Is there something wrong with my Kickstarter pitch

[thebookishkiwi]

I'm wondering if someone on here would be able to help me with book marketing?

I've written a book - an oral history/biography about a guy who lived through the Blitz in the Midlands, worked with horses in harness up until the 1960s, then emigrated to work on the big NZ stations shepherding and trapping. He also learned te reo Māori, oil painting and read a lot of poetry. (if anyone's interested, it's called Peter Holbrook: a life history - my project page is on Kickstarter). It's turned out fantastically if I say so myself and I'm confident in the writing.

The problem is this. I've done a tonne of Facebook and Reddit posts and lined up some newspaper interviews. But I've only got a few supporters so far and I'm starting to wonder if there's something putting people off.
There might not be, maybe it is just a marketing issue but does the subject matter give the impression that it's a book for men (that's not the case, but does it look that way?) so women aren't drawn to it?
Has anyone got time to take a look and give me your impression as a book buyer? I don't want to make huge changes if it's more of a reaching people problem, but if there's something you'd advise me to change I'm more than willing to listen.

@Zilla1 great point, thanks. Are you able to recommend a company who produces fully professional looking books with great paper quality etc?

My motive for doing the kickstarter was to recover some of the costs (I'm very much out of pocket directly because of the time I've put into the project) by producing a fancy first edition with beautiful paper etc. The other part of my thinking was that a number of good publishers here in NZ have self publishing wings but they actually won't take any book, they want to know the book has an audience. So the Kickstarter was a way to establish that by collecting meaningful financial commitments to buy the book.

@bettertocryinamercedes thank you! I really appreciate your kind words.

[quote thebookishkiwi]@Zilla1 great point, thanks. Are you able to recommend a company who produces fully professional looking books with great paper quality etc?

My motive for doing the kickstarter was to recover some of the costs (I'm very much out of pocket directly because of the time I've put into the project) by producing a fancy first edition with beautiful paper etc. The other part of my thinking was that a number of good publishers here in NZ have self publishing wings but they actually won't take any book, they want to know the book has an audience. So the Kickstarter was a way to establish that by collecting meaningful financial commitments to buy the book.[/quote]
Honestly Amazon's self-publishing produces perfectly adequate quality paperback books. And there is little or no point, to be blunt, in spending a fortune on 'a fancy first edition with beautiful paper' of a book by an unknown author on a relatively obscure subject.
There are a lot of scammers around who make money by telling aspiring newbie authors that they need to shell out for fancy covers and hardbacks and special editions. Don't fall for it.
The way to show a potential publisher there is an audience is to use social media and be able to demonstrate that you have lots of engagement and interaction. This will be a matter of spending time more than money (and FFS don't fall for companies who offer to sell you likes, clicks, etc.)

Hello OP,

I'd be happy to help you design a cover, I own a branding agency and have some new staff starting soon and this would be a really helpful project to put the creatives on.

You'd get a few options and I can help with printers.

I agree with all of the comment but the absolute judging a book by its cover is the key!

The title is wrong. No one has heard of Peter Holbrook so immediately the casual reaction is: who? Never heard of him. To overcome this you need a title which draws them in. You don't need to have heard of Brannaman to be intrigued by the title The Horse Whisperer. In itself it makes you think - ooh, what is that? Can he really talk to horses. I'll buy the book and find out.
Love, Language and Horses is a factual description but not an alluring enough title to stand alone. Is there a single thing he did or stood for that sums up how unique his story is? One or two words that are active not just nouns.

Being brutally honest it looks and sounds like a book you would read about in a local newspaper. One which has been written by a retired person who has been researching their family tree and discovered an interesting character. The title is all wrong (titles are a lot harder than people think).

Brutally honest is what we need here! Yes, I'm going to rethink the title. It in no way reflects the work I put into the book.

OP I am always very commercially minded and you mention having incurred a lot of costs writing the book which may mean I'm thinking of it the wrong way...

