Behind the Scenes with Kickstarter’s Maris Kreizman

At Blurb, we’re huge fans of Kickstarter, and for good reason. It’s an amazing platform that lets our creative authors get their projects out of their heads and into the world. (And being successful with Kickstarter is easier than you think.)

To get more insight, we turned to Kickstarter’s Publishing Outreach Leader, Maris Kreizman to learn about what makes a successful publishing project with Kickstarter. In her spare time, Maris blogs and has a new book coming out this year.

How long have you been at Kickstarter and how did you you get there?
I’ve worked at Kickstarter for about a year and a half. I’ve been a book publishing person my whole career—I started out as a book editor at Simon & Schuster—but many years ago I worked as an audiobooks editor at a digital retail site. My boss, Yancey, was the coolest and I was sad when he quit to start his own company. But that company turned out to be Kickstarter. What were the odds? So from the very beginning I watched with interest and admiration as Kickstarter grew and evolved and created a new space for artists to find funding and build communities around their work. When a publishing role at the company opened up last year, I jumped at the opportunity to join.

What has surprised you about working with Kickstarter’s publishing projects?
That publishing projects at Kickstarter aren’t only about self-publishing books. Writers are using Kickstarter to plan literary events and book tours, and funding book and magazine-related works from apps to zines.

What are some of the things you’d like to tell anyone before they launch their Kickstarter publishing project?
I try to remind writers, in particular, that running a Kickstarter project is all about telling an engaging story. It’s about making potential backers excited about what you’re doing, and conveying your passion to them. Which is why the video, project description, rewards and updates are all so important: They offer concrete ways to get the message of your project out.

Who should do a Kickstarter campaign? Are there some projects that you think aren’t right for Kickstarter?
Kickstarter is for anyone who’d like to bring a creative idea in one of our 15 categories to life, large or small (about 60% of projects on Kickstarter raise between $1000 and $10,000).
That said, I see a lot of publishing projects in which the creator wants to write a book, but fails to communicate what she wants to write, and why, and how. Vague and unclear projects tend to fail on Kickstarter, as they should.

Any tips for how to plan and budget for a campaign? Any pitfalls that people should be aware of?
For this question I’m cutting and pasting from Kickstarter’s mega-helpful and informative FAQ:

Your funding goal should be the minimum amount of funds you need to complete your project and make and ship any rewards. It helps to make a list of all the materials, resources, and expenses you’ll need to complete your project, and the estimated costs for each. Research how much things will cost, and consider how your expenses would change if you had to switch suppliers or fulfillment partners (it never hurts to have a back-up plan). Any funds pledged towards shipping costs will also count towards your goal. Check out this video for insight into how other creators have approached setting their funding goals.

Share a breakdown of this budget in your project description to show backers you’ve thought things through. Keep in mind that once you launch your project, you won’t be able to change your funding goal or campaign duration.

It seems like international shipping can be a challenge for some projects—what should people know about shipping and fulfillment?
Again, straight from the FAQ:

When setting up your rewards, you’ll be able to choose from the following options for each reward tier:

No shipping involved: This option should only be selected if the reward does not involve shipping anything (for example, a digital copy of a film).

Restricted: Using this option, you’ll be able to restrict the shipping of rewards to certain countries, and designate costs for each country you select. If you only want to offer shipping within your own country or shipping to select countries, this is the option for you! This additional price will be included in the reward description, and backers in these countries will be prompted to enter the additional amount to their pledge.

Shipping anywhere in the world: This option allows you to select a global shipping rate, with the choice to designate outliers with different shipping rates. For example, if you’d like to offer a global shipping rate of $15, but need to charge only $10 for shipping to Canada, you’ll be able to specify this. Pricing will be included in the reward description, and backers in these countries will be prompted to enter the additional amount to their pledges.

As you build out your rewards and set shipping costs, note that costs for a precise country will always trump the cost of a region. For instance, if you offer a shipping rate of $15 for the European Union, but charge only $10 for shipping to France, a backer based in France will be prompted to pay the $10 shipping rate. Additionally, any funds pledged towards shipping costs will count towards your project’s goal.

I back a lot of projects and get a lot of stickers and little things like that. Is that something you’d recommend? What makes a good reward program?
For book projects, most backers will just want a copy of the book, whether in digital form, paperback or hardcover. It’s great to have a variety of format options to make four or five reward tiers. Kickstarter backers also love limited editions and exclusive experiences like a Skype session with an author. I’ve seen too many creators get weighed down by other kinds of merch. I think people have this conception that every good Kickstarter project requires a tote bag, which is just not true.

How important are the rewards to the success of the campaign?
Very, especially for publishing projects! Kickstarter is a value exchange, not a charity, so most backers will want a copy of the thing you want to make.

Are there any campaigns that come to mind where you think the creator did a really good job of planning rewards?
McSweeneys is a great example of a creator that got really fun and creative with rewards, offering super fun experiential things like a personalized story written by Sheila Heti or a fictional tour of Spokane by Jess Walter. But a simpler and more straightforward self-publishing campaign is wonderful too—Hello Ruby offered digital and hardcover versions of the book, as well as workbooks and annotated editions.

What have you seen with traditionally published authors coming to Kickstarter? Eric Ries and Jane Green come to mind but there must be others. What brings a conventionally-published author to Kickstarter?
Kickstarter is a great place for traditionally published authors to try out new things and keep creative control of their projects. Eric Ries wanted to publish a more in-depth companion to his Lean Startup book (published by Crown) that would be available exclusively to Kickstarter backers and serve as research for his next traditionally published book. Jane Green is a mega-successful women’s fiction author, but she came to Kickstarter with the cookbook project she’d been wanting to do for ages. I hope that more authors will continue to come to Kickstarter to do passion projects that fall outside their regular publishers’ purview, and to retain creative control of the process.

Do you have a dream project that you’d like to see someone do and hasn’t?
I don’t have a particular dream project, but a cool thing to note is that anthologies tend to do well on Kickstarter and I’d like to see more of them. Gigantic did this incredible science fiction anthology featuring Jonathan Lethem, J. Robert Lennon, Lynne Tillman, J. G. Ballard, and more. The launch party is next week and I can’t wait to celebrate.