How to Successfully Self-Publish a Picture Book on Kickstarter | Mariana Lustosa | Skillshare
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How to Successfully Self-Publish a Picture Book on Kickstarter

teacher avatar Mariana Lustosa, Children's book author

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      2:46

    • 2.

      Why Crowdfunding

      4:37

    • 3.

      The Importance of the Illustrator

      8:32

    • 4.

      The Crowdfunding Checklist

      2:33

    • 5.

      Creating Your Project

      14:05

    • 6.

      The Importance of Pre Launch

      5:17

    • 7.

      The Importance of a Social Media Account

      4:22

    • 8.

      Market your Project

      2:42

    • 9.

      Creating a Compelling Story

      9:37

    • 10.

      The Video

      5:39

    • 11.

      The Main Costs

      7:54

    • 12.

      Create Your Rewards

      7:04

    • 13.

      Set the Financial Goal

      4:08

    • 14.

      Google Analytics Code

      3:52

    • 15.

      Go Live!

      2:28

    • 16.

      Marketing Homework

      5:01

    • 17.

      Reach your GOAL!

      5:33

    • 18.

      Ok, What Next?

      9:13

    • 19.

      Final Thoughts

      1:52

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About This Class

This class will transform your self-publishing dream into reality! 

 

I’ve self-published my children’s book A Color Named Love in a successful crowdfunding campaign, and in this class, you’ll follow some key steps to create YOUR successful journey on self-publishing your children’s book on Kickstarter. 

From creating your project page to setting a realistic financial goal and developing the perfect go-LIVE page for your crowdfunding project, you will end this class with the confidence to self-publish a successful children’s book campaign!

 

We’ll cover:

  • The self-publishing route vs. Traditional publishing
  • The Crowdfunding checklist (downloadable class PDF)
  • Finding an illustrator (If you aren’t one)
  • Book printers and shipping costs
  • Set a realistic financial goal
  • The pre-launch
  • Get the Kickstarter launch page ready
  • GO-LIVE on Kickstarter
  • Marketing steps
  • Successfully fund a campaign
  • After the Kickstarter, what next?

 

You’ll be creating your own book’s project page on Kickstarter that checks all the boxes for your campaign to become a success!

For this class, it is ideal that you already have a manuscript for your book ready. With this, you will find these steps easy to follow and apply for a brilliant crowdfunding children’s book project!

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Mariana Lustosa

Children's book author

Teacher

I was always curious about people and their stories. My love for reading and writing came from a young age when I would discover new worlds and understand more about my own through books.

I wrote and self-published my first children's book "A Color Named Love" as I believe stories are powerful tools to shows kids all over the endless possibilities of love and allows them the freedom of choice!

I chose the self-publishing route because it empowered me and made me free to follow my own calendar, timeline, and dreams!

