Crowdfunding enables entrepreneurs and business savvy creatives to launch their projects or ideas with the help of financial backing from the crowd. Though crowdfunding is a relatively new concept, the industry is growing rapidly. According to crowdfunding trends and statistics presented by Crowd Mapped, crowdfunding raised $5.1 billion at the close of 2013, up from $2.66 billion in 2012 and $1.47 billion in 2011.

Artists and entrepreneurs alike are learning the benefits of conducting a crowdfunding campaign and authors are no exception. Because of the evolutionary nature of the publishing industry and the imminent shift in power from publishers to authors brought on by the rise of digital and self-publishing, crowdfunding is becoming an increasingly popular business tool and both authors and publishers can reap the benefits.

So, what are the benefits? By conducting a successful crowdfunding campaign authors can:

Raise funds for publishing costs.

The most obvious benefit of crowdfunding is that it presents a way for authors to fund their publishing projects. Publishing can be expensive and crowdfunding allows an author to use their network and audience to contribute to the publishing costs upfront, rather than relying on sales to reimburse the costs of publishing. Having funding makes self-publishing less risky and also can help an author create a higher quality book.

Collect Pre-orders.

Reward-based crowdfunding allows authors to create tiered rewards to both thank and entice their audience to support at various monetary levels. The most obvious reward an author can offer to their supporters is their book, so crowdfunding essentially provides a platform to facilitate a pre-order campaign to a wider audience of people.

Author branding. When creating rewards, authors must devise a range of levels that will appeal to everyone in their network and audience. Authors are forced to think about what other services or items of value they can offer supporters. Creating reward levels can help authors to build their brand by determining what else they have to offer their audience.

Talk about and drive traffic to a book before it’s published.

To be successful, authors must begin marketing their book well in advance of publication. Authors should be getting readers excited for their book before it’s available for purchase, but talking about a book that hasn’t been published yet can be difficult. A crowdfunding campaign provides a landing page an author can drive traffic to before their book is published that encompasses who they are as an author and their upcoming book.

Gather important market analytics and reader information.

A crowdfunding campaign can provide authors with valuable insight to their audience. Market analytics such as age, gender and geographic location and knowing where their supporters came from (Twitter, email, newsletter blast, etc.) will help authors to cater future marketing and promotional efforts. By receiving supporter information authors are able to build and maintain a reader database.

Crowdfunding is becoming a natural step in the publishing process and offers a lot of benefits that can help launch authors to success in the book market. However, as with any book marketing plan, conducting a campaign requires a lot of time and effort. Crowdfunding is a great fit for both up and coming and established authors, but having a developed author platform, a strong network and a targeted pitch are vital first steps to success in crowdfunding and publishing. Learn more and see if crowdfunding right for you and you could join successful crowdfunding authors Seth Godin, Angela Miller and Janna Leyde.

Ten years ago I had an idea.

It happened – as these things often do – when one area of my work rubbed up against another. In this case, the question of how to shoehorn the diverse and tangential life of a forgotten eighteenth-century writer (William Hayley 1745-1820) into a book-shaped structure met the PR work I was doing for Tim Wright’s NESTA-funded In Search of Oldton for the trAce Online Writing Centre…

 The combination sparked the following thoughts…

a) digital technologies and a non-linear narrative might suit the story I wanted to tell more effectively than a traditional book-biography could

b) most people read biographies to get to know the person they’re about

c) reading a book-form biography is not remotely like getting to know someone in real life

d) it might be possible to create a digital biography that simulated the messy, blobby, incomplete process of getting to know someone IRL

and

e) that might be interesting. And fun.

I started telling people about it. Most suddenly remembered an urgent appointment they were already late for. Others (including Tim Wright, Sue Thomas and Chris Meade), at home in the digital writing world, were supportive and helped me to sharpen my much-less-than 20/20 vision.

And that was more or less it for five years until, in 2008, Chris Meade posted on Facebook about an if:book UK William Blake project – Songs of Imagination and Digitisation. There was a strong connection between William Hayley and William Blake, so I asked Chris if I could contribute a piece. He said yes, and the resulting combination of money (£800), validation and, importantly, a deadline, allowed me to think my idea into an online, dramatised (and marginally fictionalised) retelling of the relationship between the two Williams: www.rolledbythewind.net.

