GO WITH THE CROWD
Could readers help fund your next book? Simon Whaley explores the pros and cons of crowdfunding
Traditionally, writers are used to selling their books to readers once they have been published. But have you ever considered selling your book to readers in order to get it published in the first place?
That’s the general business idea behind crowd funding. You sell your project idea to the public, who offer to back it financially, for some sort of reward, and hopefully enough cash is raised to bring your project to fruition.
For writers, crowd funding is now a viable business model. Publishers want to know there’s a market for your book. With crowd funding, it’s the market that gets your book published. But how easy is it to publish a crowd funded book? And should you do it all yourself, via a general crowd funding website, or are you better targeting a publisher specialising in this finance-raising business model?
Unbound undertaking
Jennie Ensor’s novel, Blindside, was published in July 2016, after a successful campaign, via the crowdfunding specialist publisher Unbound (https://unbound.com). But Jennie came to crowdfunding after trying the traditional routes first. ‘The responses to my draft novel, then called Ghosts of Chechnya, on the Authonomy writing community encouraged me to start approaching publishers. I’d made a big effort to find an agent and needed to try something different. In September 2015 I contacted several publishers, including Unbound. I first heard about Unbound at a publishing networking evening. Dan Kieran, one of the company’s founders, talked about a new kind of publishing. I knew little about crowdfunded publishing but what Unbound were doing sounded innovative and exciting. I sent my manuscript with the detailed submission form without expecting much to come of it.’