…all of this stuff basically assumes you’re a writer running crowdfunding, but I imagine that after the fact a lot of it might be helpful to other people. I hope so, anyway.

What would be a reasonable amount to set as initial goal? (I understand the part where if you don’t make goal, you get zero.)

For me, this depends on anticipated wordcount, but the “if you don’t make goal” bit is the kicker.

For “No Dominion”, which I planned as a novella, I set my initial goal at $4000. I chose that number because I’ve sold 3 novellas in the past, and was paid approximately $3K, $3500 and $4K for them. So I’d been going to split it down the middle for “No Dominion” and ask for $3500, but then I jumped the gun and got Kyle Cassidy to do the cover art photo shoot, so I went ahead and rolled the cost of that into the campaign, thus setting the dollar amount at $4K, and setting the novella price point as a whole for the campaign at $4K.

Tim Pratt set a $6K goal for his novel-length Kickstarter. I suspect I would do around the same, probably topping out around $7500 for an anticipated, say, 80K novel, because the *idea* here is to get the cash in the door, so it’s counter-productive to aim super high and not make it. It’s a question of what’s the minimum bearable to make for your work, but one of the positive sides about crowdfunding is it frees you to do something you really want to do, and that may be worth taking a little less cash in hand.

How long does one run this thing?

Kickstarter itself suggests 30 days, because there’s pretty inevitably a trough in the middle. I ran “No Dominion” for 45 days and will do that for any other Kickstarters I run, because 45 days is pretty likely to mean everybody who might want to buy in is going to have a paycheck in that time. 30 days can miss out on people who only get paid monthly, and that can make a difference.

What’s with this video one does?

I think the video is God’s way of being cruel to writers. Honestly, for mine, I wrote a 45 second speech, practiced it a bunch of times, then set up my phone to record me and recorded it about twenty times until I had one where I hadn’t embarrassed myself stumbling over the words. I was very proud of myself for managing to put a fade out at the beginning and maybe the end. Regardless of the approach, keep it short, because people lose interest fast. Under 60 seconds is genuinely fine.

Assuming it makes the goal, when does payment come in, all at once or in chunks?

All at once. Amazon takes approximately 2 weeks to process it, and then it’s all yours. This is a totally bizarre concept for writers: the entire advance up front. This is also why you’d better be pretty goddamned sure you’re going to do the project.

And how does one disseminate the rewards?

For writers, your major reward is of course your novel/short stories/etc, which you would *think* Kickstarter would allow you to attach to the patron email lists they automatically create for you. For some bizarre reason they don’t allow epub/mobi/pdf/doc attachments, though I’ve suggested it to them (and if, say, everybody reading this would like to go suggest it to them too, Kickstarter’s contact link is at the bottom of any given page).

I do not yet know if you can attach such files to the finalized mailing list that they suggest you create, because I haven’t gotten that far yet. At the moment, I’m providing links to a password-protected Tumblr page for rewards, and have taken their Excel files to create a mailing list which I’ll end up using at the end of it all if I can’t attach an e-pub file of some sort.

Other rewards of a physical nature are sent to addresses which you can collect via the above-mentioned finalized mailing list they suggest doing shortly before you’re ready to send everything out.

Except for international patrons, shipping appears to be assumed to be included in the patronage reward level, so bear that in mind when setting reward levels.

Are there deadlines for writing/producing these?

Only those you set yourself. Probably adding an extra month to any deadline you think you might actually make is smart. She said, having not done that. :)

There is a rumor that best-seller lists don’t count books that are sold early, only the ones that are sold in the official week of release. This is a question of some relevance, because my books are almost always on the shelves two weeks before release date. So: does it matter to the lists?

And the answer is yes and no. Almost everybody has to deal with the same soft release problem that I get (a hard release is like Harry Potter got: you were not gonna get that book before midnight the day it was supposed to come out). The NYT apparently aggregates the numbers/momentum over the first weeks of release, whereas USA Today evidently only counts books sold from the week of release (though if you buy it on the Sunday when it’s supposed to come out on Tuesday, that counts as the release week).

