Learning the lessons from my Kickstarter fiction campaign
Are you a writer looking to launch a Kickstarter in the publishing category in the near future? If so, then this one is for you!
Are you looking to launch a fiction book on Kickstarter?
I recently ran a campaign for a horror novella in the publishing category and want to share what I learned. Strap in. This one could get bumpy.
If you weren’t aware, I recently ran a Kickstarter for my awesome new horror novella Born Again. Most of my previous campaigns were for comics, but I did launch a fiction and non-fiction project on the platform in 2024, so I wasn’t completely new to launching fiction through Kickstarter. Although, in retrospect, I should have taken heed of the data about category-hopping back in this post.
Much of my work here has focused on identifying lessons from the crowdfunding literature, and I’ve explored and learned quite a lot. One recurring issue I’ve pointed to is the focus on aggregate data, with little/no differential analysis. This is really important for creators because we launch in specific categories, and it’s hard to determine the ‘average’ of different products. For example, crowdfunding for a technology campaign and a comic campaign are very different, requiring different information triggers that are valued by a different backer base.
It’s been my experience that even similar categories (e.g., comics and publishing) are different in practice, likely due to a couple of reasons:
The Kickstarter fiction community is not yet as mature and supportive as the Kickstarter comics community
For example, comic creators frequently back each other's campaigns, and do update swaps to cross-promote across different audiences. Fiction creators seem to do neither.
Most successful comic campaigns show pages of completed artwork, which helps to create trust with potential backers, and also is an artistic signal for backer self-identification (e.g., you may like the premise, but are not sold on the artwork, or vice versa).
Fiction campaigns may show the cover of the book, and some provide links to sample pages, but there’s nothing visual for potential backers to see, and the sample pages are limited in scope, as authors don’t want to give too much away for free. This means the levels of trust are vastly different.
So, what happened with my campaign?
Although we hit the funding goal, I think it’s fair to say this campaign under-performed my expectations. Given the number of people following the pre-launch page, coupled with experience, I assumed we would get around 50 backers and would raise around $1000.
In the end, we got only half of those numbers.
I set a reasonable (and modest) target for the campaign, based on my estimate of engaged audience size, and tempered by the reality that there is not the same community for publishing projects as there is for comics projects. I also followed my usual strategy to connect and engage potential readers in advance of the launch.
Looking at my initial data, I knew that I needed to hit $250 in funding by day two of the campaign in order to be successful, but assumed I would hit this on day one.
Imagine my shock when that didn’t happen.
Instead, backers trickled in slowly on day one, and by the time the campaign hit the critical target point on day two, I had only hit $303. This suggested I was likely to get around $600 in total funding at the end of the campaign.
How did I pick this time-point? Learn more in my Crowdfunding 101 video.
In short, the funding distribution is a flattened S-curve, where 50% of the total funding is raised within the first few days of a campaign (the critical time-point is a function of the total length of the campaign).
So, by day two, I knew we were not on target for where I expected the campaign to be, and I strongly considered cancelling it, even though I believed we would hit the funding goal.
Despite increasing my promotion efforts, I was unable to generate sufficient momentum, and was further hampered by super-backers cancelling pledges.
I followed up again with some bloggers who I had reached out to before launch, but it was too late and there was relatively little promotion.
Ultimately, we made it over the line thanks to some last-minute backers, and I could finally sit back and catch my breath.
The glass is half-full
While this campaign was disappointing, it’s also important to recognize that it was successfully funded, thanks to 27 backers who are excited to read my work.
This is important because the average success rate of publishing projects (as of May 19, 2025) was only 39.23% as you can see from the Kickstarter data (which is below the site average).
The data table above shows over 400 live campaigns, but the success rate means roughly 60% of these will fail. So, there are a lot of publishing campaigns out there, but most of them are failing. I also suspect this may be a key barrier in creating an active publishing community.
One reason why these campaigns are failing at a high rate is that creators are simply not backing other books. A quick scan of campaigns that are off-target shows they are almost all from creators who have backed zero projects. If you recall, a recent post of mine suggested this was the number one factor for creators to address.
Should you use Kickstarter or Indiegogo?
Should you use Kickstarter or Indiegogo, or both? That’s the question I’m often asked by people new to crowdfunding, and while I have my own preference, there is now some interesting data that helps us address this nuanced question.
But more than simply sending community signals to potential backers, the fact that publishing creators are not backing other books is an impediment to creator community building. If individual creators see all other creators as competition rather than allies, then the share of successful campaigns is unlikely to improve any time soon.
Case in point: during my campaign, I reached out to several publishing creators with live projects, and offered to do an update swap (as I would with other comic creators).
Not a single creator replied.
I still believe that Kickstarter is a critical tool for fiction writers, but I think it’s still in the early-adopter phase compared to the more mature comics market.
With that said, here are some things I should have done differently:
More promotion
I reached out to horror blogs and writers in advance (pre-launch), but it was likely still too late. Those who review and critique are almost all doing it for free, in their spare time, and drowning under an avalanche of requests. I needed to make it easier for them by being more prepared, and delivering something digestible to them.
Likewise, I didn’t make it onto any horror podcasts, and again I think that hurt the campaign.
More social proofing
This campaign had no social proofing, and I think that hurt it. While I sent advance copies out to a few people, I didn’t get anything back in time for the campaign.
While I did include preview pages from the book, the data tells me there were only a few downloads, so most people who visited the campaign didn’t read the sample.
More targeted audience priming
You could look at the campaign and conclude that there is simply no market for horror novellas on Kickstarter. I think the answer is more nuanced. The reality is that I didn’t bring enough of a horror novella audience to Kickstarter.
I relied too heavily on my existing mailing list, but didn’t focus specifically on those who were into short horror fiction. That was a mistake. Instead, my messaging was likely too generic and easily dismissed, or treated as spam.
What I should have done is worked harder to get more short horror fiction fans into my mailing list before launch, and sent that subset more targeted messages to prime them. It’s a good reminder that it’s not about the number of people on your mailing list - it’s about the relationships you have with them.
More advance community building
Waiting until the launch of a campaign is too late. I needed to start connecting with other creators much earlier, and that means finding out where they hang out online. Building those relationships early would likely have helped with cross-promotion and support, instead, I felt like I was shouting into the void when I didn’t hear back from fellow creators.
I could go on, but I feel these are the big lessons for fiction creators to mull over before they launch. Unless they’re Brandon Sanderson.
Will this deter me from launching again? Absolutely not, but I need to learn from this experience and address each of the four points noted above.
One last thing:
A recent email informed me that the term “creator lab” was already in use, and being contested by several people. I don’t have any patience right now for more conflict, so need to rethink my name. Which of the following are you more excited about?
What other thoughts do you have on the performance of my - or other - fiction campaigns? How do you think fiction writers should build stronger communities? Should fiction campaigns develop their own language and information signals, rather than using the ones forged by the comic community?