Lessons Learned: Submitting Works to Calls for Entry

Continuing in my Lessons Learned series, this week I look at Calls for Entry from a curator's point of view.  Curator's need submissions:  without submissions, they have nothing to work with.  More they need focused, high-quality submissions.  As an artist, your goal is to get your work into the 'show'. 
The better your work fits with the curator's needs, the more likely it is to be accepted. 

Going into the planning stages for Explorations (2014), I wanted to include a wide range of designs by artists working in the field of freeform peyote beading.  Everyone brings their own style and interpretation to freeform bead weaving, and I wanted to highlight and share that diversity. 

I stated that I was looking for "original designs, high-quality photos and a wide range of styles.  The predominant beading style of all work submitted for consideration must be freeform peyote stitch, though pieces may include other beading styles, stitches and media.  Works may be jewelry, accessories or small sculptural pieces."  Here's the full text for the Call for Entry.  Launching the call, I didn't know what submissions I would receive, or how they would go together as a collection.    

General Suggestions for Submitting Works

Don't be afraid to submit!  The worst that will happen is that you'll receive a "thank you, but no thank you" letter.  I've received a number of these myself.  They aren't fun, but they are a sign that you are actively trying.  As an artist, when I receive such notices I remind myself that the rejection may have as much to do with how my work 'fit' with other submissions and the curator's developing vision as with the quality of my work and of my photography.   But there are things we can do to increase our chances of acceptance:

• Check the fit!  Make sure your work fits the submission criteria.  Several of the submissions I received were lovely examples of freeform bead weaving, but not the freeform peyote stitch technique.  Since freeform peyote beading was the focus of my book, I couldn't include samples where the predominant stitch was anything else.  Perhaps I'll write another book with a broader focus.  This book wasn't it.
• Use what ever submission mechanism they request.  Keeping track of all of the submissions can be a full-time job in and of itself.  I had multiple spreadsheets, and still had trouble keeping track of the status for many of the submissions, as I often needed to request different or additional photographs.  Make it easier on the publisher, gallery or curator by using their submission process. 
• Submit your best work.  Yes, this seems like a no-brainer, but it needs to be said. 
• Take the best photographs you can.  More on this below.
• Make sure your photographs meet the Call's criteria.  Image size and resolution can make or break your submission.  I'll talk about this in depth later in this post.

Five Tips for Photographing your Work
Take the best pictures you possibly can!  This is especially important when submitting to major publishers.  Because I really wanted to include as many pieces as possible, I spent quite a bit of time working with several of the artists who submitted works to try to improve their photography enough to be able to use it.  More established curator's won't be able or willing to take this time.  Here were some of the most common problems:

Background: a neutral background is easiest for me to work with in book design.  In general, lighter colored backgrounds tend to be easier to work with than black or other darker colors.  The darker color backgrounds may be dramatic, but they can pose real challenges for page design.  Avoid colored backgrounds (deep blue, red, orange, etc.)!  With colored backgrounds, you increase the risk of conflicting with the curator's vision.  If possible, take a look at the backgrounds used in the photographs of accepted works from previous exhibitions or publications and try to use something similar. 

Background vs. Piece: Take some pictures where your work fills the background.  But also take some photos from a greater distance, leaving more background that can be cropped as necessary to fit the intended page layout.  Take photos from multiple angles.  Don't forget to take detail photos as well;  filling the photo frame with close-up views of your work. 

Look through your favorite magazines to see how they used backgrounds and staged pieces for photography to get ideas for how you might photograph your own work.  This is also useful if you plan to have someone photograph your work for you.

Clarity:  Make sure that the images are crisp and clear.  Blurry photos simply aren't useable, no matter how beautiful the work might be.  Also, make sure to check your photographs for fuzzies, bits of frayed thread, smudges and other little things that your eye overlooks when viewing the actual piece.  All of these little things tend to stand out like blazing beacons of ugliness in photographs.  If your photos have any of these, you really need to correct the problem and take new photos. 

Lighting: minimize color casts as much as possible!  Yellow or grey casts distort the other colors in your piece and make your work far less appealing.  It also means more potential work for the publisher: removing the color casts without messing up the rest of the colors can be quite tricky. 