Your blurb about the book is not dynamic; it doesn't tell anyone why they would enjoy it. It sort of tentatively suggests they might, which isn't the right approach for a pitch.

As I don't feel fully clear what it's about, I can only chuck out some uninformed lines

---

Would you travel the world to make your dreams reality?

Peter Holbrook did just that, escaping war weary England for the King's Country, for a new life of farming/ rearing horses/artwork. (The farming might be the hardest sell here).

This rich biography of an extraordinary man illustrates how far passion will take you blah blah.

The story of a life lived across countries, eras and through personal challenges...this sort of thing helps make people think "ooh, I will read about him". It's a story for us, even though it isn't fiction.

You say language is key here, so maybe talk about the language and the importance of that within communities. Talk about art as language?

I was thinking about the book "Cave in the Snow", about an English Buddhist nun. She said of her biographer "I don't know how she made a good book out of me living in a cave" - but she has, because a remarkable person and a terrific storyteller make a great book.

Also in the kickstarter blurb - what about you? What are your achievements? How about a sample of writing from the book?

There needs to be a list of contacts to send this to. Colleges, arts orgs, anyone preserving the local history.

It sounds like you've done the labour of love bit but not the marketing.

@EmmaH2022 thank you so much for these fantastic ideas. You're so right about doing the labour of love but not the marketing. I'll keep them all in mind when I re-write the blurb over the weekend.

Ok, I have three new titles.

Meeting the Queen (title) In the King Country (subtitle)

This is because Peter was trotted out as a bit of a pet student by the Māori ladies who were his language teachers to meet the beloved Queen (Dame Atairangikaahu)in his home town Aria.

The Shepherd who met the Queen (ditto)
The above, except taking out the reference to the King Country and putting in a reference to Peter's work.

The Shepherd and the Queen (ditto)

The Road to Mokauiti (the name of the road he lived on)

@EmmaH2022

The story of a life lived across countries, eras and through personal challenges...this sort of thing helps make people think "ooh, I will read about him". It's a story for us, even though it isn't fiction.

love this

@Wreath21 yes I agree that those companies are a dreadful scam directed at aspiring authors and I wouldn't want anything to do with them - and haven't got anything like that lined up. Thanks for bringing it up.
Any printing company or mainstream publisher (not vanity press) I did agree to work with would be checked and double checked track record wise - I'm a big fan of reading the fine print.

Even just The Horseman?

OP, based on your reply, I agree with @Wreath21. Rather than Kickstarter, I'd engage fully with self-publishing if you can't secure a traditional deal in your locality. Trying to fund a high-end first edition doesn't seem a commercially ideal approach. For self-publishing to be a success then you'd need the cover, title and other things to be spot on so PPs advice is great but Amazon's Kindle publishing and print on demand works for many authors.

Good luck.

It doesn't seem like a Kickstarter campaign tbh. You need to offer more than nice paper and a 'fancy' first edition. Look at other book Kickstarters. The best ones have trailers; art work. They have a dynamism and energy. It may be as a PP said that you're better just self-publishing through Amazon. You can do that with minimum or no outlay if you're prepared to put in time and effort.
Look on Facebook for indie book cover groups. They are brutal but they are excellent.
Is this the only book you plan to write or are there others? Because if it's the first of many there are great self-publishing groups on Facebook too.

@Zilla1

OP, based on your reply, I agree with *@Wreath21*. Rather than Kickstarter, I'd engage fully with self-publishing if you can't secure a traditional deal in your locality. Trying to fund a high-end first edition doesn't seem a commercially ideal approach. For self-publishing to be a success then you'd need the cover, title and other things to be spot on so PPs advice is great but Amazon's Kindle publishing and print on demand works for many authors.

Good luck.

Yes, I’m not sure what you really need the Kickstarter bid for, either. I don’t think it’s going to work to try to retrospectively pay yourself back for your time via producing an expensive first edition — that was always going to be a difficult thing to sell for an unknown author about a subject who is only very locally-known.

