Kick it Into Gear

Have you ever heard of Kickstarter? I hadn't until very recently, when a few of my very talented artist friends started promoting projects they were working on through Kickstarter.com. Kickstarter exists to help creative people fund projects they want to complete, but need financial resources to make it a success.

My former college roommate, Christina Hess, sponsored a campaign to create a book of illustrations of animals portrayed as historical figures. Who knew the world of the internet that animals in clothes would be so wildly popular? (Christina did, apparently. She exceeded her fundraising goal. And of course, her work is so stunning, it's easy for backers to get behind.)

Then there's Drew Gilbert, who (as of this writing is in the final days of his campaign) who has been working on a documentary about people who have undertaken "wireless" careers in order to see the world while still gainfully employed. They are 80% of the way to an ambitious goal, and I sincerely hope they will reach the end point, since what they've created looks timely and fabulous.

These friends of mine have inspired me to dream big for my own work--specifically, the release of my new novel Curse Bearer, coming this fall. Now, since it is being traditionally published, the book comes together at no expense to me, (outside of the cover art, which I opted to commission) but the place I have a budgetary shortfall is the marketing campaign.

Hence the "Launch Curse Bearer" Kickstarter campaign. I've set a short time frame to raise my goal of $3500. Just twenty-one days. Twenty-one days of boring you all to death with posts about it on facebook. ;) But now that I've got a couple of books under my belt (i.e. The Windrider Saga) I'm driven to accelerate my writing career. A big-budget marketing campaign could play a huge role in this.

I don't just need backers, however. I need enthusiastic people to spread the word-of-mouth about this campaign. Three weeks isn't very long, and I need to average about $167 a day to meet the goal. If you believe in the potential of books published through small, indie publishing to reach a wide audience, you help not only me, but the whole small publishing movement by telling your friends about this campaign.

If you do drop by Kickstarter's sight, I would encourage you to browse projects other than mine while you're there too. It's a huge source of inspiration to see how many genius-creative people have fabulous projects in the works.

Thanks for considering it!