Image size: Always, always take your photos at the highest possible resolution.  This will give you maximum flexibility as to how you can use them.

Here are two earlier blog posts I've written about photographing your work, including reviews for books on the subject:  Updating my Photography Setup and Photographing Beadwork Outside the Studio.  Both posts are older: this is a continual learning process for me, as I work to improve my own photography skills.  I still highly recommend The Crafter's Guide to Taking Great Photos by Heidi Adnum as an easy-to-read guide on the subject.

Preparing your Images for Submission
I can't tell you how disappointing it was to receive lovely images of incredibly beautiful pieces, only to realize that the images were too small, or of too low a resolution for me to actually use.  I know it was equally disappointing for the artists as well.  Worse, several of the artists had failed to save their original, larger images and had given away or sold the actual piece, so it was impossible to take additional photos.  Heart breaking!  Here are some ways to avoid this problem:
  Understanding Image sizes:
Photos are sized in two ways:  the total number of pixels (by height and width), and the DPI (Dots per Inch).  Make sure your images are large enough for the curator's use!

• Height and Width:   What's truly important is your image's height and width measured in pixels.  As a general rule of thumb, your submitted image should be at least 1700-2000 pixels tall and wide.  Check the call for entry closely for specifics.
• Height and width measurements in inches or centimeters are misleading.  These measurements are relative as they are based upon your image's current resolution (determined by dpi).

• DPI, which stands for Dots Per Inch, is literally the number of pixels or dots that make up a single inch of the image.  At 72dpi, a single inch of the image is divided into 72 equal-sized squares.

Different publishing mediums require different images sizes.  Images are saved at different DPI depending upon whether they are designed for the screen or print:

• Digital Publications:  Images viewed optimized to view on a screen or monitor are typically saved at 72 or 144dpi.
• Print Publications: Images optimized for print publishing require a much higher resolution - a minimum of 300dpi.  

Here's an example of how this affects things:

• I received a file that was 5"x7".  That sounds like it's plenty large enough for printing, right?  Unfortunately, it was saved at only 72dpi.
• The image's total resolution in pixels was 360 x 504 pixels.  (5" x 72dpi = 360 and 7" x 72dpi = 504)
• I then had to convert that to 300dpi (the minimum dpi for print publishing).
• Converted, the image was only 1.2" x 1.68".  Too Small! (360/300=1.2" and 504/300=1.68")

Solutions:
Become comfortable with whatever image editing software you use so that you can change the image size as necessary to fit the submission requirements.   

Always, Always Preserve your Original Photos!!! You want to keep your original photos pristine, so that they are ready to edit for different purposes.  Do not save edits to your original file; use 'Save As' instead.

• Open your original file
• Make all necessary changes
• Always use SAVE AS to preserve your changes.
• Close the original file without saving.  DO NOT save the changes to your original file.  You want to keep original image without changes. 

This is especially important because some image file types use compression algorithms to reduce each image's file size.  Every time you save a .JPG, it tries to compress the file a little smaller, discarding what it thinks is extraneous data.  With several saves, these losses can become visible as jagged, pixelated edges.  And suddenly the file is no longer useable.


In closing, every Call for Entry is about building a collection.  Curators are looking to build a cohesive collection of the highest quality works and images.  As artists, our goal is to make it as easy as possible for the curator to fit our work into that collection.  Since our work will be evaluated based upon the photographs we submit, we want to do everything we can to make they act as the best possible ambassadors for our work. 

The Creative Journey with Bead Chat magazine

Creative Bead Chat, Spring 2015

Ready for a break, but don't have time to even think about a vacation?  Check out the Spring edition of Bead Chat!  The newest issue focuses on the creative journey, with 'travel reports' from the four corners of the world. 

Cynthia Machata (of Antiquity Travelers) takes us to Malta to meet artist and designer Marica Zammit, and on the road with Janice Lucas, who has traveled to Nepal (and beyond) in her Mercedes Benz long-haul truck.  Even her 'truck' is cool - it looks like something out of a sci-fi movie to my American eyes. 

The brainchild of Melinda Orr, Creative Bead Chat works to connect kindred spirits - beaders, lampworkers, polymer clay artists, bead weavers, designers - there's something for everyone.  Bead Chat, their beautifully curated quarterly digital magazine, is written and produced by artists, for artists.