Follow the book along at acolornamedlove.com

Or explore more at @acolornamedlove

See full profile

Level: Beginner

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: Hi, Mariana, and I'm the author of a color name Love. I left my tenure marketing career to self published his book on Kickstarter, and it was a great success. I was so thrilled to see that we had more than 177% of the funding goal achieved at the end of the 30-day campaign than more than 1,000 units of this book sold. It is amazing to see your story going throughout the world to people's houses and having the feedback of people love in your stories so much. For me, it was really important to have Kickstarter as a partner in launching this campaign. Because the self-publishing route can be a very interesting and exciting one. If you're eager to do it. In this course, you're gonna learn everything from the manuscript, how to format a good manuscript to show to your editor how to hire an editor to check your texts and lead your story. How to reach out for an illustrator, you, for not an illustrator yourself, you know where to find the best illustrators to bring your story to life and make your dream come true and farms of beautiful images. I will also give you a downloadable PDF that you can have as a checklist for your Kickstarter Crowdfunding step-by-step. From how much would it cost to launch your campaign? How much would you charge for your books? How much would it cost to clean your books? Where to print them? Should have print them in China or in the US where it's cheaper, worse, faster, where it has a great quality and what are the things you need to know before sending to print. We will also talk about the logistics up to your crowdfunding campaign is launched off how to send the books to people's houses? What format should it do? What does the cheaper and easier way to send his books? Because I'm sure you will have a successful campaign and we'll just send me this book so people in no time. This is a beginner's friendly course and I will do my best to teach you everything I can from all of the things I learned from lunch and my Kickstarter campaign, from all the concerns I had, all the doubts and frustrations and how I overcame them. And I'm sure you're going to have and do a great job. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to shoot me an email or write them on the chat because I'm here to help you in any way I can. I'm so glad you're here and ready for your self-publishing journey. Join me if you want to transform yourself, pollution, dream into a reality and bring your story to the world. I'm sure you're going to love it and you won't regret it to have your beautiful story read by a lot of people around the world. 2. Why Crowdfunding: Welcome. In this class we're going to talk about the crowdfunding. Why choose crowdfunding y to self-publish instead of choosing the traditional route. I'm sure everyone who writes a book and has this story wants it to be published by a big house, one of the big five houses in the US. But when you go look up for it, It's a very, very hard path and it's not easy to get in. You're starting it to be extremely polished. You need to find the ideal agent for your story. Agents have thousands and thousands of piles on this lush biome that they call of different books that they reject day after day. And it takes a long time for your book to be selected. If you want to choose the traditional route. I'm not saying that it won't work, but it's a very hard pet. I decided to go to for crowdfund because I wanted something faster and something that I could control myself and have the power to choose what I wanted. And self-publishing gives you that. While a traditional publisher takes usually 1-2 years, have the book out in the world. Self-publishing took me four months to have my story out in the world. So for me it was very easy, quick, and empowering to be able to choose and do that by myself. I looked at the two major platforms for crowdfunding that you have now in the US. Kickstarter and Indiegogo. And I decided to go for kick-started because I think they're more well-known. They are bigger. It's easier to update, plug-and-play my story in there. I saw there were a lot of other different children's books there, which made it a big platform for people to get to my story. So I thought they were great for promoting children's book and also be in that very well-known platform will give more confidence and credibility to my story. For this step, you should have a manuscript ready to go. It's really important that you have a very well-polished manuscript because not because you're doing a self-publishing book, your storage shouldn't be as professional as it can. Pay attention to this. I heard a lot of people talking to me about how they do not do book reviews for self-published books, or they do not post them on Instagram or talk about them just because they're not well-written. So it is not only about doing your store in self-publishing, but it's making sure that you have a high-quality standard as if you're doing in a traditional publishing route. Okay, so for this class, your task is to find a book editor to breed proof and check your story. I understand. This is your baby, this is your star. It's something you love. You wrote with passionate and care. But you have to be really open to be read and share the story with an editor because that person will bring it to the next level. Racing is a platform I choose to look for my editor. I found Jennifer There. She is amazing. I'm gonna put her contact here in the class resources. But you should look for the editor that resonates with your story, with your book. You can pitch up to five different editors at the same time. And you can choose if you want copy editing, story editing, if you want them to check the plot, check the story. Really read through each editor and what they do if they are into children's book because that's very important. And you're going to share with them your manuscript and share with them the reasons why he wrote the story. And they can accept or reject your story depending if they have affinity with it. So don't take this very personal. I got a lot of rejections from my first book from editors because they just didn't talk about those specific topics I was writing for. And then Jennifer, she told me she talked about those topics. She was interested in doing that. And this is the person who needs to read your story, someone that likes what you're talking about, that we want to help you the way you need to be helped. So for this class project, I want it to find your five editors. Share your story with them, get to know them, see which one you're going to choose four. And there's a lot of back and forth. They give you feedback, you can send a text back to them, they're going to send it back to you. So it's a very friendly and music going way of having your story completely and 100% taken to the next level. This is mainly what you're gonna do for this class. After that, with their story polished and ready, you can go and find your Illustrator. We're going to talk more about the illustrators on next glyphs. See you there. 3. The Importance of the Illustrator: Welcome back. In this class we're going to talk about the importance of an illustrator. If you're already one, that is great, you can use that in your favorite. And if you're not, we're going to see how we can find the perfect Illustrator for your story. Why they Illustrator is so important for your Kickstarter campaign. Not only for your book but also for your campaign. But Illustrator is gonna be the person that is going to make your Kickstarter project come to life with beautiful images. Illustrator, we have this catches of your characters which he reached a lot your project, you're going to see that up ahead. They Illustrator is going to do beautiful drawings that you can add to your videos. You can do the titles, all the information you need to add to your story, and your main image of your campaign, which is your front cover. The main image of your companion or Kickstarter project is the call to action. People are going to see that image and they're gonna relate to start immediately or not. So it needs to be a very compelling and interesting image to attract people's attention. You're going to be one children's book amongst a lot of children's book. So that's why I cannot stress the importance of the Illustrator. If you aren't one Illustrator, you can find one for on Behance and Instagram. Help with all of the links of this websites on our resources in the class. But just so you know, if there is an illustrator you follow that you like, don't be afraid to shoot them an e-mail sentiment, Instagram direct message and really try to be out there. For me, it was very important to find the perfect Illustrator to tell my story. Just so you know, my Illustrator is a childhood friend. I met her when I was seven years old in school, first grade, and I just got back with her, talking to her again and reinforcing our friendship. When we did this book together, this was something that really connected as bag. And it was amazing to see my words and her drawings come together. So never underestimate the importance of an Illustrator. There's a lot of websites talking about how you should pay $500 for an illustrator to do your book, but that's not a reality. An illustrator is one of the most expensive costs you will have because they illustrators of a picture book, 50% of a picture book, this is the story, but 50%, he's illustrations and the drawings. It is called a picture book. So don't underestimate the necessity and the value of an Illustrator. They are very important piece of your project. Hi, I'm quite risky and I'm so grateful to tell you that the illustrator of this lovely story, when I write the manuscript for the first time, I felt, Oh, below that, this little grill, call it n and her parents head. I could see all the colors coming together in my mind. The type of families, me happy and respectfully Wild Bill. I'm going to talk to you how you should present your manuscript to your illustrator after it's polished and ready, edited and read proof by an editor like we've talked about. Unless class, you're going to have it ready to share it with your illustrator if you're not one. So this is my books, manuscripts that is submitted to my editor. Here you're going to see the name edges, email and telephone at all your personal information on the left hand side. On the right, you tell what kind of book it is. So picture book Fiction Anyway, your word count. Mine had 643 words. Keep in mind that children's book need to have maximum 700 words. The idea was 500. 300-500 is a sweet spot because today picture books are not very common. Bleep, big, unless you're a well-known author and you already have an age and you're ready to have a publisher that works with you. It is recommended that your first books and your first star is be very concise and short so you have to really work with your craft with words. But mine had 643 words. You put the title and the name of the author and illustrator. If you're not an author illustrator. And this is very traditional manuscript to center traditional publishers, but it is also preferable that you have a very well-written and polish to share with their editors. So that is why I'm showing you in this traditional format. Okay? I usually put the numbers of the pages. So first and second are gonna be the end sheets where you start your story. The third and the fourth gonna be the front matter and the title. And then I start doing by spreadsheets. So 5678910, all the spreadsheets of my story. You're going to see here in red that I had some Illustrator notes. I always leave them in red so they're more easily recognizable by the illustrator. So they don t think it's part of the story. And I just write exactly what I want to be drawn in the picture. So image of the parents legs and her hiding behind them, the character bigger than them showing this inviting hand. Just because I thought this was such an important thing for her to know that I decided to wet On my manuscript, but the rest is, you can see I left it completed without illustrator notes so she could envision the way she thought the story should be told. If you see here, my manuscript has 35 text pages and the 36 page is the back matter, and then 37 and three-eighths or the end sheets. This is a 40 page picture book. They always have to be a number that is divided by four, just because this is the only way that it can be printed at the printer. So keep that number in mind. Usually picture books are 32 pages usually, but you can go a little bit up to 36 or even 40, but always remember they need to be split by four. Okay, Let me illustrate imagination run free because that's their job. That's what they, they do good. So let them see how the story talks to them and let them show to you. What I did with my illustrator was I sent her the manuscript. We had a one-on-one call to talk together about the manuscript. I told her everything I was feeling when I wrote the manuscript and she told me what she felt when she read it, and we kinda started to decide about characters. So while I was working on the Kickstarter campaign before launch, she was illustrating the characters, illustrating all the parts of the story that you wanted to share with me. And we had weekly one-on-one meetings that is very recommendable for you because this is the moment you're going to really share with your illustrator your thoughts and they're going to share with you back and you start to construct the story together. Because again, this is something made by the two of you. So don't forget to do your one-on-one meetings with your illustrators at least once a week and share a Polish manuscript with them. So for this class, your project is to look up at five illustrators that you like and that you would like to have for your story and reached out to them. Don't be afraid to reach out to him as their price, tell how much admired their work and really want to connect with them and have them doing your story, received their quotes, check their prices, see what's feasible and knock or not for you. Remembered, that will be a cost that you're going to have to pay upfront now, but it will add later to your Kickstarter costs and it will be paid by your backers when your campaign is successful. And if you are an illustrator, start deciding which characters of your book, which kind of style the one your book to have. Because those characters, that mood board, the way you envision them, their colors, the textures, how you want your story to be told visually will be very important to plug and play to your Kickstarter projects story. So start combining those images. Pharma, mood board, if you want to target with here, with us in the class projects or the illustrators, you looked up four. And this way you can continue and move to the next step, which is going to be the crowdfunding checklists. Next lesson, we're going to see every step you need to follow when you have your manuscript ready and your illustrated ready to have a successful campaign 4. The Crowdfunding Checklist: Welcome to the crowdfunding checklists class. And this class, I would suggest you to do a Kickstarter account if you don't have one, okay, this is the first thing and it's very important that you have it so we can start creating and plugging in your project information. Over there. Here is our crowdfunding checklist. I'm going to show you step-by-step. You just download it in the resources class. And it's split up by the may thinks that have in our Kickstarter. So the first thing is gonna be your setup. So you will set up your account. You're going to add a book category, your idea, if you're eligible or not and your location. We're going to talk a little bit more about that later. The second one is the basic information. So your title, the image, the video, the funding goal, and all of those that we're also going to talk about then are going to tell your story. You're gonna choose your rewards. You're going to talk about the people who are behind the project. This is the time to talk about you. You're going to talk about the payment information, which is really important because we've been payment information are gonna be paid in the end of your campaign. And you're also going to talk about some kind of promotion and pre-launch, which are very important for your story too, come to fruition. You're going to see that I split up all the items in 1s or 2s. The number ones are the things I think you should do first. They are in order, but they're also with the number one next to them. So do the number ones first following the number one order, and then the number two second following the number two orders. Just because if you follow that with the number one's ready and completed, you can pre-launch your Kickstarter page before launching your project. And I cannot stress how important it is to do your pre-launch. Just because so much good benefit from pre-launch can happen and it can give so much credit, credibility to your story before starting your campaign. We're going to talk a little bit more later about that on the next class. And I'm going to tell you exactly what is each and every topic of that lives in how you can walk through them. Okay, I'll wait here on the next class. 