The following year, I sat down with Chris and we punted a speculative application for funding the 3D Life, as we called it, into Channel 4’s IP fund. They weren’t interested. So we left it at that.

Another two years passed, then, in Spring 2011 I learned, via Twitter, about plans for a book hack day. I contacted the organisers, Paul Squires and Nico McDonald to ask if I could do a short presentation about my biography project. They said yes. After I’d spoken, developer Michael Kowalski, then in the process of founding Contentment – a creative technology startup solving problems to do with digital content production and publishing – expressed interest in the idea, but said he didn’t yet have the technology needed to make it.

Later that year I wrote a feature for the Independent on Sunday about digital literature and – because I felt it needed one – made (unpaid) a short accompanying video for the website. Two weeks work for £300, I thought. Idiot, I thought. But then… that piece led to an invitation (via Twitter) to speak about the future of the book for Tomax Talks (fee: £50).

John Mitchinson, co-founder of Unbound, was one of the speakers that evening. During my spiel, I mentioned my desire to write the biography of a crap poet no-one had ever heard of, who’d been dead for 200 years but that, for some inexplicable reason, no publisher was interested. Afterwards John said it sounded like a perfect Unbound project and did I want to do it with them?

Of course I did.

HayleyWorld became an Unbound project. After approximately 18 months on the website, it’s 19% funded. At the current rate it’ll take over six years to hit target (please pledge generously). Call me naïve, but I still believe that one way or another, we’ll get there. But I might have to get creative.

Meanwhile, Sophie Rochester invited me to speak about having a project with Unbound at the November 2012 Writing Platform event at Rich Mix. I said yes. Michael Kowalski was again in the audience. Eighteen months on from Book Hackday he told me that he had the technology and would be happy to work with me.

Gemma Seltzer – writer and Arts Council, England Literature Officer – spoke about funding: Grants for the Arts: Time to Write and Nesta’s Digital R&D fund for the Arts. I chatted with her afterwards and, although the Arts Council rarely funds non-fiction writing, she offered to help me pull together an application. That, by the way, isn’t because of anything special about me. It’s her job.

We met, and then, to cut approximately two weeks of limb-chewingly agonising form-filling, flecked with bile-bitter pessimism (WHY AM I WASTING MY TIME? THEY DON’T FUND NON-FICTION) followed by a six-week wait increasingly darkened by my recognition of the sheer hopelessness of my situation short, thanks in a large part to Gemma’s support and guidance, I was awarded a grant of £9,295.

“You really weren’t expecting that, were you?” she said, when she phoned to tell me the news.

I wasn’t.

Meanwhile, Michael and I decided to try for the Nesta fund. That has to be led by an arts organisation – in this case, Unbound – with a technology partner (Contentment) and also a research partner – a UK higher education institution. I found computer scientist and AI researcher Dr Sandy Louchart of Heriot-Watt University in the British Library. He was speaking at an event with Chris Meade that I attended. One brief natter on the spot and a skype chat later, he was in. We were good to go.

I won’t bore you with the ins-and-outs of what exactly we were good to go for/through. Suffice to say the Grants for the Arts application experience was, in comparison, like skipping through sunshiney meadows with the one you love (unless you suffer from hay fever, in which case it was like that only without pollen) and by the end of it my brain had knitted itself into a ‘70s macramé wall-hanging. It’s probably less painful if you have a budgeting fetish (I don’t), or if someone else does the whole thing for you (they didn’t). Having said that, one of the many upsides of applying for funding together with partner organisations rather than solo was that everyone contributed and critiqued content and – most importantly – checked and corrected my adding up.

While ploughing through the Nesta application, I realised there were several unanswered questions troubling me about my project. Questions like “do people really read biographies to get to know the people they’re about? Shouldn’t I find that out rather than making an assumption?” and “What are the processes through which people get to know each other? Don’t I need to understand what those are in order to be able to simulate the experience in a biography?” I was pondering these and wondering whether I needed to go back into academia when Kate Pullinger mentioned on Facebook that Bath Spa University had a small number of practice-based, digital writing fee waiver PhD studentships on offer. I applied (that form was much easier).