There's so much that I love about this magazine!  I can enjoy it simply as eye candy, flipping through the 'pages'.  It's a great resource for one-of-a-kind art beads by individual artists that you could incorporate into your own designs.   If I'm in the mood for more, the articles take me into the world of other designers; people I'd love to spend an afternoon with  around a beading table.  Best yet, when I see something I love or want to learn more about a particular artist, I can immediately click through to their website or blog.  The magic of digital magazines. 
 

Journey to Malta to meet Marica Zammit, interview by Cynthia Machata

Share Janice Lucas' journeys (I love the insert photo of her long-haul truck!)

So you can guess how excited I was when they approached me to ask if I'd be willing to allow them to write a review for Explorations in Freeform Peyote Beading!  Uh, Yes!?  Please?  Linda Younkman wrote a lovely, two-page review.  I was even more thrilled with how well my book fit into the issue's overall theme of creative discovery. 

Linda Younkman's review of Explorations

It's always interesting to hear what my work looks like to others; what catches their eye and draw them in.  Only a portion of the first chapter is devoted to Color, but I am flattered that Linda found it comprehensive enough to view the section as an entire chapter.  The chapter (and book) opens with a review of the basic peyote stitch, followed by an in-depth look at the ways in which freeform peyote differs, then continues on to a review of the design principles (including Color) that can help give direction to our freeform bead weaving.  All told, the book includes over ninety pieces by twenty two artists, with in-depth photo essays exploring about a third of the designs.


I've touched on just a couple of the things which caught my eye in this particular issue of Bead Chat.  It would be easy to write another page or two.  Instead, I think I'll close this here and leave the rest for you to discover on your own.  After all, isn't that what creative journey's are all about?  I hope you enjoy Bead Chat as much as I have! 

Lessons Learned: Managing my Kickstarter Campaign

If you're just joining in, this is part of my new series focusing on the lessons I learned in last year's adventure in crowdfunding and self-publishing for my third book.  A Google search will turn up scores of posts with tips for creating a stellar Kickstarter campaign.  My goal here is to provide a much more personal look at the process based upon my own experiences.  In earlier posts, I covered designing a Kickstarter campaign and my experiences creating a Kickstarter video.  Now, I'll focus on what happened once the campaign was off and running.

The Kickoff
Make sure to tell everyone you know about your campaign!  I can't stress this enough.  The more people you have excited about your project, the better your chances of succeeding.  Don't bore people, but make sure to let them know - here's where an elevator pitch comes in.  Mine went something like "I'm running a Kickstarter campaign to support my newest book to help people learn to trust their creativity and make their own freeform beadwoven designs."

Even if they're not interested in your particular project, they may know someone who is.  My campaign succeeded entirely through the power of word of mouth.  I didn't know it at the time, but I really didn't have a large enough Facebook following for my campaign to succeed according to statistics (250 likes when the campaign launched).  But what I did have were friends who believed in my project and shared it with their friends, who shared it with their friends; and the rest was history. (Thank you all!!!!!)

Social Media and Spreading the Word:  

• Play to your strengths.  I'm primarily a blog and Facebook kind of girl, so that's where I focused. If you're great at building Pinterest boards, using Instagram or Twitter - then use your medium to its fullest advantage.
• Only a portion of your audience will ever see any one post.  With Facebook, the stats indicate that only 10-20% of my friends see any individual post.  
• Use the power of personal emails.   I was slow to take advantage of this.  At the start of my campaign I emailed a few of my friends whom I thought might be interested.  I didn't want to send out "please give me money" emails, fearing I would sound greedy or money grubbing.  I have a sneaking suspicion this is something that women wrestle with more than men - one of those hidden paradigms in our culture.  Halfway through the campaign, a friend sat me down and told me that I was being foolish.  About that time, I realized that I didn't need to ask for financial funding; what I really needed to ask for was support in spreading the word. 
• Respond to Everyone who Contacts You! I spent several hours each day responding to emails.  If you have more than one account, remember to check them all - you'll receive messages through Kickstarter, tweets, emails, Facebook messages and any other social media you use.  I'd never realized how many different ways there were for people to contact me.  It's exciting and wonderful, and can be tiring.  I was afraid that my emails would sound 'canned', so I tried to write an entirely new email to each person.  Some stock phrases are probably okay, especially if they are truly meant.