5. Creating Your Project: Hello, and welcome to your creating your project. For this class, we're gonna be focusing exactly on the crowdfunding checklists that are already formed less class. And I'm just going to go through each and every step on this checklist so you know what I'm talking about and you can follow through just so you start. I want it to be familiarized with the Kickstarter page. Just because this is something that you're gonna go through the crowdfunding checklist at the same time as you go through the page. So it's really important that already know how it works. And just to be clear, you're going to see that it added number one and number two here. This items follow the Kickstarter flow. So as far down the setup, going through basic rewards, story, people, payment, and promotion, this is the ongoing list that Kickstarter has, but I decided to add number one then number two for the things I think you should do first and the things that I think you should do second, just because the things that I think you should have first are the things that if you accomplish, you're ready to do your pre-launch page. And I cannot stress the importance of your pre-launch page. We're going to have a class on the pre-launch page further. But just so you know, this is a place you can put your image, your title, and your description of your projects and lead people clicked to be notified when your project is launched. This way you can create a database of people and see who is already interested in your project or not. That is why in my personal experience, I believe creating all the topics for the pre-launch page is very important to continue working with calm and these inner project while you gain a database. Okay, So just to start, I'm going to show here like your dream, I chose publishing because we are our children's book. Then you're going to describe what you're going to create, as they say here, don't worry, you can edit this later, but this is going to be your information. This is going to be your elevator pitch. For those of you who don't know, elevator pitch is the information you are able to give to someone while you're in an elevator ride. So 20-30 s and it needs to contain the basic information of your project. Why is it important? Why does it matter? What is it about? It needed to convince people to click on your story. This is also going to be present on your pre-launch page. So I, so I recommend you to do something very special and very unique here. And it needs to be 135 word max. So it's like a tweet. You need to read very mindful of words. And I decided to road right mid n and has for parents and children's book that celebrates polyamory and all the beautiful valley forms of loving family. So I introduced the character. I talk about what it is a children's book. I talk about the main topic you could write here. If it was about sleeping well, if it was about first day of school, everybody knows about anxiety. So you write here the theme and compliment with something that will really entice and talk about your story. Then you're going to go to your location. You need to select your country just so you know, this is very important. Kickstarter has a list of around 20 eligible countries and I'm going to share with you here in the class resources. But you're also going to see now, these are the only countries that are allowed to be on Kickstarter. Now, if you're not from one of these countries, unfortunately, you won't be able to have a Kickstarter project, but I recommend it to look your country if it's not on this list, what are the best crowdfunding platforms and your country? Because each country has their own good and well known crowdfunding platform. I chose kick-started because it was a bigger and best for me in the US. But it's up to you, depending on the country you reside, you have to confirm you're at least 18 years old. You can verify and have an address and make the column the US. You can verify and have a government issued ID and you have a debit or credit card in the US, they're not going to charge you anything on that cart is just in the case of something happens and they need to have an information of your car, you add that information and then you click Continue. If you're eligible, perfect, you're ready to go. If not, unfortunately, you cannot move forward with the Kickstarter page, but I recommend you continue watching these videos and watching this lesson. Because everything that I'm going to tell here, it's gonna be very similar to any other crowdfunding platform. The backend may differ, but the information, the important part of the video of the marketing, the importance of the tools and parties of the Google Analytics. Everything is gonna be the same. So I'm pretty sure you're going to learn a lot from that. So you continue with us right after you're going to take a moment to review the rules so we have to have something to share. They have to be honest, you cannot fund raise for charity, you cannot offer equity, and you cannot evolve prohibited items. If you click there, you're going to see it, but it has gums, all types of things that are hazardous or harmful. You cannot have. If you click on it and now you're ready to go and overview your project. And then we move to the second category, which is the basic, the basic integrin. I'm gonna go here to a project already have, just so you go and see what I've done on the basic integrity, you're going to add your title, the title of your book. It needs to be short and sweet and concise. Hotkeys, I put a color name of love and a color name, slash children's book with a polyamorous families because this was very important for my project. So let's say her book is about insomnia. You can add your title of the book slash, a book that deals with insomnia for kids or anything like that. It's important that people know on your title exactly what the book's about. On the subtitle. They're gonna copy and replace the main information that you had on your project idea is gonna be the same You could tag or you can choose a subcategory which I chose children's book. You add the location. And here you're going to add your project image. Be very mindful that for the project image is very important, that you have a very beautiful and compelling image. Don't have a lot of texts. Show what the story's about. In, use your time to look around other children's books in the kick-started that already are launched to see if there's a style that really appeals to you. In my case, I decided with Clara that we wanted to have the title of the book and an image of the parents because just so you know, the COVID wasn't ready when we did the pre-launch. The cover was ready for the launch, but not for the pre-launch. And Clara told me that a lot of illustrators, when they're doing children's book, The covers, the last thing they do. So be mindful of that and half the time of the Illustrator and really tried to come up with some image. I'm going to show here, this was the image we had for our pre-launch. You see that we have the four parents already drawn. Clara thought about the shared at the tire in a nice way. This is not how our n turned out to be. So prelaunch had one image and our final launch had another. But this, since we wanted to pre-launch, to go quickly, after we checked all the number ones in the list, we decided to have a specific image only for the pre-launch and is also the image I shared on our Instagram account just to be very cohesive and coherent. After the project image you add the video. On this case, we're not going to add the veto because you don't need it for the prelaunch. We're going to have a class only on the video because it's a very important component. 80 per cent of successful Kickstarter campaigns have videos, so keep that information. We're going to have world-class only on vetoes, but it can skip that for now. You put a goal amount, what do you want? This can be something that you imagine. Now, we're going to have a class only on the goal, on the funding go and on your cost. So I put on my kick-started 13,000. I use their calculator to estimate the cost, but this is something very initial. Just leave it here as a placeholder and you're going to come back to that after your pre-launch, after your lunch, you choose your target date. And I decided to do a month from where I was doing. So you put a target date. This can also be changed before you launch. So just put something as a placeholder as well. And the campaign duration, my recommendation does is that it shows that 30-day campaign, Just because you could put more days. But a 30-day campaign is very, is a very good period of time that is not very short and not very long. Two people understand the pressure you have and they understand they have a short period of time to pack your project. I've seen projects with 45 days or 60 days, but even Kickstarter and a lot of other project craters tell that doing a 30-day project is much more likely to be successful just because people understand the pressure you're on. They understand they need to help you and fast. So put 30 days as my recommendation because there's going to be best and easier for you. Then you click Save and you're gonna go to your rewards. Here, I suggest you not to add anything for now. That's why I put a number two next to rewards. Just because you can come back to this later and you don't need the rewards for your pre-launch. Your story is the same thing. I recommend you leaving the store in blank. This is one of the most important things of your kick-started. We're going to have a class only on story. We also have a sheet, a PDF only for your story as well. And I'm going to help you through all this story process. But for your pre-launch, don't need it, so we'll just keep it for now. Then you're gonna go to the people. People are very important. This is something that is also going to be very useful for your pre-launch. The pupil is where you add, your profile, is where you talk about who you are, how you are. It's about your story. Why I decided to create this is where you put a beautiful profile. Imagenet talk about you and you create a persona who is the person behind this project? Because I'm sure you're just like me. If you see some project that I'd like you to see a brand that you like. You always want to know who's behind that. You don't click just for clique, but you have to create a connection and empathy with that person and their story. So I would suggest it's really create a beautiful profile. If you go here to edit your profile, you can add your name, you can add your avatar, which is your icon. You add a biography of herself, you at your location, your time. Then you can go and decide if you're going to have a vanity URL. What is the vanity URL? Is a custom URL that is going to determine your page. I created one on myself. I added a color name of which is the name of the book. It can have. It has to have at least three characters and is the beginning of your project URL. They're going to generate for yourself. Kickstarter is going to generate for you your project URL, but your vendor to want is the one that takes to your profile. So if I click here, I go to my Kickstarter page, but I go to my profile page. Okay, That's what the vanity URL is about. So if you want to put your name, so kickstarter.com slash profile is less Mariana, which is my name. This would be my vanity URL, but not my project URL. Okay, so decide your vanity URL here, you add collaborators if you have them. I added my husband because he was our very important collaborator for our project. But you just have to do it as optional. You don't need to add if no one, Okay, Then you go to payment. Payment is also really important because with the payment, you're gonna be able to create your pre-launch page. So you add your contact e-mail. You tell them if you're at individual oil for legal entities. So if you're a person or if your company, and when you click Continue, they're going to ask for all your information, so your ideas, your nicknames, all the information you have. You're also going to ask for your bank account, everything for your bank or your payment sources? Complete everything of this. They usually say can take up to five days to verify your information or three business days. But that wasn't the case with me. It took 5 min, but just keep in mind that this can take a little bit long. So after you went all through the number ones that I told you about leaving this number twos further later, you're going to arrive to your promotion page. This is where at the moment we were waiting for your pre-launch. You're going to see that on the pre-launch happen number one and also number two. And I'm going to show you why. When you prepare for your pre-launch, you're going to have your project URL. The URL was already defined as your vanity URL. And now they're going to get your vanity URL and they're going to add right after the slash, the name of your project. Okay. In my case, mine was kickstarter.com slash a color name, a color nimble of that happened. But if you put your name on their profile and then add the name of your book, That's gonna be your URL. It's gonna be generated after you submit for review. So that's why it's still not showing here because I didn't submit in this case. But in your case you will have submitted for review, so you'll have it ready. Then your user pre-launch page. This is the moment to activator page with all the things you check with the number one are ready and you are verified. You'll be able to launch your pre-launch. And you're going to have it and click to start your pre-launch page. And you're going to start tracking everyone who arrives to your page. The pre-launch pages of very interesting moment because up until now the project was all with view. It was all on the backend. It was all with your friends and family and the people you've talked about, and it was all your dream. The pre-launch, I had this funny feeling when I launched my book, that it was the moment my project became a reality because my project page wasn't ready yet. But this was the moment that everyone will see it. The big platform like Kickstarter had my book over there. People could click the booklet, Think about it. People could look at my project. Even if it was just a title image and a subtitle, It was the materialization of this dream. It was the beginning of this process. So I really believe you should do. I recommend you do your pre-launch page and have it ready because this is gonna be the first step we're going to take to have a successful Kickstarter campaign and started getting in your database. And you're also going to see that I left the Google Analytics here as a number two, they Google Analytics are the cold you're gonna get on Google to track your page. We're going to have a class only on Google Analytics. And the reason why