Free Market Research for Authors

Authors who use crowdfunding to finance the production costs of their book get for free what industries pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for: MARKET RESEARCH

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Crowdfunding

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Proponents of the crowd funding approach argue that it allows good ideas – which do not always necessarily fit the pattern, required by conventional financiers – to break through and attract cash via this funding method.  It is certainly an amazing opportunity as one of the starting steps in the publishing process.
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Many Benefits, Beyond the Financial Gains:

  • Marketing – project initiators can show there is an audience and market for their project.
    In the case of an unsuccessful campaign, it provides good market feedback.
  • Profile – a compelling project can raise an author’s profile and provide a boost to their reputation.
  • Audience engagement – crowd funding creates a forum where project initiators can engage with their audiences. Audience can engage in the production process by following progress through updates from the creators and sharing feedback via comment features on the project’s crowd funding page.
  • Crowd funding often grows the overall number of books sold.
  • Feedback – offering pre-release access to content or the opportunity to beta-test content to project backers as a part of the funding incentives provides the project initiators with instant access to good market testing feedback.
  • Bringing passionate readers along for the publishing ride and creates deeper relationships and reader engagement.

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Quite a few crowd funding services are available, best known and trusted are Kickstarter and IndieGoGo  – see also a comparison table on Wikipedia.

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Support From Your Customers
Too often, authors write books before knowing the depth of their reader base.  The supporters of your crowd funding campaign are your future readers / customers. Crowd funding is a way to pre-order books before they are produced – invaluable for a startup author-publisher. Crowd funding means you have readers even before your book is published.

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Nothing New …
The idea of funding books by subscriptions is actually something that was already popular in the 18th century.  Now we are really going back to a time before we had big, trade publishers who used to give writers large advances in the past.  These days authors are using the web to attract readers to their own book project.

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Readers and Reviewers
Authors can offer copies of their book to supporters. Let’s say an author’s book campaign gains the support of a hundred people who will receive a copy of the book as a reward. On launch day the author will already have access to those hundred readers, who will be able to review the book on Goodreads, Amazon or B&N, Kobo or Apple and generate attention and momentum immediately after publication.  If the book is sold in print through bookstores, it has only a couple of weeks to succeed and with an initial boost its likelihood of success is much greater.

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Key to Campaign Success
The author’s knowledge of the audience of their book and how to reach them is the key to success in publishing. Crowd funding means, an author is able to test the market for the book and find and connect with their audience pre-publication, which gives them a tremendous advantage when the book is published and promoted to a large audience of readers. Get lots of tips for a successful campaign from a former blog article.  Important is that such a campaign is well planned and that authors create a relationship with their backers.

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Read more:

https://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2012/06/17/crowdfunding-success-with-kickstarter-or-indiegogo/

https://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2014/08/03/crowd-funding-more-than-money-for-your-book/

https://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2012/08/04/startnext-crowdfunding-jetzt-auch-in-deutschland/ (German)

https://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2013/10/13/great-news-for-canadian-authors-kickstarter-is-here/

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If you would like to get a mentor and our support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or learn how you can make yourself a name as an author through content writing: We offer for three months all this and more for only $179 – or less than $2 per day!  Learn more about this customized Online Seminar / Consulting / Book Marketing for your success: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars

 

To learn more about professional book marketing and publishing, please read also
“Book Marketing on a Shoestring”
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UAVL3LE

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