Keeping Things Rolling

Updates give you a chance to engage with the people who already support your campaign, and to woo those who might be considering jumping in.  They are automatically emailed to all of your Kickstarter supporters, and can be viewed from your main campaign page. 

• Milestones - it's fun to post progress reports on your campaign, but I was advised to keep this to the major milestones. 
• Insider Info - Updates are a great place to go into greater depth about aspects of your project that excite you.  For me one of these was full-bleed photography.  Since I'd published my second book, Createspace had finally introduced this printing option.  This meant that photos could stretch all the way to the edges of the page without margins, opening new, wonderful possibilities for page layout and design.  An update allowed me to show off how this could look. I also announced my Call for Entries for inclusion in the book in one of my updates.
• Contests/Challenges and Rewards - I spent a lot of time looking through other campaigns to see what they used as extra incentives during their campaigns.  They key was to find something that would be of value to my supporters without destroying my budget.  Save your best ideas for the end, when there's already a greater sense of urgency.  
• The most popular reward I offered (and the only challenge to succeed) was a full PDF copy of my original book, Freeform Peyote Beading.  The challenge was IF we received full funding by midnight on the last full day of the campaign, I'd email the download code for the PDF version of my first book to all supporters at the $40 level or above.  I have never sold the digital version of this book; the only way to receive a copy was through this campaign.  Which made it a more powerful incentive. 
• Acknowledgements - with the tremendous support I received, I wasn't able to list everyone who helped spread the word, but I made sure to include shout-outs and links to everyone who wrote a blog post about my campaign. 

Navigating the Doldrums
Most campaigns do their best in the first and last week.  The first week everything is shiny and new.  The final week there's a sense of 'all or nothing' urgency.  The weeks in between were particularly difficult as I watched my campaign stall.    It helped to know that this was normal.  This doesn't mean you can slack off, nor does it mean you should give up.  I fretted, worrying about the all-or-nothing aspect of the Kickstarter process.  Should I have gone with Indiegogo, or one of the other sites that allowed for partial funding?  Should I have gone with a longer campaign (60 days instead of 30)?

See what I meant about mid-campaign doldrums?

Thank you, thank you to those of you who joined the campaign during weeks two and three; you helped keep my stomach from eating itself!

Going back to the statistics, I reminded myself that shorter campaigns had higher success rates.  I can see why; a longer campaign would have been more wearing, with a longer, potentially more devastating, trough in the in the middle.   The best advice I found for navigating my campaign's doldrums was to dig in, have faith, and keep going.  Spend this time continuing to build content to share, comb through your email and contact lists to see if there's anyone you missed, keep conversations going with your early supporters, and generally keep the faith.

It's good training for later in your project, when energy flags but you simply need to keep going.

Celebrate your Wins
Whether or not my campaign succeeded, I'd committed to celebrating my wins.  For me, that was the number of people who had turned out and turned up, who'd become involved and helped to push things forward.  For the first time in my publishing career, I had people actively excited and waiting for my new book to appear.  That in and of itself was spectacular.

If my campaign hadn't succeeded, it would have been hard.  I would have gone through a period of mourning.   However, I'd already committed mentally to pursuing this project either way.  The final project would have been paired down, and taken longer.  But there was enough excitement to indicate that the effort was warranted - my book could find its audience.

My campaign did succeed, and we were off and running, full-steam ahead with the actual project.  I spent the following week writing another flurry of emails and postcards - thanking everyone and sending out the first wave of rewards.  Since my rewards tiers were pretty complex, I also built a spreadsheet to track what each supporter was supposed to receive.  It was time to put processes in place for the long haul. 

In my next post, I'll talk about what I learned about submitting works and photographs to Calls for Entries from the other side of the table; running one. 

Seattle Spring

My garden will never win an award, but I love the blooms!

Seattle gets a bad rap for its weather.  I can't tell you how often I hear "I couldn't live there; it rains all the time."  Well, I've have to say, I much prefer Seattle's rain to the snow much of the rest of country has had this winter.  

While we're further north than Boston, it's so much warmer here.  Spring arrived back in late January with the first of the crocus, and hasn't gone away since. 