I'm not doing this now, because I was very frustrated when I created my Google Analytics tracking and I put it over there and I never saw the numbers showing up. I never saw any analytics for my page. And then after a lot of research, I found out that the Google Analytics doesn't trace your pre-launch page, is it only traces your launch page. That's why we're going to leave that step for next moment. Okay, So that's basically it for this class. Your task is to go through all the number ones in the checklist, check them all, get your account verified and go live, click life and activate your pre-launch page and have it ready, shared here with us if you want, as of now so we can all go and be notified when your project came that come out and we can interact with your page as well. And do the main points here. See what already have. If you have anything missing, go through all the number was check them all. Go-live in your pre-launch page and on the next place you're going to see why I talk so much about this pre-launch and the importance of the pre-launch page. See you all next class 6. The Importance of Pre Launch: Hello. I hope you had fun and in creating your pre-launch pages and just the feeling that you have of starting to see something coming up, starting to see your project is taking shape. I remember when I launched my pre-launch phase with Clara, we were very excited just because it was the first time we put our project out there. At first, it was just something we had on the back with us and no one knew at least not only our family members and friends. But then just putting this pre-launch page Live, It just made the project feel more real. We just started feeling the clock was ticking. So I hope you had fun and enjoyed creating and launching your pre-launch page. I'm going to talk in this class about the importance of the pre-launch page. Okay, we're gonna go through why it is so important to have this link and this project's life while you're still working on your Kickstarter page and how to reach out to people using that link. Okay, so what I did with my pre-launch page was that just by having Kickstarter photo on your Kickstarter, a title and the link that leads to a Kickstarter page. This just gives automatic credibility to your project because at first I couldn't mail someone talking about my book, but I didn't have anything to show them. It was not very credible. When I created the pre-launch page. At now I have suddenly and link that takes two existing page to a well-known crowdfunding platform. And people just believe on that, they just understand it starts to take shape. So I decided to look who was the experts in the area of my subject. So let's say you're talking a book about, let's say you're talking about anxiety on your book. So the people we're talking about anxiety today, are there any blogs talking about it? Are there some researchers researching for anxiety related to children or their podcasts that treat about the subject. Are there books, other books? Are there people of interests that talk about that on Instagram? So just start looking for that network of people that could support you in your launch. When the time comes, what I did was I started looking for people that would understand and relate to my books topic. And it was amazing to see their response. I emailed researchers in the area. I e-mailed almost 15 different podcasts that talked about my subject. I reached out to people on Reddit forums, on Facebook groups. And I just started putting my book out there, talking about the book that I was going to launch. Talking about myself a little bit. I think for this part is written part and that will build a pitch that talks about who you are and what you're going to share with this book. What is the importance of your story? So one paragraph pitch, introduce yourself talking about why I wrote this book. You talk about when you're going to launch a Kickstarter. So you have an idea always in one month from now, you put the link of your pre-launch page and it talks about your project. I got five positive responses of people wanting to interview me for their podcasts, which was amazing. So I use this link to share with everyone from the media that I thought would relate to my topic. And I got a lot of positive responses. So this is such a good energy vibration to just get this positive response for people because it just went to work and do more in your project. In this moment on the pre-launch, two things are gonna happen. You're gonna be yourself, the author, is going to be talking about your pre-launch page and reaching out to people, creating this beautiful compelling pitch email to talk to people and reach out to them. On the back-office, they Illustrator or you as an illustrator, is going to start taking care and polishing your project page. Just because you're walking towards the launch in one side you're going to be a market here and that side are going to be talking about your book putting out there, reaching out the most people you can. I remember I sent about 50 mi per day just to receive ten positive answers. And those answers are what got me here. So keep pushing, talk to people. Don't give up. If you get one negative response, disregard, or see what the person is giving us a negative feedback and try to change it for your upcoming emails. But just keep pushing forward. Because again, Clara, we saw the amount of people clicking on our pre-launch page keeps increasing and increasing. And the most important thing we did was add our launched link to an Instagram account we created for our book. I cannot explain to you how crucial the Instagram account of our book was for the success of our project because there is where it can reach micro influencers. There's work where you can reach pages of interests that talks about your subject. And everyone is on Instagram now. So keep that in mind because we're going to talk about that on next class. And you're going to see how important it is to have an Instagram page and social media presence for your book, for your Kickstarter launch. Okay, talk with you next class. 7. The Importance of a Social Media Account: Okay, so now that you have your pre-launch lean, now that you're working on the back-office to make the best car you can for your project. And we're going to talk about that on next class. I'm just going to tell you about the importance of the social media account. For this case, my personal Instagram account is only for friends and family and closed ones. Clara, as an illustrator, has two accounts, one personal, one for her friends and family, and one for her work. So we decided to create an Instagram account for our book because Clara's database is based in Brazil, her father's offer illustration are majorly from Brazil. And this is where it's gonna be a book that was going to be launched in the US. So we decided to create an Instagram account for a color name love. Just don't know. As any other Instagram account, this one started with zero followers and that is completely normal. Today, we had, we launched this book On November of last year. So it's less than one year and we have almost 3,000 followers on our Instagram account. That's because we do a very big job in a lot of effort in promoting the book and keep posting and talking about it. When we started it, it was a very empty page, of course. And we decided we were going to have at least nine posts before sending it to people around because this would also give credibility to our Instagram account. So my tips for you are one, I have a image of your profile on your social media account, the same as the image of your pre-launch page. Just because this can relate both and people can understand it is the same thing at the title, the same time to have on your pre-launch page to your Instagram account and add a description of your elevator pitch on your Instagram as well. There's a part on your Instagram account when can add the link, add the link of your book over there. We decided to create first as a personal account, not a business account, because personal accounts on Instagram tend to have a larger reach because they relate to people, they talk about people. So we chose to do it as a personal account. And just today after the book is launched, after it was a success, we change it to a business account so we can do paid ads and different things, but that's something for later, much later and we're not going to touch upon that in this class. But choose to be a personal account azure link at your profile image and make a nice bio and post nine photos to create a beautiful complete grid before started sharing it around. That's my personal tip to you. Just because, you know, some people have followed your own Instagram and you check the name and you're like, This person only has one photo. I don't know if this is a very reliable I don't know if I should trust this person. So just to create a more reliable and compelling page, have this nine posts. And really think about the story you're going to tell him this pose. This is a moment where you went Illustrator gonna sit together and decide what is she gonna illustrate. My suggestion is that you present the character, present the story, give a little bit of industry information or a little bit of interesting information because your followers are not only interested on beautiful images, but they're also interested in culture, in story, in knowing things. We put some information about articles that are related to the book, but everything with the same aesthetic and the same look and feel we have for our book and now we want to create first story page. If you already have a large database and talk about your books on your own Instagram account. And you think your followers will relate to that in a positive way. Go for it. You already have the database, already have the information. Just start sprinkling of information here and thereabout your book about your story and people know you are ready so we'll just continue to follow and that will increase your folders database. But if we don't have, don't be afraid to create a page on Instagram on your own. For this class. I wanted to have that page ready to go. And I want it to start thinking. The people you are going to talk to on your Instagram. Think about 30 names we're going to talk with and start to market your project. This is going to be really, really important and we're going to talk about that on next class, how to make the best marketing for your project. See you there. 8. Market your Project: So for this class, your project is to have an Instagram page and the pre-launch page of your URL on your Instagram and start reaching out to people. Okay, with that in mind, create a nice speech, the same pitch you did for your mails and further podcasts and for the people you're reaching, to reach out to people on Instagram. Find people who are influencers that don't have thousands of followers, but they have like 5,000, 1,000, 3,000, top of the smaller ones are going to be much more open to you at first, you can talk to the big ones, of course, you can bet and try, but go for the small ones as well because they are so responsive. I remember me and Clara reaching out to people with our, with our Instagram account, to accounts of people that had 800 followers, that had 1,000, 3,000. That's more than us. We had zero. And we reached out to them talking about the book, why we decided to create the story? What was the importance this history and why I wrote that story? Because they need to understand my reasons why writing it. And I just shared everything with them and people were so responsive it was amazing to see. They started following the pages, started sharing it. And in no time we had a very well known page that keeps growing by the day. So it's really important that if focused on that father database, one thing that I did in particular that I really liked that I suggest you do it if you have time, is for every new follower I got on my Instagram account, I would send them a personalized message, thanking them for following the page. Just because that created such a special relationship between me and them. And they replied to me, they asked me things and we started conversations. We became friends on Instagram. Of course, now that we have more than 2000 followers is really hard to keep track. But at first, every new follower count that because they will be my backers in the future possibly. And I want to create that connection with them. It's really important to create that moment with them. So that's why I decided to reply one-by-one. And I would suggest you do the same if you can. So this is what I want for this class that you have this Instagram page ready, start reaching out and start thinking about the purpose of your project, because that's gonna be what you're going to write on your direct messages to your followers, or if the people are reaching out on Instagram. And keep that in mind because this is going to be the ethos and the same content of your project page on Instagram, which we're going to touch upon on next class 9. Creating a Compelling Story: Hi, Welcome to the creator compelling story class. In this class we're going to talk about one of the most important parts of your Kickstarter, which is your story. This is what comes right underneath your title and your photo or video. And this is the moment to wow your backers. Show them who you are, show them sketches, tell your story the reasons why you wrote this book. This is the moment to really connect with your audience, because this is the front page of your website. This is where you're going to make them buy your book or leave your page. So keep in mind that this is one of the most important parts of your Kickstarter. And for that reason, I created this checklist. We're going to find this in the class resources. But this is what I use and what i followed to do my Kickstarter story. Those are the main points that I think are important. I researched a lot of children's book kick-started. And those were the topics that really resonated with me and that I thought were the most part important to have in my Kickstarter page. Okay. So what I did with Clara was I did a skeleton, which I suggest you do as well on the story page, this is something that is not going to be published until we launch your Kickstarter. And this is something that can be changed if you want. So I'm just gonna go through all the steps that I went through just to tell you what I did. And as a tip, write your skeleton and put Illustrator notes where you want her to add sketches, book pages, graphics, titles, and share with your illustrator. Because like this, you can keep writing and she can keep adding images while we'll do this together. If you are an author illustrator, I would suggest you start with the skeleton in words as well, and then plug-in the images just because it makes easier for you to organize yourself. Okay. So going through the checklist, the first thing that I did was talk about the story. So why this book, why I wrote this book, just a little catch phrase of y rho the start. And then Clara illustrated it because I thought illustration would make it very interesting to start my page. Then I would suggest you read a book mock-up, Joe, so that people know what the book is about. This is the most important thing of your page. This is why they're going there. Then you talk a little bit about why this story matters. This part is really interesting because this is the moment to tell why you wrote this. Was it because of your son or daughter? Was it because of a sibling? What is because of a childhood memory? You have. Anything that you think will really make the Becker connect with yourself. A lot of people who are reading this, they identify with that. They identify with what you write. And that's why they decided to back your projects. So really put yourself out there personally and create this empathy and connection with the future Becker, because this is going to be very important for you after I talked about the story. So the story characters, who are they, What are they doing? Their