We looked at some of my numbers with some of the Walker Papers and concluded that there are enough early sales that it *could* affect my ability to get onto some lists. So ideally? Really, really ideally? My readers would torture themselves and not buy the book until the actual release day, and then everybody go out at once and buy it immediately. This, however, is asking a lot of readers, and I can’t corral everybody and release them all at once. :)

There is also a rumor that Amazon’s numbers don’t count toward any lists. That one is apparently more true than not, though apparently Amazon falls on and off in usage for the lists depending on how willing they are to release their numbers, which varies.

B&N.com, however, *does* count toward list numbers.

Amazon also *always* ships early unless it’s a hard release date. I don’t know if B&N does, but I gather B&N aggregates the numbers shipped anyway and lists them on release day/week. So–without biting a hand that feeds me–it’s probably of more use (not just me, but to any author you like) for readers to pre-order through B&N.com instead of Amazon*.

Now, all that aside, here’s the other vicious truth: I’d really need literally everybody who buys my books to buy them in the first week/month of release in order to have any hope of making seriously big numbers. I have wonderful, loyal readers who have given me an amazing career and have kept my books on the shelves for a long life, which is hugely, hugely important to continuing to do this for a living, but if I want to level up to the best seller lists**, something has to change.

Possibly what has to change is I have to write something different which catches fire, but that’s very hard to predict. :) In the meantime, though, the best I can probably do is hope to get something going that leads into a big splash for the final book of the Walker Papers.

Because we’re on the downward slope here, guys. There are nine books planned for the series, and the timeline is pretty much hell bent for leather from the start of SPIRIT DANCES all the way through to the end of book 9. It’s probably too late to rack up some kind of magic momentum for RAVEN CALLS, since it’s out in four weeks, but I (we, if I assume you’re in this with me) have two books after that to try to hit it out of the park.

*This is not a statement intended to make people with Kindles feel bad. If you have a Kindle, for heaven’s sake, buy a Kindle book. I get the *royalties* the same no matter what; this post is just about whether there’s hope for me to reach a bestseller status over the next few years. :)

**And I do. I have always been in this game to–for lack of a better phrase–win it, and my personal definition of “win” is not “beat the other guy” but “get onto the national bestseller lists”. There is nothing wrong with being a mid-list writer and I’ll take it if that’s what I forever land at, but my completely-out-of-my-hands goal is to have that awkward first name “New York Times Bestselling Author” preceding the already-on-the-covers “CE Murphy”. :)

All of you please email me at cemurphyauthor AT gmail DOT com with your snail mail addresses, your username if that’s what you’ve won under so I know who you are, and whatever name I should sign the books to. :)

A particularly handsome model displays the new book. :)

I’ll pick 3 random commenters to send a copy of RAVEN CALLS to. That’s 3 on mizkit.com & 3 on mizkit.livejournal.com, just so that’s clear. :) And hell, I’ll be doing this on cemurphy.net, Twitter, Facebook and G+, too, so if you’re very thorough you can have up to 6 chances to win a book, I suppose. :)

And oh, the spot varnish on this one is AWESOME. AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME!

-Catie

SUNDAY, MARCH 19, 9:53 A.M.

The werewolf bite on my forearm itched.

Itching was wrong. It wasn’t old enough to itch. It should hurt like the dickens, because I’d obtained it maybe six hours earlier. Instead it itched like it was a two-week-old injury, well on the way to healing.

Only I was quite sure it wasn’t healing. For one thing, I kept peeking at it, and it was still a big nasty slashy bite that oozed blood when the bandages were loosened. For another thing, my stock in trade was healing. Fourteen months, two weeks and three days ago—but who was counting—I had been stabbed through the chest. A smart-ass coyote—kinda my spirit guide—had given me a choice between dying or becoming a shaman. Even for someone with no use for the esoteric, like I’d been, it hadn’t been much of a choice. So now, nearly fifteen months on, a bite on my forearm was something I really should be able to deal with.

And it wasn’t that I hadn’t tried healing it, because I had. Magic slid off like oil and water, or possibly more like oil and gashed flesh, if oil slid off gashed flesh, which I assumed it did but didn’t want to actually find out. Either way, the magic wasn’t working. Normally that would be a bad sign, but my talent had taken both a beating and a boosting in the past twenty-four hours, and wasn’t behaving. It reacted explosively when I tried using it, and I didn’t want to explode my arm. So I was getting on a plane with absolutely no notice and flying to Ireland, because I’d had a vision of the woman who had turned werewolves from slavering beasties 100% of the time into part-time monsters, and in my vision, she’d been in Ireland. I figured if anybody could keep me human, it had to be the woman who’d bound the wolves to the moon’s cycle.