Right now, the daffodils are beginning to segue into tulips and my forsythia is finally starting to fade after several weeks of cheery yellow blooms.  The cherry and apple trees lining the streets are beginning to blossom, and grape hycanth are popping up everywhere. 

Yes, it rains in Seattle.  That's why it stays so green here.  It's what gives us our lovely, extended spring.

Walking up to my front door

It's often cloudy - but a bright white sky with high clouds can be quite beautiful, and a lot less glare than when the sun peeks out during the winter.  Anyone living in northern climes knows what I mean. 

 

Apple buds almost ready to blossom. 

It might rain a lot in Seattle (I can hear the light patter of raindrops falling on my roof as I type this post), but I sure do love the spring show that comes along with the rain! 

Lessons Learned: The Kickstarter Video

For me, the video was far and away the most challenging part of putting together my Kickstarter campaign.  While I enjoy speaking in a workshop setting, put me in front of a camera and I get the willies, badly.  In this post, I'll share the a few things I learned to make the process easier. 

Planning the Video
Plan what you want to say ahead of time.  Unless you're one of those rare people who are great at extemporaneous speaking, spend some time plotting out what you want and need to share in your video. 
Content

• Key points - what is your project and why is it cool?
• Who are you, and why are you the right person for this project?
• Why are you asking for help?
• What is your time line?
• Call to action.  What do you hope people will do once they've watched your video? Remember to share what they can do to help support your project. Be specific.  If you're like me, asking for financial support may be hard.  Remember people really do want to help!  It's fun to help other people achieve their creative goals.  Several friends kept reminding me of that fact. And as a supporter of other Kickstarter campaigns, I have to agree.

Video Length

• Shorter videos have higher completion rates.
• Keep your video under 2 minutes.  People tune out on longer videos unless they are truly amazing.  Mine was simply sufficient.  At 1:51, my video had 1,773 views with a 40.44% completion rate.  Doing a Google Search for 'kickstarter video plays completed', it looks like that was a reasonable percentage. 
• Time yourself.  Once you have your script, read it out loud and time yourself.  How long did it take to read through everything?  
• If the time was more than two minutes, see if there's anything you can cut or edit.

Equipment

• Technology assessment - what equipment will you need?  I shot my video with an older model digital camcorder with an internal mike, set on a tripod.  My husband acted as the camera man.  While the image quality of the video wasn't the best, the biggest problem with this set up was the sound.  
• An external, clip-on mic could have improved things considerably!  It doesn't have to be expensive.  Runnng an Amazon search for 'external microphone for camera', I found an Olympus Noise Canceling Microphone for under $15 with great reviews.  I've not tried it myself, but I truly wish I had purchased an external mic before filming my video!

Setting

• Location, date and time.  Where will you shoot the video? What time of day? 
• Will you need supplemental lighting?
• Check for any external conflicts!  I planned to film my video at my studio, located in an old warehouse building across the street from the Seahawk's stadium.  When my husband and I arrived at the studio bright and early one Saturday morning in January of 2014, we discovered a street party in process.  Since we aren't sports fans, we'd managed to miss the fact that it was the day of the first Superbowl playoffs.  The Seahawks band playing their hearts out just below my window was a lot of fun, but pretty much insured that we wouldn't be filming that day.  We did make use of the time to decide where to film, set up the equipment, and do a quick run through.  We then returned the next day to do the shoot.  Luckily we had the flexibility for that extra day! 

Additional Resources - here are several links to other sites with suggestions for creating a stellar video:

• Check out Kickstarter's fun tutorial, part of their Creator Handbook
• 5 Must Read Tips for First Kickstarter Video
• Crowdfunding Dojo's post has some really great insight into creating an engaging video that makes it worth the read, despite an annoying pop-up encouraging you to sign up for their newsletter. 

Shooting the Video

• Consider shooting your video in sections.  Even at under two minutes, I found it very difficult to keep to the script when I tried to run through everything at once.  I kept ad-libbing and 'running into the weeds' until I broke my script into five parts, each shot separately.
• Mark where you plan to stand/sit.  Breaking the video into several shoots, I ended up marking the floor with a blue X of painters' tape so I started and ended each section in the same spot.  
• Shoot multiple takes of each section while you have the chance.  You can always trash the extra video later, but it's worth having the extras in case of glitches that you didn't catch in your camera's playback.
• Shoot any alternative shots that you can think of while you have the camera and crew.  We shot all of the scenes with me speaking while standing in my studio.  But I also had my husband take some video of me stitching a project and working on various aspects of the book design on my computer.  While I had no original plans for them, this footage was very useful in post production. 