styles, their characteristics, for me was really nice because Clara did this specifically for this kickstarted. This was not on the book, but she just made this very cool characterization of the main characters. And I think this is also a moment for the reader to connect with their character as well. Not only with you, but with a character that is going to be presented on this book. We didn't have our kickstarted our book pages yet. And this suggests that I give to you a lot of kick-started already have the pages of the book ready with it because Clara was developing the page as we did the Kickstarter solution we had was at the quotes, main quotes from the manuscript that for me really show who this book was and showed what the book was about. Can we put them as illustrated nodes, which gave this a little fun and cute touch. We also think was important to talk about the book. So just give the information of the book. Is it hardcovers, it's tough, covert. How many pages, what is the size? Because this also gives a little bit of credibility to your story. It shows you already have a mock-up. It shows you already have a book. You already have all these details that are going to be important to who, whoever is going to buy your book. And I added here that we're going to be uploading book pages as they got ready. Just because this was something we wanted to share. And since the project part is something that can be changed, me and Claire, will we added the pages as they were being unlocked. And as you can see, there's our Instagram handle here. Just because we shared the same pages on our Instagram, we would always like to mirror or Instagram to our Kickstarter just because it makes a mark concise message to the backers and to everyone who's following us as well. Claire also added some sketches which are very interesting. People really like to see the development and evolution of sketches made in pencil to the original final art. And we also thought it was really cool to share that. So she added some sketches here. Moving forward, we have the recommendation. If you are able to get recommendations from people from the industry, that's amazing because it really gives credibility to your project as well. What we did was we talked to two people that I got interviewed for podcasts and I asked them to read the manuscript. I send the manuscript to them in Word format. I asked them, of course, not to share with anyone, but I asked him to give their honest opinion on what they read and what came back was so beautiful. It's so nice to see someone else's opinion on your story. Not your mother or your father's opinion or your siblings, but someone from the industry really enriched our Kickstarter page. So Clara made an illustration of their quotes And we also add it to the project. Following that is how to get the book people are going to go for here, for your book, mainly, of course, the perks and rewards are also going to be interesting, but the book is like the key point for what they are. They're either a PDF because in my case I had an e-book. I suggest you have a book yourself as well. And we showed how they could get the book or get the physical book as well. I added this here because I decided my perks later. So I added this later. I just added a part here for Ed perks. But I have to wrote about all the perks that we're gonna have. We're going to have a class only on perks. So you're going to talk about that later, okay, but I also added the perks here. You can leave that blank for now. We also added this stretch goals here. Keep in mind that you can have stretch goals in your mind before launching the project just to push people to invest more in your Kickstarter. But for us, we didn't add any stretch goal until we reached our main goal. Because I think that really diverged from the main point which is achieving your goal and selling your book and making become a reality. So my suggestion is that you don't add a stretch goals now and edit only later after you reached your first initial and the main goal we also added about the creators. This is also really cool because we were able to tell our story. Mian car we met when we were kids as we added a little photo of us here when we were smaller than we added a zero when we were all there and just told why we came together to launch this book. This is something that you can get from your profile that you already did or add some extra information the next retouch to create that connection that we talked about later I put why I decided to go in for Kickstarter. Everyone has their own reason why I decided to self-publish. So here's a moment to tell why. We also added the book costs. Just so you know, we were going to have a class only on book costs later. So leave the space in blank only with the title. And then you can come back to that and really make your book costs charged pie in a very cute way when people would have their book. This is also good to have. So just keep in mind that it can take up to eight weeks for the book to be ready. We're going to talk more about that on the cost part, where I'm going to show you some of the book printers I found to print my book. But usually the average is 8-12 weeks. So keep that in mind when letting your Becker's know when the book is going to be ready. Okay. We also added shipping cost because of course that's a very important information. I will share with you a little tip card on shipping costs. Because sometimes it can be really daunting to know how much would it cost to ship something that you do not know the weight yet? But we're going to talk about that on the cost glass as well. And finally, I added the dedicatory. Thank you. Who are we dedicating this book and this kip foot kick started to, I edit all the podcasts that helped us just because they were very, very important in this journey. So add the names of everyone who supported you. That's a very nice way to tell them. Thank you. We also added our e-mail for contexts. You're also add our Instagram so people can reach out to us after our Kickstarter, we can continue talking with them Kickstarter as to, to have a risks and challenge. So we put the risks and challenges for books. Usually the risk and challenge is the printing, the time the printing is going to take and if you don't get the full money. So just keep that in mind when you're writing that those were the main risks I found everything else was pretty smooth. So you should just talk about the waiting time and what you already have ready, what will still need to do just so they have this timeline with them as well to follow up with their project. So that's basically it. I know it was a lot, but just because there's one of the most important parts of the Kickstarter. As I said. For this class, your project is to have your story tab with their skeleton ready just so that your illustrator can come and add in all the titles, all the information, all the graphics, and all the images as you move forward with the project and as you prepare to launch your Kickstarter and with your star in Han doing this, you will have a very easy guide for your video. This is going to be a script for your video mainly. So keep in mind that the video is very important. 80 per cent of the successful Kickstarter campaigns have videos. So we're going to talk more about that on next class, but just have that in mind for your script, for your video. See you next class. 10. The Video: Hi, welcome to the video lesson. In this class, we're going to talk about making your video. I know that we already have a skeleton of your story ready? And with that, you can have the script of how your video is going to work. So the first thing you need to do for this class is really write down the main topics you're going to talk on your video. Follow the topics that you spoke about on your project page that we did last class. And really tweak it just to be more concise so you can speak in front of a camera. The first thing we usually do when going to a Kickstarter page is looking at the video. It's really important that you do a very compelling and interesting video for your package to see who you are. A video that talks about yourself. This is the best way for anyone who is senior project to get to know your emotions, the reasons behind your book, get to know you, your story. Why I decided to write it and how is this story important and why this story matters? All the projects that have vetoes success at a much higher rate, like we talked about last class. And I know that making a veto can be really hard and daunting. Being in front of a camera is not for everyone. But I'm sure this is an effort that is going to really pay off just because this video is this main connection you're going to have with your backers. So even if you don't want to do it, even if it's something you're pushing the back of your mind, you don't want to deal with that right now. Just be out there, get together with some friends, get together with your partner or your partners, and just do this video. It's going to be easy and quick. I record my video in one day and I edited in three days. It was me, my husband, his camera. We don't have a tripod, so we put the camera on top of a bench, on top of some books. And we just had this space in our living room that was fun to record, and we did that together. Clara lives in Brazil, my Illustrator. So she recorded on the same day as I did, and I decided to edit the videos because she was really focusing on doing the design of the book. So you should decide who is going to edit your video for you. If you don't have editing skills, you can hire someone, but it's gonna be caused him. So I suggest you edit yourself. There are a lot of editing apps that are free, such as iMovie, and you can have it on your computer really easily. There are some more professional ones, but I will suggest to stay with the simple ones. If that's not your thing. It's going to be very easy and interesting to do your video. Okay, so what I did was I got a lot of images from Clara's catching on her iPad, sketching on her papers. She recorded speech for me as well. I made the script for her. So that's why it's really important that you only record the video when you have your script ready. And my suggestion is that you do not only do a recording of only your face, do a montage of different types of videos and things. This way, you can have a very dynamic video for your project. In my case, I mixed my face talking with the camera, Clara's face talking with the camera. Clara's hence drawing to film herself drawing in her house. I also added some photos of us as child. She also added a video of her son. We just created this really concise and beautiful story on why we wrote this book. And that's something you should really do to create and take your story to the next level. The most important things on the video or tell who you are. Tell the story behind your book later, get your ideas from. As for people for support, explain why you need support. Explain why you need their money. This is, we're talking about people's money here. People don't want to put their money anywhere. So really tell them why you need this money. How is this going to help you? How is this story going to help kids all around the world? Talks about how cool your rewards are if you already have them, I will suggest to have them before recording the video. But if not, that's okay and explain that if you don't reach your goal, you're gonna get nothing. Everyone will be said with that information just because it's very nice for them to know that they need to back your project. For it to happen. You have to tell them that this is an all or nothing campaign. Most people don't know that Kickstarter is all or nothing. So it's really important that you make it very clear for them this way they will know they will need to support your project if they wanted to come to fruition. This is an all or nothing campaign. So you're going to see that as soon as you decide to purchase any of the perks that we have here, the mind is not going to come out of account. We have to wait to reach the whole goal of the campaign in the 30 days are closed so the money can leave your accounts and we can start publishing this book as soon as possible. Finally, thank everyone. Thank, thank them for their time for being there, for really talking with you through your project. Help us bring this story to lie. The other thing to remember, don't put any copyrighted music on your videos. There are a lot of different places that have free copyrighted music just because you don't want to abuse the music that is not free of views. Some resources with you in the class resources, but SoundCloud, Vimeo, and ccMixter, some of them that I use, and they're very good for this purpose. They have a lot of different musics and different sounds that you can just mix and match. And it's going to make your video very interesting and dynamic. There are some technical specs as well. I'm going to share the link here with the technical spec so you can see what are the main information is we need to have to have your video on Kickstarter, but it's pretty simple and straightforward. And finally, vetoes are my favorite part. I really liked doing my video. I love editing. This was something that was really fun for me. I left the not very fun part for next one is also very important. So next place we're going to talk about the main cause and what you should consider when doing your Kickstarter project. I'll wait you there. Thank you. 11. The Main Costs: Hi, Welcome to the main costless and the main costs are very important for your book. This is when your business persona comes in place. Kickstarter makes to have a lot of heads. So you need to edit videos, write a book promoter book, be the market here. Do the administration, take care of finances? So just keep in mind that this is something that is going to really show you all the different things you can do. And I'm sure you're gonna do them very well. And the business side of the Kickstarter, you're going to talk about the main cause. They're very important because you need to consider every single one of your cost to have an accurate Kickstarter go. A lot of people want to put the goal super high to get paid a lot. But if you don't have your goal reached, you're not going to have your project. So my suggestion is that you put the go as low as you can and everything that again, extra is gonna be amazing, but just make sure your project is going to be launched. The main reason you're doing this is because we want to have a book out there in the world. So I suggest you put all the costs you have. That is going to be the amount of when you're going to ask for your project. Just because you want this to be the lower number you can get to have your project back and then you get the extras. Okay, so make a list of every possible expense you think you're going to have. Even the less obvious ones like bubble wrap or like envelopes. But do your research on everything, everything you think you should expand with this project. For large expenses, you'll need to research the best prices. It's okay if the number is bigger than you expect. Because you thought the project was simple, but sometimes it isn't and it's better to have everything taken into account then leaving something out and not being able to pay those things, I decided to price my book in $20 because I thought that would cover the cost of everything that would entice in my book production. Because I saw that a lot of different Kickstarter pages also had their books for $20. So I decided that would be an accurate and good amount for my book. Don't forget to give yourself a little bit of cushion. Don't put it strictly everything you've spent, but add a little bit extra just because kickstarted charges a five per cent tax if your project is successful. So make sure you add that to your costs. There's also a 3% charge on credit card transactions. So keep that in mind as well and find that there's taxes. Each country has their different texts. It will be great if you check with your accountant or someone you know, that