I think people reading the Kickstarter pitch may also be thinking ‘What is this for?’, given that the book is already fully researched, written and mostly edited. The logic for the bid would be more obvious if you were asking for money to fund travel, research, transcription of interviews etc — if the project were at an early stage.

Story sounds interesting! Cover and title mean I would only possibly it heavily discounted for an older male relative that I didn’t like much…

In line with PP's suggestions and the nature of Kickstarter's benefits, could you look at what extra deliverables you could offer with funding if the book printing were funded, a website with audio visual material, a memorial for the chap, some token made from UK granite and Kiwi greenstone, commissioning an oil painting for the local museum and so on, a small grant for Maori school children to learn his story, something likely to capture their attention.

The other dimension I'd add is to look at the geography of the audience. Without looking I'm not sure so could be old or incorrect assumptions but if the majority (c2/3) of kickstarter funding is from US backers, less than 5% from the UK, less than 4% from Oz, next to nothing?? from Kiwis and much of this for tech and other non-books, you might want to think about setting up your angling spot where the fish are.

Similarly to what others have already said, I think one of the questions you have to ask yourself is whether your audience for this book is on Kickstarter or supports Kickstarter projects? And what do they gain from buying your book that way vs having an e-book available immediately? For the reader, it sounds like a book that is meant to be read rather than say a pretty book with interesting pictures so there might not be enough value in getting it printed on the nicest paper.

What do you think is the single most amazing thing about this man?

If you can sum that up in a word or short phrase, then that's getting towards the right title.

And the book inside should be structured towards that.

Personally, I like Horseman as a title. It is quite poetic and energetic. It explains the book will explore a relationship between a man and a horse. (Slight issue that most horsey people aren't big readers, but those who read will read horse books first.)

Re: Kickstarter - isn't that for people hoping to invest in a business that might yield returns? It is hard to yield returns on a single book. Is Kickstarter the right place to look for funding?
Would it be better to self publish on Amazon for free and take 35% of all sales?

I would say that £17 is a lot of money to spend on a book, your book looks interesting but not something which would be worth it for me.

@gingerhills

What do you think is the single most amazing thing about this man?

If you can sum that up in a word or short phrase, then that's getting towards the right title.

And the book inside should be structured towards that.

Personally, I like Horseman as a title. It is quite poetic and energetic. It explains the book will explore a relationship between a man and a horse. (Slight issue that most horsey people aren't big readers, but those who read will read horse books first.)

Re: Kickstarter - isn't that for people hoping to invest in a business that might yield returns? It is hard to yield returns on a single book. Is Kickstarter the right place to look for funding?
Would it be better to self publish on Amazon for free and take 35% of all sales?

There have been some fab book campaigns on Kickstarter but usually they have different levels of 'support' and different 'returns' eg there was one for a graphic novel about a computer hacker. One level of support was a signed book; another had art work from the novel; at the very top level, it was an online 'be a hacker like the main character' training day. I've seen others where it's almost like a pre-order but early support levels get exclusive content; personal notes from the author; backstories; bookmarks, etc. It's not the Kickstarter doesn't work for books. It's that it's hard work and OP's offering as it currently stands, isn't right for it. It's not going to generate enough interest.

Yeah, a Kickstarter for books will only work if there are a lot of special extras for buyers - swag, signed copy, event invitation etc. Or if the book is something important to a specific community in some way (history of a radical movement that isn't often talked about or somesuch). Or, perhaps, a special edition with lots of pictures that would cost more to print - but again, the subject would have to be very interesting and unusual.
It's not that OP's book isn't interesting by the sound of it - but it's not so interesting to so many people that they would want to pay more than the average price of a self-published book, either as an ebook or a paperback.

@LorelaiDeservedBetter - thank you. What a great, informative answer.

Ooh no advice personally but have been listening to podcasts about entrepreneurs, maybe Rebel Business School coaching series? One whole series was about a Kickstarter.

@gingerhills I was considering doing it at one stage so I looked into it. It's nice for that research to be worthwhile even if it is just sharing on MN