On 27 February, Byte the Book, a membership organisation aiming to educate authors and publishers about technology and help them make connections across the publishing industry, held a panel discussion entitled ‘The Wisdom of Funders – How to Crowdfund your Creative Projects’.

The panel included Adam Gomolin from California-based Inkshares, known as the ‘studio for books’ of publishing start-ups; Alex Somervell, co-founder of One Third Stories, a children’s language learning platform still finding its way; and Paul English from Wet Zebra, very much like Inkshares in its ‘crowdfunding’ model where the users decide who gets published. And finally Neil Griffiths, an author who aims to help small presses continue their good work in bringing the best in literature to the public by establishing a crowdfunded prize. All had valuable advice for writers considering moving into non-traditional forms of publishing, or even, as Wet Zebra’s Paul English suggested, becoming publishers themselves.

Chairing the event was David Roche, Chair of The London Book Fair, and a fully-funded author of his book Just Where You Left It … and other Poems via the crowdfunding platform Unbound.

“Crowdfunding lies somewhere in-between self-publishing and traditional – a fertile middle ground – which is full of hybrid models.”

Roche started by summarising how the industry has transformed in the last five years, citing a number of platforms whose focus was on discoverability, but which had either gone bust or defected to Amazon – the exit of choice for a lot of start-ups: “Crowdfunding, crowd curation and reader endorsement is becoming the trendy space where discoverability was five years ago,” he said.

Roche explained that on one side we have self-publishing – an absolutely legitimate part of the publishing industry – and on the other, the long-standing traditional publishers: “Crowdfunding lies somewhere in-between self-publishing and traditional, a fertile middle ground which is full of hybrid models,” he commented.

Why crowdfunding?

“We shouldn’t second guess what the market wants – ask them…”

“Crowdfunding is necessary when you lose faith in a system,” said Neil Griffiths, award-winning novelist and founder of the Republic of Consciousness Prize, an award for independent presses who often take huge financial risks to produce some of the most ambitious work in literature. Griffiths feels that crowdfunding has seen growth because the traditional route doesn’t always recognise great books.

“There’s something wrong when 60 to 70 million books are pulped every year,” says Paul English from Wet Zebra, a publishing outfit specialising in e-books and “good old fashioned hard-copy books.” “We shouldn’t second guess what the market wants – ask them … We’re just saying we trust the people,” he added. While Wet Zebra isn’t ‘crowdfunding’ in the traditional sense it is certainly in the spirit of it because the crowd gets to decide what gets published by voting for the books they like. 1,000 votes will see a book edited, published and marketed. Adam Gomolin, co-founder of Inkshares, agreed with this view. “You are simply asking readers whether or not it’s something they like – why wouldn’t you do that?”

Inkshares – dubbed, among other things, the ‘Netflix’ of publishing – certainly has a laudable system in place. It publishes books based on reader selection, much like Wet Zebra, but readers ‘vote’ by pre-ordering them after reading a few free chapters. The service authors receive from Inkshares depends on the readers. 250 votes will give an author an edit, while 750 votes will gain a writer a full package (edit, design, print, marketing).

Gomolin says this isn’t as revolutionary as some might think: “A long time ago they would publish the first chapter of a book in the newspaper, and the publisher would stand at the news stand and ask ‘did you like the first chapter?’, and on that they would make decisions.Why would you ever try to guess? … It’s about measuring interest.”

Missing great books

Griffiths expressed concerns about how the traditional publishing model fails at times. He knows a top agent, he said, who secretly admits that they aren’t good at spotting books that are outliers. Add that to the publisher who told him off the record that they print up to 500 titles a year but only really get behind five to eight of them for publicity campaigns; he asks if yours will be one of the small bracket of books they really get behind, even if you do get an agent and a publishing deal? Not to mention the long-time problem of publishers putting the big money into the ‘dead cert’ books, usually based around market trends, because that is safe.

“I think authors are incredibly hard-working in terms of getting their content out there…”

Gomolin recounted the story of Inkshares’ Slothlove, a hugely popular picture book, and their most successful publication. If he were making decisions at a traditional publishing house he would never have given it a green light, but now it’s a top seller being developed for television. The case of Slothlove he said, highlights how reader curation exceeds the gut-test selections of traditional publishers.

“I think authors are incredibly hard-working in terms of getting their content out there: they talk to their friends and family, they do the talks, they do the tours, but what they don’t quite know is how to get the volume needed to get to the next step.” commented English.

This is where he thinks crowdfunding helps. Authors use their networks to publicise their own work on the crowdfunding platforms, but those networks will potentially also browse other works on the same platforms and vote for them too. Thus other people’s networks will be voting for you, and that’s when you see the rewards as a writer too. It’s not just your family saying you are good, people who don’t have to are saying so too. This is how the community builds. “Writers on these platforms become like families.” English said.