really understands what kind of Texas could be charged. Kickstarter has a part on Texas as well, but they can really change depending on your country. So keep that in mind for your project. Because in the US is 14% for taxes. But this is something you really need to look for your case and specifically with your accountant loud, let's go through my costs. I had a cause with editing, like I mentioned, So I, I added them out. I paid for my editor here on Kickstarter. So it's good that you talk with your editor to see how much it costs. Printing. Printing is a really, really important costs. And it was something that made me go very insecure and all over the internet trying to figure out where would I print my book. I found two printers, one in China, in one in the US. I decided to go with the US one because the one from China would take longer and the books would take shoe months to arrive here by ship. Printer I used in the US is called Bank printing. I'm going to share their contact here with you. I had a lot of problems with them on delays. They gave me an eight-week timeframe and then it became 12 week. So just keep in mind and those are the things that are important to put it in your risks and challenges. Keep in mind those things can happen, okay, especially because I did my book during COVID, there could be some delays and it's really important that your backers know about that and there are very clear and communicative with them. For the printing, this is going to be the cost of your product, the cost of your goods sold. So that is going to be one of the most important costs for your book. In my case, I asked my printer for books, they already printed. I asked them for pages samples. I asked them for hardcover samples of books they already have, and keep having track of time. That's really important. Cost shipping is also really important one we're going to have a class only on shipping. But I use an platform and app called stamps. It's amazing, it's really good and they have exactly all the shipping costs. You can print labels at your house. And I'm going to share with you some shipping costs. I got very confused at the time because I didn't know how much my book would wait. Usually a children's book, mine had 40 pages with hardcover weights. Almost a pound. One pound was the weight I added for my books. And whenever people bought it, I added there the cost of the shipping, I added worldwide shipping. This can be up to you, but really keep that in mind when how you're going to send this books because shipping are very high and important cost of your book. So what I did was I charge $5 for shipping the US, $10 to shipping for Canada and $20 to shipping for the rest of the world. You're going to see that there is a very accurate amount because it is very costly to ship books. It's very costly to have shipping internationally, shipping in the US, I use media Mayo, but we're going to talk more about that later. There's also ISBN purchasing. I don't know if you guys know, but ISBN is this little number that appears on the back of your book. For self-publish books, you don't need to have an ISBN because this is only for libraries and for bookshops that are going to sell your book. But as I wanted my book to be really professional and as that one in my book to be sold to bookshops in the future, I added an ISBN, go online. There's the ISBN website and I'm going to share with you as well. And you can buy official ISBN number. E-books and printed books need to have different ISBN, Okay? So whenever you have a new format for your book, you need to buy a new ISBN. That's another cost. You should at least have any marketing costs. We should add them as well. I didn't have anything, but if you have you should add them. Texas, as I mentioned, gifts and gift shipping. So it's important that you have the gifts you're gonna ship in the cost of the shipping. Because there is a case of this guy that made a game for Kickstarter. And he rocket, he's sold a lot of units. But the shipping for the game's ended up being more expensive than the book and he didn't take that into account. So he ended up having a debit because the cost of the shipping was more than what he got for his games. So keep that in mind that if you're gonna do a perk or you're going to send a reward, make something that can go with your book. In our case, we had a sticker that went inside the book and they did increase the cost. The secret didn't wait anything. We add some sketches that also didn't cost anything. Authors signed copies. So if you are going to do a reward, keep that in mind. If you want to do a tote bag and poster, a t-shirt, if it really relates to your book and if you think it's really important to do it, but I wouldn't suggest doing things that are so heavy or are hard to ship it just because it's going to create, increase your cost a lot. And it can have Becker's not support your project because of that. So keep that in mind for this class. Your project is to create an Excel file with all the costs and items in your project. If you don't feel like sharing in the class resources is fine just for a question of confidentiality. But if you want to chat with anyone in the course and just share a printer you found or share a place if all that is interesting to have the best cost benefit for your book, be free to share it because I think everyone will benefit from that. Leaves space for your rewards in this XML file because we're going to talk about them on next class and then you can add their cost so your Excel file, okay, see you all next quiz 12. Create Your Rewards: Hi, Welcome to the rewards class. In this class you're going to decide what are the rewards that are gonna give that little extra something to your story when going through different Kickstarter children's book pages. And I recommend you do that a lot. I searched for all the different products that people gave. Some people gave shirts, some people gave tote bags, some people gave sicker, some people gave sign books. And I decided to choose the ones that were resonated with my project. And also the ones that wouldn't increase the cost for shipping, like I mentioned to you. So just to show you here little bit of art works. Man Clara decided to have a paper doll and drawing sheet. This was a pdf downloadable, so it wouldn't incur any costs for printing or shipping, which was great. And this was also something that parents could print in their houses. And they connected to our story because our stories about this girl that needs to find her own love and has a very special and unique family. So we did about this kid that can have any clothes they want. The children had the option to draw the hair thing. This can thin the colors, everything they wanted, and put them in the family and draw the family with them. Because a lot of things that are sold today are very standardized families. And we want the kid to be able to draw their family the way they imagined it, in the way they envisioned it and how their families, independently of how many people they have in their family. So this was a very cool, interesting one. We also had our loving circus said it was also a lot of empowering and cute stickers that are related to our story. As you can see here, when we did the Kickstarter, Clara didn't know all the secrets I would have here. So she just did this question marks, but it was very interesting because people could see what the stickers would be about and suggested some unique ones and the ones to decide later. This is something you can totally do. We also added the donation option. This was something very interesting for us because It's really good that you're able to give and get back. And if people purchase a book and they feel like donating it to someone in need that cannot purchase it. That would be amazing. So we decided to add the nation as a park because it's really important for us to be able to spread this love around, even with families who couldn't afford it. Finally, one of the biggest prizes was the original sketches done by car and she would illustrate someone's families. Okay. So I'm just going to show you on the right, How're perks worked and how they went. Good pledge, $5 just for sharing your love. And this was for people who just wanted to support the project but didn't want a book. We got six people helping us here. We also decided to charge $15 for the e-book. We got 35 backers. So this is a part of the money that came to help the project come to fruition. I think is really important to have an e-book, even because after you're going to share the link of your e-book with different people. If someone wants to make a review of your book and they don't want a physical copy, is really parties have a digital version, so I think you should add that one as well. $20 for the book. This is what the people came far. So of course, the majority of Becker's we're here, 378. We also had a paper doll and the book, 19 bankers for there, the colors should plus the secret. 33 people came to books, stickers in the coloring sheets. 50 people came. Two books and one donation because we don t think people need more than two books in their houses. So we just added the donation components starting from the third book. We also had here the introduction of this sign at hardcover copies because we thought people who were getting to books and we're investing so much in a project, they deserve to have a signed copy and that wouldn't cost anything for me. We had this 301 that we didn't get anything, but then we got the 501 that we only had five because Clara only had time to do five illustrations. This is something you can do for your rewards, okay, You can add a maximum amount. For all the other ones, we had no limit, but for this one we had a limit of five and we had three people supporting us with $500, which was amazing. Clara did beautiful sketches of their families that I'm going to share with you. And it was very special to have them and give this reward to them as a thank you for them helping so much in our project. We also had one thing that you can also add to yours, which is a timed reward. So we had an early bird free shipping for only for us because shipping worldwide is very costly. Like I mentioned, we had a timed free shipping for the people who bought on the first 48 h of this project. And we had 67 and people purchasing here. I suggest to the side and look around what perks relate to your book. What things you can do that will not add cost to you, are there will be as cheap as possible. And that will tell your story in a more compelling way and decided which weren't reward, you're gonna go for your back-end. This is how the rewards work. Here's where you add all the information, where you're gonna talk, what you're going to launch for the main crucial things about your book at the time if you want or not, and really describe what the rewards are going to be. And I really think the cool part about the rewards is that you add something that is going to make your story be told in a fun way to not only add what the reward is, the edit in a cool way so that people can understand what you're talking about. So in my case, just to give you an example here, like pledge five or more equity, just add something as a title saying, help us with money. But I don't want people to read that. That's not interesting. So I put sharing your love because that's what people are going to do. They're going to share their love with us. They don't want anything in return, you're just sharing their love. So here on the description, I also added something. You have a lot of love to show you what I'm part of her story, but you cannot pledge for your full book. That's okay. You're gonna get a thank you card, Clara, sent by e-mail. Thank you card for this six people. And it's really cool that you add an information that is not very straightforward. What makes something fun and interesting when people read your pledge is another thing we did here for the book. We could only have a color name Love by the book here, this is the physical book, but we decided to put, share the love and bedtime stories with your family time one-on-one with your kids, got hardcover copy delivered to your door. Just make it very special description. That's why I spent a lot of time doing my rewards because I wanted it to be the most enticing and interesting and hard touching information that I could add. I didn't want to have only a single information, but something that people will read, put a smile on their face and identify with. So that's it for this class. For this class, the reward section of Vicki started should be filled out. You don't need to have all the information now. This is something that cannot be changed later. So it's the part that we really have to pay attention to before launching your page. But this is something I came back a lot of times with Clara while deciding the prize, deciding the tags, really reading through all the rewards, We've talked about it a lot. So just start having the skeleton of your reward pages now and add this information to your stories section, okay? Because you already have the title there, just waiting for this information to fill up and add the reward shipping and reward costs your Excel file. So you can see how much was spent and set a realistic funding goal to your project. We're going to talk more about the funding. Go on next class 13. Set the Financial Goal: Hello, welcome. For this class we're going to talk about setting your financial goal. We've already walked through all the path of creating your story, thinking about your rewards, thinking about what you're going to shape, how much you're gonna be, your costs. And all of that is going to be fundamental to determine your financial goals. As I mentioned, this is an all or nothing can paint. So I need to be really mindful of your financial goal. Don't put it so high that is unachievable. And put it as low as possible to cover all your, all your costs. But make sure you're covering all your costs. You don't want to have a successful project where people are going to send you money and you won't be able to send the books with them because you were financially unavailable. So make sure that everything that you're going to spend is going to be taken into account and the tax and spend the extra to set up this financial goal. You need to have a goal that is achievable, goal that is realistic in a goal that is going to pay all your debts and costs with your book. Keep in mind that the financial goal cannot be changed at any time after your starter campaign. So this is something that is going to be, when you put it up, it's going to be over there. There's something that you can have with which is at a stretch goal, you can change your funding goal. But once it's reached some projects and incentives, some of them add new features, some of them at colors are gifts to Becker's. I'm gonna put a link here that Kickstarter offers with all of the things that you should take into account when creating your stretch goal. But I reached my goal 100% in ten days of my campaign. Right after that, we decided to add this tried to go up. And it was really important to add this goal because for us it was something that would benefit not only the project, but everyone around. We had a goal of 13,000 and we added an extra goal of $18,000. We would then donate 100 books. If we got that. This one we added later, as soon as it was achieved, we also did the same thing at our Instagram account. And it was really interesting to keep adding milestones at the Instagram account so people could understand they were almost at a stretch goal that we're almost at the goal. And followers just love to see and check your project and see how is it going. And people kept sharing, froze, they kept pushing. They became our market tiers and our advocates for this project, which was also amazing. And we had the luck to achieve also our stretch goal. And that's why we added the unlocked information over here so that people knew that 100 books will be donated, which was amazing. And just so you know, the donation part is really important because I read another Kickstarter and I'm going to tell him now as well. It's really hard finding a place to donate or books. Male schools, they never replied. You would mail helping groups that relate to your topic, they don't reply. So we had to find select people in select schools should donate our books. But we had a hard time finding someone. So keep in mind to start researching already. If you decide to go into donation route where you're going to send your books too, and how you're gonna do it. And remember you also have shipping costs for that, okay, this class, your task is to add up all the costs you have, though we already did unless class and compare it to your financial goals, make it even make your cost is the same as her financial goal and have it set up for you to continue with your project. See if everything that you have as a cost is aligned to your financial goal. And see if that's how much one again, with your project, with that number in hand, you need to fill out your initial project page. Remember we left a blank space there for the financial goal. So you need to ask your Illustrator or yourself to create a doodle for it showing how much you're going to ask for in water, your cost. So if you see over here, here's where we showed how much it costs, we're going to be. How much would go for printing, editing fee rewards, and shipping. This is the amount we're gonna set up to our financial goals. So for this class, you should have your financial goals setup. The comparison between the goal and the amount of costs you're going to have to see if they add up. And you're going to ask for your Illustrator or yourself to do the visual chart telling where you're going to spend your money. So as soon as you have that, you're almost ready to go, you're only missing one key part before the launch. That is the Google Analytics that's going to really help you check how your project is going. But we're going to talk about that on next class. See you there? 