Kickstarting With The Walrus - A Real-Time Marketing Case Study: Part 1

I. Love. Books. I love good, slow-crafted books. I love books with stories in them that were written to entertain me. And I like to think that, after all these years of doing it, we're pretty good at making that sort of book here at Impulsive Walrus.

In an absolutely ideal world, we would make a book and people would buy it because it was a book we made. We wouldn't have to go out of our way to convince people that this particular book was worth their time. We'd be able to just point at the logo, say "Impulsive Walrus Did Another Thing," and the book would sell.

And for some fans, it does work that way. But most people--they need to be convinced. That ideal world is not the one we actually live in.

Beware the Expert

At least one of two things is true any time you read marketing advice on the internet. It could be both, but it's never neither:

• Whoever gave you the advice is not actually all that good at marketing things, or

• Now that the advice is on the internet, everyone else is doing it and it's no longer functional.

This has only become more true in the realm of AI. My inbox, now that I am marketing a thing, is flooded with AI companies telling me that their version of Skynet knows the secret, magic formula to make people go to my Kickstarter page and click the button that says "follow." Invariably they are exercising the same strategy for literally every other customers, which means once again we'd be lost in a sea.

So What Is the Right Way?

Heck if I know!

No, seriously. I can break down our strengths and our weaknesses...and I'm going to try to do just that here in a second. I can form a plan to use our strengths to overcome out weaknesses. But will it work? No. Clue.

But I am starting this by saying this: I have been marketing books for over fifteen years now. I have tried a number of strategies. Many have worked. Others have admittedly failed.

We're about to go into our biggest Kickstarter to date. And by "biggest" I mean "we've got the most money sunk into this project." We have spent that money in the hope that it becomes our biggest Kickstarter total to date. But we're not going to know if that's true until we hit that there "Launch" button.

What's This Post About, Then?

This post, and the ones that follow it, are going to be an attempt at laying out, with some degree of transparency, exactly what the thinking behind our current marketing strategies are. We're going to let you experience this effort alongside us.

We may be totally pooching this. It's too soon to tell. We know that. This might be a way for me to document our utter, devastating failure in slow motion. Or it may be the most successful thing we've done. I don't know yet. Anyone that tells you, at this stage, that they know a Crowdfunding project is going to be successful is either (1) lying, or (2) Brandon Sanderson.

But either way, we're going to let you watch it happen with us. Because there's a lot of authors with a lot of good books out there, and we really want them to be able to show those books to the world. We aren't going to tell you how to do that. We're just going to try to do it ourselves, and let you learn from our successes and our failures. That's about all we can do for you, really.

Identifying Our Strengths

To begin with, we're going to look at what we have going for us. And it's actually a decent list.

1. This is a really, really good book. That's a strength. Of course, really anyone who is publishing their book should believe that--if you don't think it's good, go fix it before you put it out there. So I know this is good, and once people read it, they'll know it's good. That's helpful...but not terribly unique.
   

2. We have a quirky premise

   OK. Now we're cooking. See, this book isn't just a cool anthology. It's a cool anthology written for a very specific purpose. The entire book serves as a practical joke on a very specific, actual, real life person. Glen exists, and we're helping comic book writer Paul Jenkins prank him. That's really fun! And we can tell people who are getting in on the Kickstarter that they're helping Paul Jenkins prank his buddy, because that's exactly true. If we can convey that to people, we can get them in on the joke. That's a powerful draw, right? So there's a strength.
   

3. Paul Jenkins

   This one is an absolute wild card for us. Comic book writer Paul Jenkins is, without a doubt, an amazing draw. He did the introduction and he wrote the first story in this. It's his friend we're pranking. In many ways, he's very involved with this project. Paul is an absolutely cool guy. He's a joy to work with. He's funny, he's creative, and he cares about being creative far more than he cares about this book being famous or financially successful. An he really cares about the teams and other creatives he works with. In terms of writers, he's top-notch. It has been a privilege and an honor to work with him on this. But the man has how own very successful and creative endeavors that support being able to do more really fun and fabulous projects that fans are waiting for. So how much time is he going to spend marketing a fun, silly anthology put out by a tiny indie press when he could be talking about Captain Marvel and The Sentry? A relatively tiny amount of time (by design) also, since we're a fun side project. That's not a knock on him, that's just a matter of where he needs his time and priorities to be. We know that, and we embrace it. We've been clear--he can do what he wants, when he wants. He's the star, here. So, yes, someone of Paul's caliber involved with the project can only be a help--but the degree to which it is a help is hard to wrap our heads around and a bit unknown for us. We're going to find out together.

   
   

4. Our Authors

   I put Paul in a separate, special category just because he has extensive fame. But we've got a strong list of authors who bring fandoms of their own. Alma Alexander, the Duchess Herself, has given us an incredibly moving story. Pat Swenson, the demigod that runs Fairwood Press, has given us one of the quirkier Glen deaths we have. There's a host of authors, each one has worked up their own following. And here's the thing: For non-headliner authors, there's stakes in this. There are benchmarks at which they will receive a second or even a third round of bonus payments. Our authors absolutely have an incentive to go out there and start flogging this thing to their fans. But at the end of the day, this isn't their book. It's a short story, to them. So I cannot--nor do I--expect them to be as invested in this as I am. Still, including Paul there's twenty-two authors, all of whom can be expected to give some degree of participation. In past Kickstarters, this has been middling. We have altered our incentives slightly and will be engaging our authors directly a bit more this time, and we'll see if this can become a greater strength for us than it has in the past.

Identifying Our Weaknesses

By far and away our biggest weakness is the size of our sales channels. We have three key methods for informing people about what we're up to: social media, e-mail, and this blog.

As for social media, Impulsive Walrus Books is largely most active on Facebook. We have only just started our BlueSky and Instagram accounts, and there's basically nothing on there (including followers). Our Facebook account has a 247 followers. Now, our personal social media is more extensive--but also more likely to be buried by an algorithm. This blog isn't something that people follow individually--it's somewhere we have to drive people to. In fact, by doing this post here, I'm actually hurting our Kickstarter page. Chances are I did something to cause you to read this. Maybe I could have used that something to send you to the Kickstarter page and get a follow out of you instead. If I were to rely on this blog, I'd be typing very eloquent posts that only a handful would read.

Our mailing list actually isn't bad. We go through ActiveCampaign, and we have 740 people currently on our list. Unlike Facebook, we know that when we send an e-mail, it gets to you. So that's going to be our primary driver of traffic--but even that has only 740, and if we convert 10% of those to followers, that's still maybe, maybe 70-71 followers. Cthulhu FhCon had one hundred and fifty pledges when all was said and done.

Our hope for Glen is 500 backers. You'll notice that's not a dollar amount and that it's far more people than we've had participate in our last two crowdfunding effort. We're trying for over a 333% increase, here. And that means we need to find 468 backers. That's a tall order for a mailing list with 740 people on it--a 63.2% conversion rate seems very, very ambitious.

So, that's where we begin

We have some strengths. We have some huge challenges. And we have an immense amount of trepidation about same.

In our next post, we'll go over how we intend to use our strengths to overcome our weaknesses. We'll talk a little about the art of in-person marketing, and we will (sharp intake of breath) talk to you about our plans for paid marketing.

For now, let us know in the comments below--how do you think we could best go about handling this? What sorts of moves would you make? Heck, you might have something up your sleeve that we don't know about, and I'd be excited to hear it.