How to Sell Books Through Crowdfunding

How to Sell Books Through Crowdfunding

Have you heard of crowdfunding? The collective financing (literal translation of the term) serves as a real “online kitty,” brings together several people who donate for a purpose – artistic, political, and many others. Therefore, we passionately believe that it is possible to use platforms to sell books.

Crowdfunding can be a perfect alternative for authors and freelance writers who don’t have a major publisher behind their publication. In our case, iSpirit Publishing promotes and supports Book crowdfunding with a powerful tool and a cooperative model. To bring the best of Human solidarity and be a platform to help promote and sponsor new Voices and Spiritually Conscious messages.

When setting a fundraising goal, the dream of having a Published book can become real. You can even include Promotional packages and Marketing coverage.

However, it is essential to reward your supporters. Those who believed in the proposed book – we’ll talk about that later.

First, what is Crowdfunding?

Crowdfunding can be defined as the collective funding of a project. It can be a personal, cultural, artistic, social, literary project, an entire company, or an industry project.

Depending on the project, crowdfunding can be a donation or a form of investment. In the first case, the person donates the money with the primary goal of seeing the project come true.

The second goal is to finance a project and get the money back with an income.

Through crowdfunding sites, individuals choose to support a project, either because they identify with the proposal or because of the rewards – simple or financial.

The most notable Crowdfunding platforms are Gofundme, Indiegogo, Kickstart. But there are many others.

Anyone who likes the idea adds value there. When the period ends, the campaign ends.

At this point, one of the three options below occurs:

1. If the campaign is an “all or nothing” type and the goal has not been reached, whoever put money in will get it back and it will all end there.

2. Whether the campaign is “all or nothing” and the goal has been hit, great – the project owner receives the money, and everything is fine;
if the campaign is “flex,” the project owner will receive the money whether they have reached the goal.

A reward is offered to those who donated resources, which may vary according to the amount contributed.

On some platforms, the only reward for the donor is the satisfaction of seeing that come true.

This is the case, for example, of someone who raises funds for health treatment. In this case, the donor just wants the treatment to be done and the person to heal.

When we talk about Crowdfunding modalities, we can list the following:

Donation
Known for being unrewarded, the donation campaign is carried out, in most cases, by charities and other groups that are supporters of welfare causes.

Reward
This is the most common crowdfunding format. In it, the creators offer some reward to those who donate.

Equity crowdfunding
In this model, the money donated will be for making a profit. In this way, contributors are the real investors. The method is widely used, mainly in Startup companies.

Debt crowdfunding

At Debt Crowdfunding, after a period, the donation amount is returned to the donor, with the addition of interest. For this reason, it is seen as a “Micro-loan” format.

How to use crowdfunding to sell books?

After understanding how crowdfunding works, it is a fact to understand that action can be beneficial for independent writers in two ways:

1. To finance the production of books + cost of distribution
2.To help to finance the Promotion and publicity (media coverage) of your book.

In the first case, the author/freelance writer is not yet finished with his work but needs collective help.

As noted, this financial aid can be invested in research trips or even in the purchase of materials for the writing itself (such as notebooks and other literary works).

In the second case, the work is already finished and ready to be read. However, we know how expensive printing and distributing books to readers’ homes can be. Thus, crowdfunding can offer a little help.

Rewarding your Book Crowd

It is necessary to reach a certain amount for a pre-established number of books to be going to print, in the most usual cases. The author does not have to pay for these values out of his own pocket. In many cases, which would be unfeasible- mostly when we talk about independent authors or those using a hybrid publishing style.

In both purposes mentioned above, it is essential to reward those who believed and supported the project. They can happen in different ways and vary according to the amount of money donated.

For example: in smaller amounts, it is possible to offer only the book; for medium amounts, a book or a button; when having higher amounts, a book + button + shirt.

‘The writers” decide the rewards themselves on the website chosen to realize the virtual kitty.

What are the advantages of selling books through crowdfunding?

There are several advantages to selling your books through a crowdfunding platform. The main ones are:

1. Be able to gather a good investment even before the publication of the work.

2. Do not need a large publisher to transfer the amount obtained.
The “crowdfunding amount” will serve for various actions, from printing and advertising the book.

3. It is possible to have 100% creative freedom.

4. With publishing in crowdfunding, you will gain people interested in purchasing your book.

Your Creative final project should please your fans and people that know you and naturally support you.