14. Google Analytics Code: Hello. Today we're going to talk about the Google Analytics code. I'm pretty sure you heard some point in your life if you work with Internet or with anything online about the Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a page offered by Google that helps you track down and analyze data from people who went to your website, how much purchases they did. How many people will view your website on a set period of time, where they came from. Was it mobile was a desktop. You can see all those information into Google Analytics page. And it can seem hard. Just gonna give you some tricks to you. Create your own Google Analytics code to add your Kickstarter page. Remember when we were talking about the promotion page that you already have and it's ready to go and you already did it for your prelaunch. On the bottom there was a tracking ID for adding a Google Analytics number. And that's what we're going to talk with you about today. It's gonna be super simple. If you see here is a tracking tool to give insights of who went to your website. And I wanted to give you a tip. It's very, very addictive. I got completely addicted to my Google Analytics page. I would go in there like every five-minutes to look how much how many people were online therapy for online at that time? Five people where they were looking for from Brazil, was it from Canada, was it from the UK? And he got very interesting to see the website. And of course, when you have like 200 people land on your page, is almost certain that you're going to make two to three or four sales or more. And if have like one to two people, it's going to take awhile. But it's just fun and interesting to see where your sources are coming from and maybe in the future, use that information to talk to publishers if you want, or use that information for yourself to see what market really purchase your book. Of course, you're going to see from whoever purchases the book, where are they from? Because you're going to have their address after the project is successful. But Google Analytics just shows you at the moment where your project is successful and it shows where people are coming from. You can also create traceable legs if you went from Reddit or Facebook to head over there and see exactly where people are coming from. And that was really interesting. So I'm just going to show you how to use your Google Analytics tracking code. This is how your analytics page should be. You click on the admin. After having a cow, you add an account name, Kickstarter pay launch, you click Next. Then you create a property name, which is going to be also the name of your Kickstarter. You can put whatever you want. You choose your time, which is New York, and then choose your industry which I chose books and literature small because it's just me and Clara and my husband. And I decided to measure engagement with my App optimized, measured that across multiple devices are platforms. And finally, I click Create. You agree, you accept. And then you're going to have your unique ID number right over there. With that number in hand, you just copy it. You go to your Kickstarter page. You go to your promotion part. And you just paste it over there in safe. It's as easy and quick as that. Don't forget to go back and click on your property, which already have property settings. And then click Check your tracking ID. And then on the bottom part, you're going to click on enable users metric and reporting this way you're going to enable to read your information while they're pulling up from Kickstarter. Like I mentioned to you, the code won't work with a pre-launch page. Okay. Just with the launch page. That's why I decided to leave it for after, because you will need this for the launch for this class project is to create your unique Google Analytics code, your UA code, and put it in your Kickstarter page under the promotion tab, and click Save, and you should be ready to go live at any moment. We're going to talk more about this on next class. See you there? 15. Go Live!: It has arrived the moment we've been waiting for the moment to review your project and go live this moment, I expect you to have everything ready, your Started page, your video, your images, all the information plugged-in in your skeleton, your rewards revision, everything ready to go live. This is the moment we've been exciting for taking the time to read everything you've done so far. Send it to the Illustrator to read it as well. If you have one and just make this work of checking everything you've had friends and family. Let them read, let them see if they understood everything, just go through everything to see if it's all fine. As you know, I've been telling you a little bit about this on the last lessons, a lot of things are able to be changed while your project is live at a lot of things that are not. So keep that in mind and make sure you're taking double attention to the things that are not able to be changed because they will be locked as soon as you launch your project. The following things you need to pay attention because they cannot be changed. Your funding goal, your deadline of your projects. So the days are decided to set it up for your reward tiers so the amount or the quantity and the text for the rewards, rewards cannot be changed. The information about the payments or your bank account and your verified identity that cannot be changed. So pay attention to that as I mentioned before, your kickstarted profile name. So take your time, read it all through, see if it's all the way you believed it should be. If it's all according to your plan. And press life, does a green button and go live on the day we decided to do that, I called Clara and I press the life dwelled, doing a Zoom call with her. And it was amazing to see the magic happen when we press life because we had the 200 names and our pre-launch link page. It was like this. $20, $40.45, 50, 75. Like the numbers kept increasing and I showed my husband, he was shocked. The first hour we had sold almost $1,000, just a friends and family and the people that we had on our pre-launch link. So keep in mind that first day is going to be your most important and biggest day and that first week following, you, just keep tracking the numbers because I'm pretty sure you're going to have a great success. And after the Kickstarter is launched, should go and sleep and take a rest. No, no way. There's a lot to be done and we're going to cover all that on the next class. See you there? 16. Marketing Homework: Hi, I hope you had a great time doing your Go-live of your project. I hope it's already up and running. And if you would like to share with us how your page ended out to be, That's one of the main things of this class. So please share with us in the class comments and on the class project as well. We would love to see your link. And just so you know, now that it's live, what should you do? Should I go an ad? Relax. No, you should really pay attention to everything that's going on now because every day is a counter clock running to your ending of your campaign. So what I did was I had two fronts. One was my social media account, reach out to people, Marketing, going to read groups, Facebook groups, talking about deadlines, posting about deadlines, talking about how much percent I hadn't reached off my goal. I shared everything with my bakers in the updates that I'm going to show you. Now, I also shared everything with everyone on Instagram just because it's makes this so real and people understand It's so on time. I think that's happening now and they should help it if they want. So one part of me was doing this marketing work, doing interviews, being out there and constantly, constantly posting on Instagram. Clara really helped me with that. She was the one who made all our Instagram posts. So it was really good because we could have an update every day. And another thing that I did was on the back end of the project. I'm going to show now screen of how my project was. If you go to your project that is already launched, you're gonna go to your dashboard. But that's where it was one of my favorite parts, just because they're together with the Google Analytics is the place that you're going to check everything that's going on with your project. So you're going to see the amount that was pledged. How much percentage was it funded? How many seconds and days and hours you have to go and how many bankers have helped your project. Here you're going to see the funding Progress tab. It shows as I told you, how on the first day launched, November 10th until November 11th, like this was the higher peak at it started, it kept growing on the first week, then it kept growing but slower. And on the end, it peaked again. The beginning and the end are the times that you're going to really skyrocket. So pay attention to those two moments. And as I mentioned, really focused on that messy middle so you can keep pushing the project as you go along the way. And as you can see, we reached our goal here with ten days of the project. So you can see your goal. And then from there on it was just extras and extras and the stretch goals and everything that we do to really push the project and bringing it to the next level. This is a part that I really loved. I don't have it here anymore because my project is done. But you're going to see here that it can create a referrer. What is the referred? Refer is a traceable link that you can share with people. So let's say you're gonna be on a podcast. You're going to click here. It's going to be the link of your project and you're going to add podcasts x, and you're going to send that podcast a link that all of them will have in here and you're referred tab, you're going to see how many people came from that podcast. Was it from Instagram, was it from reddit, Facebook? If you send it to some teacher or someone who is an expert in the area, put the name of the person on the link and they will be able to share that. And you can trace and see where the majority of your followers are coming from. And maybe do a push again on that place top of them again, do another post. You're going to see that having this Refer is really important because you're going to see who really is important for you to keep sharing the project with and who didn't bring that as much as return as you want it. So this is a very cool part. And kickstarter has their own refers as well. So recommender, internal MAO, checkout rewards, paid search and advance, everything we'd already come from Kickstarter and the rest, which is custom and external. You're going to do it yourself. You're going to see the amount of followers. In the end of my project I had 324. So during the time that kick-started his life, even after the pre-launch, people can still follow your project, but not Beckett, from $325, only 95 converted was 29%. 2000 people played my videos. This was, you can check what reward is more popular. Here you can add the Google Analytics as well to connect this project to your Google Analytics if you haven't done it yet on the, on the pre-launch page. But if not, you added here and all the information of your Becker's. So this is something very interesting because you're gonna have these two areas of your Kickstarter page going on at the same time. The front end where you post your milestones, you talk to your followers on Instagram and you keep pushing. Every single day I wake up and go to the focus you on your project. That's what that was what I did. And even when we reach the goal, I continued pushing so much because I wanted to bring this story further. I wanted to read two more people, wanted more people to know about this loving book. I kept pushing and talking to people and doing the marketing work. Clara helped me. They illustrations and everything I needed for social media posts, for Facebook, for reading groups and everything I needed. She helped me daily while she was illustrating the book, which was very intense for her as well, but it really paid off in the end. So this is what we're going to do together successfully funded campaigns. And I'll see you on next class talking about how you can reach your goal and faster. See you there. 