Post-processing
Once you've shot all the scenes, you still need to put it together into a finished video.  What video editing software will you use?  I used iMovie, which came with my laptop, so I'll focus on that. I'd never used iMovie before and had a lot of trouble understanding the interface at first.  Once again, it was Google Search to the rescue. 

• Apple's iMovie Tutorial page was a good place to start, but I found some of the 3rd party videos more immediately helpful.
• IzzyVideo has an extremely thorough video tutorial that walks you through every step.  I found his Tour of the Interface and Editing tutorials particularly helpful.

Things you can do with iMovie (and presumably other video editors as well) include:

• Separate the audio track from the video
• Carefully edit out a couple of glitches in your audio/video.  This is a great way to get rid of 'ums'!
• Used the software to adjust the audio track to minimize the tinniness from the camera's microphone.  (An external microphone might have prevented this necessity).
• Combine still shots along with your videos.  You can specify how long you want each still shot to remain on the screen, as well as specify the scene cuts/fades.
• Video editing isn't fast!  I found it rather like putting together the pieces of a 5,000 piece puzzle without quite knowing what the finished picture is supposed to look like.  Make sure to allow your self time to both come up to speed with the software (assuming you're like me and aren't already familiar with it), and to put together your video puzzle.

Quite a bit of time can go into the creation of your 1-3 minute video, so you might wonder if it's really worth it.  I know I did.   What I can tell you is from a statistical standpoint, projects with videos have a much greater chance of succeeding than those without. 

Perhaps even more importantly, the video gives you a chance to connect more directly with your audience than is possible with either text or still photography.  It's a powerful way of saying 'See, I'm real, my project's real, it's going to be fantastic, and I'd love for you to be a part of making it so'. 


In my next Lessons Learned post, I hope to focus on running a Kickstarter campaign.  I'll talk about my experiences managing updates, social media, stretch goals and anything else that I can think of between now and then.  Have something in specific you'd like me to include?  Let me know!  I love your feedback. 

Thinking about Peyote Stitch

I've recently received a couple of emails from people who are having trouble with the concept of freeform peyote stitch.  Since I've spent a fair bit of time trying to answer those emails, I thought I'd turn them into a blog post. 

To understand freeform beadweaving, you first need to have a strong understanding of the regular version of the stitch.

• Peyote Stitch reminds me of bricks in a wall; each row is offset a half-step from its immediate neighbors.  (Above Left)
• Turn the brick wall on its side, and the similarity is even more pronounced. (Above Right)
• With the wall on its side, the gaps at the top show you where you need to place the bricks (or beads) to build the next row of peyote stitch.  

This assumes you are working with materials (bricks or beads) of roughly the same size.  

What happens if your bricks or beads come in a bunch of different sizes?  This is where Freeform Peyote comes in!

Don't throw out the whole concept of peyote stitch.  You will still be working with rows offset by a half step from neighboring rows to either side.

• Like the photos of the stone and brick wall above, you will still have very recognizable sections of peyote stitch. 
• The key is marrying the sections.
• It can help to organize your beads by size - I find freeform peyote is easier when I group like with like.  
• Build discrete sections with the different sizes of beads, don't just mix them willy-nilly.
• Freeform is not random.  It is a more organic melding of different sizes and shapes. 

This example of freeform peyote doesn't have the extreme size variances of the stone and brick wall, but you can see how I've grouped sections of similarly sized beads together.  My larger accent and focal beads are surrounded and supported by peyote stitch.

Last tips

• Don't try (or expect) to do everything at once!
• Just like building a wall, you will work one row at a time.
• With each row, you have the opportunity to make decisions regarding bead sizes, shapes (and colors).