That’s what I was telling myself, anyway, because it was slightly better than a full-on panic attack in the middle of the Seattle-Tacoma Airport.

Read more!

First up: “No Dominion”!

Project Proposal: I set out with a goal to raise $4000 through Kickstarter.com to fund the writing of a Walker Papers tie-in novella about Gary Muldoon, Joanne Walker’s septuagenarian sidekick:

Recently widowed after nearly fifty years of marriage, Gary Muldoon had given up on adventure. Then shaman Joanne Walker climbed into the back seat of his cab, and since then, Gary has trifled with gods, met mystics, slain zombies and ridden with the Wild Hunt.

But now he must leave Joanne’s side to face a battle only he can win. Because as their long battle against a dark magic-user races toward its climax, it becomes clear that it was not illness that took Annie’s life, but their enemy’s long and deadly touch.

Though lovers be lost, love shall not…

     …AND DEATH SHALL HAVE NO DOMINION.

Project Conclusion: Over 500 patrons contributed over $20,500 to the “No Dominion” campaign, earning them the following:

3 novellas
5 short stories
3 chapters of a book that doesn’t exist
& 1 CE Murphy photographic calendar

…which, frankly, was rather more than I expected. :)

Proof of Fiction Committed: There are two pieces of free fiction associated with the “No Dominion” campaign. Neither is actually from the “No Dominion” novella, because that novella begins in the middle of RAVEN CALLS, the 7th book of the Walker Papers series, which isn’t due out until March 2012, and I didn’t want to spoil anything. Instead, I’m offering up the following:

Magic Hath An Element, the first chapters of URBAN SHAMAN, as seen through Gary’s eyes instead of Joanne’s, and Forgotten But By A Few, the first “No Dominion” campaign short story.

Enjoy, and thanks for reading!

Happy Birthday, Gary, and Happy New Year to the world!

But now it’s done! And now it’s available here, on Amazon, and soon on B&N.com!

Two heroines. Two magics.

One world.

There’s nowhere in America like the Big Easy. Just ask Jane Yellowrock, shapeshifting vampire killer, whose hunting grounds run the length and breadth of the Bayou.

Just ask Joanne Walker, whose shamanic magic has drawn her to the heart of American Weird.

But it’s not Joanne’s world, and it isn’t Jane’s either. In a New Orleans where Katrina never hit and supposedly-dead vampires stalk the streets, Jane and Jo have to find and defeat the magic that brought them there–or they just might find themselves…

EASY PICKINGS
fan fiction by the authors themselves!

Read the teaser and

PLEASE NOTE: You will be given the option to “return to open at mizkit dot com” once you’ve paid! Click through on that, because that’s what will bring you to the download page! So don’t skip out of Paypal until you do so through that link! Otherwise you won’t get your story, and I won’t know that! I’ll think you’re out there happy as a fish in water, reading all about Jane and Jo’s adventures, when instead you’ll be sniffling in your tea! Don’t let that happen!

Right. Anyway! We’re planning to release it on the 15th, and in the meantime, here’s the cover!

I love the way I said that: “successfully funded”, all casual-like. What I really mean is OH MY HOLY LIVING BEANS, $20,635?!?!!?!??! *520 backers?!?!* You guys cracked the third novella! And the “Gosh, I guess I’m singing for my supper!” level! Oh my, I say, oh my. O.O *laughs* No, really, that’s going to be fun. I haven’t sung in a long time. :)

Jami Nord guessed a closest-to-accurate final dollar amount at $20,675 and has won one commissioned Walker Papers short story–and a bunch of other loot as well. Congratulations, Jami!

I cannot thank you all enough. This has been the most utterly amazing, humbling, exciting, awesome experience, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. And in a lot of ways it’s only just getting started, so yay! We’ve got lots more awesomeness ahead of us!

Thank you *so much*. I’ll be doing one more general Kickstarter post in the next few days, talking about what I learned from this project, but in the meantime, let me also thank you for your patience while I’ve talked about nothing else, and I promise to get back to your regularly scheduled blog now. :)

My parents, who are awesome, got me celebratory flowers. :)