17. Reach your GOAL!: Hi. So now that you have your page up and running, you had your Instagram up and running your interview schedule, your podcast schedule, your illustrator is helping with the post. Now it's time to really push your project forward and reach your goal and fest. One really important feature that you have on your Becker, Becker and page is the updates. You can keep posting updates at anytime and sharing everyone, what are you done with your project? So on my case, I sent, I think 11 updates starting with we were live. Clara also helped me doing the layout for this one is the same one we did for read it and also on Facebook. So we have a very cohesive form of communication. We've just shared with everyone. So they knew the project was live. And after that, we kept publishing everyday and talking to everyone about there were only 48 h to go, only 2 h to go. Our project was funded with thanked everyone. We talked about the next tabs, which was really important. But here are some of the updates we did during the project. So we told the book was live. Then we told them we had 30 per cent back already on the same day. Then we talked about projects we love. This is something that me and Clara head as a wish for this project, Kickstarter has a badge called projects, we love beds. And they give this batch two projects that they believe have all the communication that they wanted. Four, there's not a rule for you to be in a projects we love is something out of luck and out of a good work you did mankind, we believe we had done a really great work and we were hoping so much to get this badge. And then on November 13th, two days after we launched our project, we received an email from Kickstarter is saying that we got our projects, we love badge, and that was amazing. He really took our project to another level. And it puts us in a page where only project we love our featured so people can really see what are the good projects in the best projects on Kickstarter. And we were there side-by-side with so many amazing projects, which was amazing. We also shared that on our updates with our backers when we were only 10% towards your goal with shared as well. When we reached our goal, we shared new pages unlocked, stretch goals reached, talking about pages 40, 8 h to go, 2 h to go project funded and thanking everyone saying that we did it and we did it together. For us, it was really important to keep sharing these milestones and people kept texting and saying they were so happy you're in senior updates receiving our emails. Because imagine you put your money somewhere and you just want to be sure that you put your money in the right place and then you're gonna get a return from that. People really were excited with the updates we did and we were happy that we did it. So I recommend you do updates as well. Following any kind of communication you're gonna be doing on your Instagram account and any kind of communication you want to push for your project during those 30 days, I think it's really important to add extra milestones. Like I was saying, you also should add your stretch goal. Talk about it, why you're doing it, how you're doing extra gifts, donations, whatever you think is important because that's going to push it further. You can also put your milestones images on Instagram, Reddit, and Facebook groups talking about how much you have achieved. We did that and it was also really good. Every time we posted on Reddit, we saw a huge increase in people coming for our project. Also create video on Insta stories, timelines, poster timelines, the goal talk about your goals. Share with everyone just like I showed on the updates, because this is what it's going to make people see your project is life. It was not done by someone who just press life and left the project, abandon. You were there everyday crafting and improving your work daily. And this is what matters to your backers and to everyone who's Senior effort for this project. And I think this is what really made we reach our goal in such a short period of time and exceed the going 77%. So for this class, if you haven't done it yet, Create and create and post instagram stories and timelines and talk to your followers about things you are achieving and how your project is going on. Just wait to see the success that will come from there. I'm sure people are gonna be thrilled to know your project is going so well and are going to be so excited to help you push it further. Because anytime we posted anything that was missing 48 h, 24 h, that the goal was almost achieved. So many of our Instagram followers that were close to 1,000 shared with everyone else and talked about it and were so eager to help you push it forward. So this is time to reach your goal and celebrate. If you reached your goal, have fun, enjoy, celebrate the moment and push forward to reach those extra milestones that you decided for yourself if you want them to happen. I want to share with you here a video of a message we got from a backup. This was a banker that really supported us in our Instagram account. And they send us a message at around midnight, I believe saying, I just wanted to know I was the person who reached your 100% funding. And I cried so much. I called Claire on Zoom immediately and we were sold through to see that that person wanted to tell us that they were on 100% funding Bakker, and we reached our goal. I was in tears, so excited I told my husband and we were so happy to celebrate this moment. And we were just looking forward to see what this project will bring for us in the future. So if you reach your goal, enjoy celebrated, publish on pain it Kc, have fun and be happy and eager to start again tomorrow. Pushing your goal further, reaching more people and being able to tell their story for more people around the world. And right after that happens, after the kick-start, after your goal is funded, what next? What do you do when your project is over? How can you ship your books? All of that. We're going to see you all next place. I'll see you there. 18. Ok, What Next?: Welcome back. So after the Kickstarter is done, you should be asking yourself what next. What I did in my personal situation was Clara continued doing the illustrations for the book. We were happy was successful. It worked out. We knew the timing of our printer, which was three months. So we had to rush because we've promised the delivery date in March of 2021. So we wanted to send everything to the printer until the end of December. That was our plan. So Clara was doing through that one month all the illustrations and I was looking for all the shipping costs and all the things that we need to have hire for my project. What is important here is be sure to have all the files ready to send to the printer at the time you've promised so the book can arrive in time. I told you my specific case there was that my printer was delayed, so my books were delivered in end of April, which was one month after my project was done. For that reason, I posted a lot of things on Instagram for our followers telling them two-way talking about COVID, how hard it was for a printer to have things done on time. And I shared that also my book updates. And I cannot tell you how many heart-warming messages we got from everyone's saying they were so thankful for us to share that with them and letting them know that the project was still ongoing, but it wasn't a little bit of hold because of external situations that we could not control. Always be very honest with their Becker. Always be very honest with their followers. Always be very honest with what your project is taking because these people invested on new, is there money that you have and you want to give them a return and let them know whatever was going on on the back-end because they they don't know. Wild Clara was doing the illustrations. I was preparing for the shipping. I had a call with a lot of different packing and shipping companies and I decided that the best cost-benefit was doing it all myself. This is something you will decide for yourself. There's a website called Becker kids, that they also have all the infrastructure to ship books to you and a lot of different ones that Kickstarter shirt on their pages I will put here on the class resources. For myself. I found that stamps was the best website on the world. It is connected to UPS, USPS, and global posting, and it does national and international shipping. I bought a printer for labels from my house. I bought a normal printer from a house. I kinetic that everything to my computer and I downloaded the Becker's list. I download it each list from their website from Kickstarter. And it's super easy. It comes as an Excel file to you already. And it has the name, the address, and all their main information from your backyard that you will need to ship the books to them. I was doing all that while I was preparing for the books to arrive just because I wanted to have everything completely organized. As the books reached my house, I was ready to ship them to everyone's place. So I recommend you doing the same. Download all the backers lists, see whoever has sent you the address who hasn't central starts sending emails to recruit, collect, and survey their information because you will need to do that on your own. You have to do the survey yourself to get their addresses. Their addresses are not filed when they buy the book, only after the campaign is successful and it's over, then you can ask them for their addresses on a survey done by kickstarted and sent by yourself. So I decided to send all those emails, gathered the list, prepare everything, get the packaging. I think it's really important for you to buy cardboard wrap, to protect your books, plastic pouches to go over the cardboard wraps, the labels, the label printers, and a good stapler, and have a good team to be there with you. I had all the people in my house helping me pick all the books when they arrived. And it was really good to have this amazing team with me until later time, just to be able to have this books delivered on time to everyone. So after your project is done, you go menu and then you're going to go on your reward surveys. And you're going to send the survey to your backers, asking them the information you need from them. So as an example, I didn't send any service for the Sharing Your laws because they don't need to send me any information for the e-book. Already had everyone's email, so I didn't need to send a survey for them as well. But I started serving everyone West for books. So you'll click here to create a survey. And you create a survey with an intro message that you're going to put whatever you want. I just said hi to everyone, talked about the illustrations, talked about when we expected the books to arrive, and then we wanted to prepare for shipping and we'll send them the survey with good timing to have everything on time. So I asked him for full name, address, city, state code, so-called phone number, e-mail, and I ask them to have any other comments or requests they want for me to read. I think only 12 people replied on that one in my case, and they all asked me to sign the books for them. I did that, of course, with a lot of pleasure and happiness to be sending the books to their house with a personalized message. So I recommend you to really think through your survey and sent to everyone with a timely moment for them to send you the answers and you see who's still missing to reply. Until today. It's been more than three months that I launched my Kickstarter, that my books arrive, that I shift my books and I think I have around 20 books of people who never send their addresses to me. I still have them with me. I still hope that they're going to send it someday, but I still keep their books with me. So keep in mind that a lot of people will reply the survey quickly and a lot of people will take time. So it's good that you take some time to send these emails as soon as possible when your project is successfully funded. Another great tip that I can give you is create a hot site, a webpage that informs about your book so that your Kickstarter is not the only point of contact and so that you can continue capturing people's emails because that's gonna be very important for when your book cover. I want to continue selling them on top of all the kick-started purchases. What I did was when your campaign is done, you can change your main page. I change the information and I added this info. If you miss the Kickstarter campaign, join the waiting list on the green button below. When people click on Get on the book, they were directed to my website. Now the website is already done and changed is a website that is complete. I added the I added e-commerce on this website, so I sold the book, I sell different things. But mainly it was just the title, a call to action asking people to subscribe for their email. They become our database on our website, we had more than 300 people subscribed before launching the book. So another database that we created, here, we just show all the beautiful images of the book, all the pages, all the information that people needed to know for them. I also added the reveals. I connected our Instagram page to become very professional. And if people wanted to send comments or suggestions, they still had the chance here. And now my became a store, so they can click it. Loving store, man Clara, we added a lot of different perks. Books, e-books, audio books. We also added the seekers here, there were a success and we create a new sets of posters and postcards for everyone who wanted to buy at our website. This is something I cannot stress the importance of. I really recommend you create your own website on Squarespace is pretty intuitive, quick, but there's a lot of different tools and resources online on the Squarespace website teach you how to do it all on yourself. And it's really easy and fast. And that's it. Later, you can continue doing your marketing work, sharing the word about your bulk. Of course, you're going to be on a waiting time. In my case, I was very anxious and very nervous because I was waiting for this book to arrive and I saw only delays and delays and delays. Men Clara was send the book on time and it still took so much time specially due to COVID. They had a lot of issues that the printer, but in the end, it was all worth it. The books arrived at my house at the end of April. Everything was as we as we expected. All the pages, the end sheets, all the colors, everything was exactly like we dreamed off. And something that I'm going to give us a tip. I think I read the PDF file of this book before sending to the printer around 100 times. Just because I wanted this to arrive at my house with the perfect everything all the details need to be perfect. So I read it and saw all the pages around 100 times. And a tip I can give you is I read the book backwards just because our mind is so fixated on reading something from beginning to end, we're ready to fill out the words because we know I've read it 100 times, but read it backwards. So this way your mind doesn't trick you in filling the words you already know. In reading backwards, I caught two mistakes that haven't seen before. This is a good tip for you to just check and double-check before sending to the printer because this is gonna be your last chance to have it all correctly done. Okay? And that's it. Continue your marketing work, spread the word about your book, be out there. I'm sure you're going to have a huge success in your book is going to be tremendous. I would love to see all your Kickstarter page is up and running supported projects and see where does it go in with everything you learn in this class. If you need anything, send me an email or leave in the comments here on the comments section. And I'm going to be super thrilled to help you in any way. I tend to make your project the best it can be. Next class, I'm going to do the final thoughts and I'll see you there. Goodbye 19. Final Thoughts: Well, that was all that we had. I hope you enjoyed all the lessons. I hope you enjoyed this class. I hope it really, really made you believe and understand that doing a Kickstarter campaign can be very daunting, but it can be very rewarding. And I hope you were able to create a successful Kickstarter campaign page, your link, your pre-launch, your Instagram. And I'm dying to see everything that you have to share here with us. I would love to be able to join our pre-launch. Lean can be able to see your campaign moving forward and sell the successor book is going to bring, be happy for a dream that is coming for fruition. This was something that I got from my Kickstarter. It was just this feeling of mission accomplished and that I had my gym in paper. Now more people were looking at it. And I think you're going to feel the same way just because it's gonna be a very, very special Joiner and you're gonna see from that one, everything is going to be very special. All the answers are going to get all the messages, all the contacts are going to make an, everything you're going to learn, you're going to learn so much Kickstarter is just one part of an amazing and very scary publishing journey. But I'm sure you're going to be very good at it and you're going to be very successful. Complete each of the classes milestones, the Kickstarter checklists, and share everything with us here at the class projects so we can see your success and be able to exchange everything that you've learned with one another. All the questions, all the doubts. Everything that I taught here was from my point of view and everything that I learned in my journey. But I'm dying to see what everyone has learned on your own personal journey because I'm sure there will be so much learnings and mistakes and things you think you should understand better that you are sharing here with us and we're going to all grow together as a group. So thank you so much for being here and cheers for your children's books successful campaign. Hope to see you again soon. Goodbye