As I write Unbound (including me as one of their authors), Contentment and Heriot-Watt University are through the Nesta initial expression of interest stage and waiting to hear the results of our final application. If (and, naturally, it’s a big if) we get through that, there’s a panel interview to negotiate. Meanwhile, I’ve morphed into a full time PhD student at Bath Spa University (although, to fund my living expenses and support my daughter etc I’m still doing other work).

All of which means it’s now time to make something concrete of this idea I’ve been talking about for a decade.

Wish me luck.

Lisa Gee

—

Image © epSos.de

The Writing Platform is pleased to announce the first beneficiaries of its bursary scheme awarding two writer-technologist partnerships with £3000 each.

The Bursaries have been awarded to Caden Lovelace @neoeno & Laura Grace @usherette and Ben Gwalchmai @BenGwalchmai & James Wheale @JamesWheale, both partnerships will work on a jointly conceived digital literature project for three months (from 1^st April – 30^th June 2013). At the end of this time they will present a piece of work or a prototype at Bath Spa’s Mix Day on 17th July and the work will be showcased on both The Writing Platform and The Literary Platform.

Established to support creative experimentation and interdisciplinary learning between writers and technologists, The Writing Platform Bursaries, supported by the NALD Futures Fund are awarded to writers and creative technologists who the judges believe will bring new ideas and solutions for the wider writing community while making creative use of existing, readily available, digital tools and platforms.

The Writing Platform Bursary launched in February 2013, receiving 77 entries across the board. The Bursary is supported by the NALD Futures Fund and the judging panel was Kate Pullinger, Editor of The Writing Platform and Professor of Creative Writing & Digital Media at Bath Spa University; Joanna Ellis, Associate Director, The Literary Platform and Leila Johnston, creative technologist and Managing Editor of The Literary Platform.

For more information about the winners and their projects see the full press release.

The Writing Platform Bursary, supported by the NALD Futures Fund, is designed to support inter-disciplinary learning and collaboration between writers and technologists.

The fund will support two one-off bursaries of £3000. Each bursary will be allocated to a project team, consisting of one writer and one technologist, who will work on a jointly-conceived digital literature project for a period of three months.

What we are looking for:

Projects that explore an issue that is relevant to the wider writing community. These might include, but are in no way confined to: new creative forms, methods of disseminating work, ways of engaging audience.

Ideas that make creative use of existing, readily available, digital tools and platforms to achieve their aims.

What we expect of bursary recipients:

At the end of the project each team will supply a piece of work or a prototype, along with a case study about their project and the experience of working together. Case studies will be published on The Writing Platform and The Literary Platform for the benefit of the wider writing and technology communities. The case studies may also be showcased at Writing Platform live events.

Projects will run for the three months from 1st April to 30th June 2013. Anyone applying for a bursary must be able to commit time to the project during this period.

The purpose of this bursary is to support inter-disciplinary learning and collaboration and so, naturally, we expect those participating in the projects to engage with one another in an open and supportive manner.

Eligibility criteria:

Only those resident in the UK are eligible to apply.

Writers are eligible if they can demonstrate that they are currently active and a desire to develop their practice in new ways.

We welcome applications from writers irrespective of whether they are traditionally published, self-published or unpublished.

Technologists are eligible if they can demonstrate an active interest in arts/ technology cross-over in their work to date.

Application process:

The deadline for applications midday on Tuesday 12th March 2013.

Successful applicants will be notified by Monday 25th March 2013.

Writers and technologists may apply individually or in ready-made pairs.

Ready-made pairs must consist of one writer and one technologist. The writer must meet the eligibility criteria for writers, the technologist must meet the eligibility criteria for technologists, outlined above.

If you are applying as an individual writer, you will find the form here.

If you are applying as an individual technologist, you will find the form here.

If you are applying as a writer/ technologist team, you will find the form here.

Selection and pairing process:

The bursaries will be awarded by a selection panel consisting of:

Kate Pullinger, writer, Professor of Creative Writing and Digital Media at Bath Spa University, editor of The Writing Platform; Leila Johnston, creative technologist, journalist and maker; and Joanna Ellis, Associate Director at The Literary Platform.

Successful individual applicants will be paired by the selection committee according to common interests.

The decision of the selection panel is final.

If you have any questions about the bursary email hello(at)thewritingplatform(dot)com with the word ‘bursary’ in the subject field.

Good luck!