Lessons Learned: Setting up a Kickstarter Campaign

Today I'm launching the start of a new series of blog posts sharing my experiences in self-publishing.  I thought I'd start with what I learned setting up a Kickstarter campaign.  For those of you who aren't already familiar with Kickstarter - it's a crowdfunding site for creative projects.  Crowdfunding is the process of connecting individuals and small companies with Ideas with others who would be willing to provide funding to help make that idea happen.  It's rather like a NPR plede-a-thon, except you're helping support a specific creative project.  Kickstarter doesn't guarantee that you will ever actually receive anything from the project creator, but most project creators are strongly motivated to deliver. 

As an aside, there are other crowdfunding sites, such as Indiegogo, but I'm focusing on Kickstarter since it's the one I use.

I do not claim to be an expert, but here's what I've learned:

Why I decided to run a Kickstarter
In my case, I hoped to raise seed money towards the production of my latest book.  Raising funds is the main reason people run a Kickstarter.   But I believe that something even more important happens along the way.  You develop a community excited about your project. 

From my previous publishing experiences I knew that I would hit a wall mid-way through the year-long project.  Talking with other creative professionals, I've found this is a common theme.  As artists, our work is solitary.  With projects that last months into years, there's lots of room for doubts, alternate paths and other diversions to sneak in and wreak havoc.  Having a community to which I was accountable made forward movement a necessity.  They also gave me a sense of purpose and support; I was writing the book for them. This made it much easier to stay focused. 

Getting up to Speed

• Give yourself at least a month to put together all of the details!  Designing a successful Kickstarter (KS) campaign, you are effectively putting together a business plan and a sales presentation.  Don't expect it to happen over night!  It's worth taking some time and doing it right.
• Read through their Creator's Guide and browse the FAQs - they are fantastic resources. 
• Learn from other campaigns.  I started by simply looking through other campaigns that seemed interesting.  I read the text, watched videos, read through project updates.  I took notes on what drew me to each project, things I liked and didn't, what information they included and how it was presented, how they set up their funding tiers. How did they handle updates?  What made their updates interesting? 
• Develop your own 'favorites' list of campaigns and watch them through the cycle.  What did you think they did really well?  Did they reach their funding goal? Many successful campaigns don't reach their goals until the last 24 hours, mine included.
• Consider joining a group like the Kickstarter Best Practices on Facebook.  It's a great place to ask questions and get feedback as you develop your campaign (but remember to do your homework first!) 
• If you know someone who has run a successful Kickstarter, ask them to lunch and pick their brains about any questions you still have after you've done your research.  I spent about an hour doing just that with game designer James Ernest; asking him questions about updates, stretch rewards and creating an engaging video (his videos are far better than mine!)   An independent filmmaker I spoke with warned that the Kickstarter would become my job for the duration of the project.  While that was a bit of an overstatement, running the campaign was quite time intensive - writing and responding to emails, developing updates, tweaking the campaign, working with social media.  I spent several hours a day on the project.
• If you're an introvert, be prepared to put on your extrovert persona for the campaign's duration.  You will be the chief spokesperson for your campaign, and a cheerleader for any community members or friends who decide to take up the cause.  
• Get the word out early.  (I could have done better with this!)  Start getting the word out while you're still putting it all together.  Not too much at first (you don't want to fatigue people before you've even launched), but a word here and there can go a long ways, especially in the early days of your campaign. 

Setting up your Kickstarter Account

• Verify your identity and set up a Payments account at least two weeks before you plan to launch.  If your campaign succeeds, money will change hands; they need to verify that you are who you say you are.  This must be completed before you can submit your KS for review!  The verification process can take up to a week to complete. This was the cause of several very tense days as I didn't allow quite enough time before my intended launch date. 
• Build your KS page at least a week before you plan to launch!  Every campaign has to go through a review process where an actual person from KS looks at it to make sure it meets their internal guidelines.  This can take up to a week, depending upon how many new campaign requests they've received.   You can still edit the campaign after their review is complete, but all of the basics must be there before the review.  

