The Doubleclicks Tell You How to Do Kickstarter
Posted on October 20, 2014 Posted by John Scalzi 4 Comments
And they’ve done an unsurprisingly thorough job of it. If you’ve ever wanted to do your own Kickstarter/crowdfunded project, you’re going to want to read this. What I particularly like is that it emphasizes the fact that Kickstarting a project is a tremendous amount of work, which is a thing I think a lot of people gloss over to wallow in the idea of Kickstarter/crowdfunding as this sort of cosmic ATM that just shoots free money at people. Doesn’t quite work that way, folks. Trust the Doubleclicks on this one.
I have a band name “Blink Blink Motherfucker” and I was going to do a Kickstarter to hire musicians, hire song writers, hire choreographers, hire concert managers, and hire music video makers. But, you know, I have the name.
I read the article, and these folks don’t seem very supportive of my approach.
Indeed, I have often said, based on my own experience, that I wouldn’t wish a Kickstarter campaign on my worst enemy. But there is a way to succeed with one, it is simply that you have to lay tons of groundwork in advance and build an enthusiastic audience first.
The Doubleclicks are phenomenal, both as people and as a band, and I think that their post speaks really well of their passion and just how smart they are. Fantastic advice — I enjoy contributing to Kickstarter (I see it as Kiva without the return) and these are things I weigh as a backer when considering a project’s success.
Also, after witnessing a cargo load of boxes marked “Machine of Death” impounded by customs for some bizarre reason, I’ve learned that plenty of things you couldn’t predict will happen, and how someone navigates the bumps along the way really tells you a lot about them and if you want to back them again. I am a happy REPEAT backer, too, and love it when people contact me about new projects.
This is perfect timing for me. I’ve sold a story to an anthology that will be doing a KS set to begin within weeks (there was a 1st edition of the anthology–SFF stories by women–that was very successful; we are hoping for similar success for this 2nd edition). I knew that I’d be doing a certain level of PR–tweets, blogs, etc.–as part of the KS, but I had no idea what the powers-that-be had to do. So thanks so much for posting this!