."  my approach to that during my campaign was: I annoy people on a regular basis for multiple different reasons, annoying them so they can help me achieve my dream seems the best reason I can think of. Trust me on this one, even the most cranky of your friends and acquaintances will be rooting for you when you say to them "I have a book deal" 

This is the best advice I can give: ask everybody you know to buy your book. follow up until they either say no, or buy your book, get over your own insecurities and stop making excuses for why you are not asking someone or following up with someone.

Good luck to all!
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    Erin S. Evan liked the forum thread, Geek N Sundry Contest Entrants: Crowd Funding Guide!
    Greetings everyone! 

    I’m Rick, and I love crowd funding and contests. Since all of you are entering this Fantasy contest (my genre of choice) and I’m going to end up bankrupt in the near future. I figured I’d give you some quick pointers on how to get started on the prospect of crowd funding. Because for many, you’ll quickly find it’s more daunting than you realize. 

    1. Contests are the best way to drive orders to your book because they provide a sense of urgency. ~Make sure you tell people you are in a contest, it’s a big deal, the top 3 get published and be excited. 

    2. In order to crowd fund, you need a crowd. This one is one I often see overlooked. Even if your crowd is 10 people, that’s fine, get those 10 people before you pitch strangers. There is this farmers market theory of kale thing that John Olivir did and it’s totally true. Nobody will buy the one, sad, lonely piece of kale. But that same kale with 10 more people behind it giving it a thumbs up! Perfect.  Basically, before you go mass pitching to anyone who will listen: Get your immediate 100% surefires to order. Spend that time polishing your campaign page. 

    3. Use Video. @Joseph Asphahani ran a fantastic campaign using video updates. Short, simple, and sweet. @Tal M. Klein went and had some amazing muppet ad’s and he was the prior Geek N Sundry contest winner. 

    4. Don’t be afraid to ask people to support yourself, not your book. It’s a small division, but it makes a big deal. Ask people to help support you get published and back that dream. It will take 2 years before they have a book and there is a lot of editing that goes into it. Your story may look completely different, so focus instead on your idea, and who you are and why it’s important to you. 

    5. Focus on your own extended networks, family, and friends first, then turn your attention to crowds and other Inkshare authors. Yes, there is a community here, and everyone is trying to get their books funded. At some point, it’s about playing match maker and cross pollination of reader bases. That is a good and healthy thing. It’s okay to market each others books to your crowd. That’s why you knock your people out of the way first. Then you can help others and others can help you. 

    6. Passive media: Ads, cards, fliers, these things help you build your author brand and focus your vision, but they don’t help with crowd funding in a contest. They won’t net you any sales. What they will do: Is polish your writer brain into a fine-tuned 15 second selling machine. 


    So, those are some of my quick tips. Inkshares had blogged about it before: and Tal Klein wrote his tips. I’m willing to help and offer advice to anyone, just send me a PM. 

    ~Rick Heinz
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      Erin S. Evan liked the forum thread, Updates to Inkshares credits

      Dear authors and readers,


      Thanks again to all who completed our recent surveys. Your feedback, experiences, and insights continue to inform how we advance Inkshares as a community, publisher and creative IP marketplace.


      In the first survey, a vast majority of you stated that you found credits helpful, but with caveats. Many communicated that the credits policy is confusing and needs to be more strict, and that overall it’s too generous a system to continue in its current form. We agree.


      The intent of the credit system is to encourage engagement with the platform.  Specifically, we want to incentivize readers to re-engage with the platform after their first purchase and to reward readers that bring new users into the Inkshares ecosystem.  At the same time, it’s important for us to be proactive in preventing harmful uses and abuses of this system.


      To that end, we are updating credits to make them more sustainable. Starting today we will issue two types of credits:


      Referral Credit for referring someone who buys a book (one credit per book): $2.50

      First Order Credit for first-time users only, earned after their first purchase: $5


      As always, we welcome feedback and questions.


      Have a wonderful weekend!
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        Erin S. Evan liked the forum thread, Geek & Sundry Contest - New Rule
        People with established support bases are always going to have an easier time of it than people who are just getting started. That’s kind of inevitable for a contest like this. But don’t let yourself believe it’s a forgone conclusion that someone will win a competition just because they have a large readerbase, or because they’ve won them in the past. When I entered the hard sci-fi competition with Tantalus Depths, I had no existing support base whatsoever and hadn’t been on this site before, AND I entered almost a month into the contest. Sure I didn’t win, but I worked my way up to within a dozen pre-orders of taking fourth place, and now I’m only 90 pre-orders from hitting full publishing. In the end, it all comes down to how much work you put into your campaign. You can be a complete beginner and still run laps around veterans if you’re willing to work harder than they are.
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