Designing your Kickstarter Package
People may link directly to your campaign page, or they may first see your project thumbnail, and you need to design for both.  Here are the pieces you'll need to put together:

• One Sentence Summary - this is your elevator pitch. Try to focus it towards your target audience, but make it accessible to others as well.  Don't try to tell it all, just snag their interest. 
• Video - keep it short - under 2 minutes! Keep it focused.  The video is as much about you, the presenter, as it is about the project, so a little personal is good. 
• Detailed Description:  what are you trying to create and why should others care?  My goal was to outline my plans for the book and to show how it expanded upon my previous publications.  This was a much more ambitious project on several fronts, with a relatively tight deadline for the amount of anticipated effort. I really wanted that to come across in my description.
• Pictures:  While the video is great, it's also good to have some regular photos relating to your project.  This can be tricky when you haven't started yet, so it can pay to be a little creative.  For my part, I put together a sample book cover, and used images from patterns I'd previously published to give a feel for what the new book might look like.
• Reward tiers - what will people receive?  This by far the hardest part for me.  I wanted my supporters received something really awesome for their investment.  But at the same time, I had to make sure that I had funds to support the production process, not just rewards fulfillment.  But more on that later.  I did have a lot of fun coming up with names for my various tiers.  It was something I'd noticed from some other campaigns and enjoyed.

Project Budget
Make sure your budget is realistic, and your reward tiers leave room to cover expenses besides simply filling the rewards. 

• Production expenses - believe it or not, one of my biggest expenses was printer ink.  It is almost impossible for me to truly evaluate the effectiveness of a page's layout without seeing it in print.  This meant I did a LOT of printing over the course of writing the book and designing the page layouts.  It's almost embarrassing how much I spent on ink!  I also spent several hundred dollars purchasing ISBNs (I'll write more about that in a later post). 
• Labor (and Opportunity) Costs - while working on this book, I knew I wouldn't have time to develop new tutorials and classes, which meant that my Etsy sales and income from teaching would decline.  I added a small amount in the budget towards general labor costs for this reason. The project might labor of love, but forgoing income for the duration makes it hard to continue.
• Rewards Fulfillment Costs - How much will it cost to fulfill your rewards?  Remember to include shipping costs, including the costs for packaging.  This can add up fast!  Many of my rewards were in the form of digital files, which helped with costs. But this was still a significant proportion of my budget.
• Kickstarter's Percentage - Kickstarter doesn't run their site for free.  Expect about 6% of the amount you raise to go to Kickstarter and the Payments Account you set up.
• By the Numbers:   22,252 creative projects were successfully funded last year through Kickstarter.  Publishing was the third most populous category, behind film & video, and music.  According to Kickstarter' statistics page, the overall success rate is 39.05%; more projects fail than succeed.  Over 70% of the successfully funded projects asked for less than $10,000.
• Keep it Realistic - Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing proposition.  If you reach your funding goal in the time selected, then you receive the money to continue.  If you do not reach your goal, then no money changes hands.  For these reasons, I set my goal to cover a portion of my  project budget - enough to cover rewards fulfillment, production expenses and a wee bit towards labor.  I could have asked for a larger portion of my project budget, but wanted to keep it as reasonable as possible from an outside perspective.  

 Setting up Your Reward Tiers

• Rewards - Brainstorm all the different rewards you could offer related to your project.  Look through other projects for ideas.   Ask friends for their suggestions.  Write them all down.  How much would each cost you to deliver?  
• Not all rewards are monetary.  I thanked my supporters in the Acknowledgements section of the book, and on my blog, inscribed all of the copies of the print edition, wrapped each book in hand-dyed tissue paper to make each package more festive, and tried to find other ways to say 'thank you' as well.
• Price Tiers - Kickstarter suggests that the $20-30 range is their most popular pledge level, but remember to take your costs into consideration.  I really wrestled with this.  Crunching the numbers, the finished book plus shipping would cost me more than $20 each.  Offering digital tier levels separate from the print edition was my solution. 
• Delivery Dates - what's the timeline for your project's completion?  Something I did not consider when I set up my estimated delivery dates was the time it would take to put each of the packages together.  I found it took me at least 20 minutes to put together each package - inscribe and wrap each book, assemble and tape the package, type in the shipping information, print, trim and affix the shipping label. That's after I'd purchased and gathered all my supplies, and put together my postcard bundles.  With over 50 packages to ship, it added up.  Developing the Kindle version of my book also took much longer than anticipated. 

Once you've put your package together, it's time to launch.  I'll talk about what I learned running a Kickstarter in my next Lessons Learned post.

In the meantime, I'd love to hear what you think.  Was this post useful?