In Search of Sisu Kickstarter Success!

So that’s one (fairly massive) thing crossed off my to-do list.

My crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter ended today with 220 backers and £7,878 pledged which dwarfed my target of £5,000.

I genuinely cried on the first day of the campaign as the wave of positivity and kindness came through. It was a solitary experience writing the thing, so suddenly broadening the net and exposing the project to a wider audience was daunting. Setting a target and asking people to spend their hard-earned money to buy my book scared me.

Establishing and managing a successful crowdfunding campaign is not actually as easy as it may seem. A month before it started I had almost no social media presence and therefore no real platform to publicise what I was doing. It has taken time and effort to successfully get the pieces of the jigsaw together and it was by no means a solo effort. Have a look at this post about my Top 10 tips for a Kickstarter campaign.

I believe in the book of course but seeing others do so has made me feel very fortunate. Writing, editing and now publicising this book has been all about sisu. It was a step into the unknown. The book releases at the start of July (available to buy now) and then I’ve really entered the labyrinth where people’s comments and criticisms will no doubt test my resolve.

I guess it will be a ‘welcome to the world of writing’ and putting your head above the parapet. Or in Lincoln’s words, “You can please some of the people some of the time, all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can never please all of the people all of the time.”