He suggested that crowdfunding also offers the opportunity for authors to band together and start their own publishing co-operatives, allowing authors to directly fulfil the need for new publishing models – much like crowdfunding platform Unbound, which was set up by three writers who wanted to challenge the publishing status quo.

Who should I go with?

“My advice is that if you properly research the crowdfund you will use, you will save days.”

“When it comes to funding, you really need to know what each platform is about.” argued Griffiths, who found this out the hard way.

After spending days on the platform setting up his page for his award, he was turned down by Kickstarter because it doesn’t ‘accept causes’. Although he felt they were wrong to turn him down – this wasn’t a ‘cause’ but a philanthropic enterprise – his anger and dismay didn’t deter him. He went on to raise £5,000 using his own ‘platform’ consisting of a web page and a PayPal account, and leveraging his own modest social media community. For anyone thinking of crowdfunding independently in the same way, Griffiths’ advice is clear: “Doing it yourself? Don’t!”

“Had I had slightly more natural intelligence, I would have done it differently… my advice is that if you properly research the crowdfund you will use, you will save days.”

And crowdfunding won’t help everybody. Griffiths said that launching his prize opened his eyes to the varied quality in literature out there: the winner of his prize is one of the most remarkable works of fiction he’s ever come across. But he also was unlucky enough to read one of the most “incomprehensibly pretentious pieces of work” too. Sometimes there is a good reason a manuscript can’t get backing: “In the world of literature, publishing and prizes, we have to face the fact that there are terrible books as well as really great books.”

Pick a platform with a good track record in your area

Alex Somervell also implied that authors should inform themselves properly before going ahead and deciding which platform is right. Kickstarter, for example, has a great record of funding children’s books. Somervell says that in the last five years it has hosted 50 campaigns around kids’ books that have resulted in £50,000 or more. This is why Somervell chose this particular platform for One Third Stories, a small publishing business aimed at giving children “a positive first step to language learning” by producing books that “start in English and end in a different language”. The platform led to him raising £35,000, along with pre-orders for 2,000 books.

The right platform can “create opportunities to go beyond your immediate community.”

The business is still young, he said, and they still “don’t know what they are doing”, but have recently settled on a subscription business model as a result of listening to their audience. They are happy with this new direction and after nine months are just about covering business costs.

For anyone who imagines their published work would transfer well to screen, Inkshares also help their writers in securing rights in other platforms. Gomolin explained that they are locking six-figure deals for authors, with seven-figure deals now on the horizon. “We have authors who work minimum-wage jobs that are being called “generational voices.”

Is it for everyone?

“Networking pays.”

Perhaps one of the most basic themes that emerged from the discussion was noted by Roche initially. He launched his book on Unbound in May 2016, on the same day he participated in a networking event with Byte the Book: “11 weeks later it was fully funded.” A man he met at the networking event ended up being patron for his book, giving him the last £2,000 he needed: “Networking pays.” he said.

Perhaps one of the most basic themes that emerged from the discussion was noted by Roche initially. He launched his book on Unbound in May 2016, on the same day he participated in a networking event with Byte the Book: “11 weeks later it was fully funded.” A man he met at the networking event ended up being patron for his book, giving him the last £2,000 he needed: “Networking pays.” he said.

The general advice seems to be that crowdfunding a book is problematic if you don’t have a huge network, but that Unbound, for example, can offer opportunities for individual books. Griffiths added that his experience was different because he’s not a business or trying to publish a book, and that he believes that the right platform can “create opportunities to go beyond your immediate community.”

Gomolin noted that Inkshares brought unknown writers without networks to the public by building a community for them – an interesting example of what some of these hybrid-crowdfund publishers can offer to writers beyond just simple publication.

However, English’s advice is: “Focus on building a big network first, then try crowdfunding,” and that “social media is key in this.” He added that the Wet Zebra model of 1,000 votes is ‘very achievable’, particularly when you consider how the community is built on the platform.

The panellists also agreed that funding fiction books and non-fiction books each brings their own specific difficulties: fiction is very subjective and so crowdfunding can be challenging when trying to drum up support; and in some ways, non-fiction crowdfunding can have a wider general interest among the public, though there was some suggestion that it can work well for niche publications too.

Crowdfunding, it seems, can offer great possibilities but can entail as many hurdles as going down a traditional route. “Getting a book or business off the ground – through crowdfunding or otherwise – requires living and breathing it.” says Gomolin. “There’s no substitute for hard work.”

But you knew that already – you are writers after all.

Reported by Jade Zienkiewicz

Byte the Book standard membership is £99 a year or £30 a quarter. For more information on their events and joining up, see their website.

Read more about the ventures and platforms mentioned:

wet-zebra.com/
onethirdstories.com/
inkshares.com
republicofconsciousness.com
kickstarter.com
unbound.com