Modern Developments

I recently posted that, "Nobody cares until the whole thing's done."

There have been some recent developments in publishing and self publishing that seem to change that. One thing in particular that I'm talking about is kickstarter.

There are those who may believe that with kickstarter you don't need a final product, but an idea. That's true to some degree, but it's also false. Kickstarter is an investment program. You are trying to get customers to invest in your work with the promise of some reward. They aren't investing for money, but for a product and, more to the point, the chance to be "involved" in something.

Look at indie music, where everything is most popular before it is popular. It is always nice to be one of the fans that saw the band before they really developed their skill so you can say, "I like them until they went mainstream."

But when you are looking for investors for a project it's because you don't have the money upfront. You are essentially advertising either:

• a) the full product when it is finished (i.e. The published book if you've already written it, or the published book that you haven't finished it yet.) or...
• b) the idea of an amazing book that you're going to write.

The outcome is the same. You're trying to get someone hooked on your book. Where kickstarter has an advantage is that you have a venue where people can look over your stuff and buy right away. They can act on their impulse. The idea of buying things online has fed into this. If you just tell someone "I'm writing this awesome book and here's the story." You're selling the idea of the finished story to them. But only if the idea is fully fleshed out. They're still willing to put out money for a finished product. They want to read it, but they don't have it so they lose interest. With kickstarter you're just saying the shipping will take a while.

It's easy to take advantage of this system and sell an idea that will never see daylight. But you'll only do that once. Just like big publishers your readers will stop investing if nothing comes from it.

So, if you're selling a thing, or the idea of a thing, just remember: even with modern changes, people are paying for the finished product. Make sure it's worth their money.