Kickstarter, GoFundMe or ??

Middle Ground, book dummy 2018 copyright Douglas Stockdale

So while my Canon 5D Mk3 is undergoing “flange back” repairs at Canon, I will have some time this week (hopefully repairs complete this Friday) to evaluate some fund raising alternatives to produce Middle Ground.

The big-daddy of book fund-raising appears to be Kickstarter with it’s all-or-nothing process. Seems like the big contender to Kickstarter is GoFundMe with it’s process of you get what-ever you can raise. Both have various fees, so that has to be taken into account for the amount being raised, so if I up the ante by 10%, I should have the fund-raising expenses mostly covered.

I will have to admit that since I will do the binding of Middle Ground book the actually printing expenses for a small volume leporello book are not that bad. Nevertheless, pre-selling the book to have most of the expenses covered is nice. Likewise, both of these programs might also broaden my presence and open some new book and print markets for me.

I have been following a couple of recent photobook Kickstarter projects (I will also have a couple of really nice photobooks as a result) which have recently been fully funded. This gives me an indication of what incentives and rewards seem to work better than others.

I cannot start a Kickstarter program until I obtain the 5DMk3 and it’s capability to provide HD video, which an info-video appears to be a necessary part of Kickstarter. I might need some help with making this info-video as well, so something else to noodle this week.

The GoFundMe from what I have seen are individuals liking what you are doing and then supporting you get there, with a lot of social driven causes. What I don’t see in most of the GoFundMe projects are any kind of rewards, e.g. books and prints, for your donation such as you find on Kickstarter. So having rewards might be an alternative if I were to go that route.

I have been reviewing some other artist fund-raising programs, but most of these do not appear to help the sponsor achieve their financial investment goals. Not a great prospect for investing the time.

So I have the week to work on this fund-raising strategy, which pushes out my publishing date a little bit.

Cheers!