Substack, I've been neglecting you. There I was thinking I would be in touch constantly, daydreaming about the time we would spend together and pushing lovestruck notes through the bottom of your locker. But instead about 12 days have passed and I’ve said bugger all.
I did not realise quite how much bandwidth it would eat up trying to crowdfund a book about the transcendental power of 80s R&B. I have been re-reading my last post, written hours after campaign launch, panicking about not getting enough traction, and I'm struck by how early it was to be feeling that way but also that I was totally right to be worried.
With 17 days left, I have raised £1,670. That's courtesy of 40 amazing people, who I will never stop thanking. Whatever ails my world, I will always know that they had my back. But the £6,900 target is a whole other matter. It’s in sight, I guess, but across a chasm at the end of a rope bridge that has lost most of its slats. Or if you prefer a wee Premier League football metaphor, we needs 40 points to stay up but it’s approaching Christmas and we’re still not in double figures.
What’s been happening:
Not long after Darth Vader levitated me with his pinkie, I found a crowdfunding expert who didn’t seem like all the other dodgy consultants shortly after launch, offering me the route to Shangri La. He gave me sensible advice on buffing up my campaign page and attracting more visitors, including stuff like extra pictures, clearer headings and more info about backer rewards. He plugged my campaign to his networks and gave me a ton of ‘stuff’ websites who might feature my book. I can’t say this has made a massive difference, but I definitely have a sharper campaign site and his enthusiasm for the project did steady my nerves at a crucial time.
I talked to a pal in Australia who runs a marketing company. He thought the book was definitely a winner but worried about the 30-day timeframe (if you’re not fully funded by then, you get zilch). He pointed out that November is the busiest marketing month in America because of Thanksgiving/Black Friday/Christmas run-up, which had not actually occurred to me. He reckoned I would need to reach 5,000 people a day to find enough believers. Which sounded like a lofty order. But then…
… another friend put me in touch with a PR guy who ran a successful 80s music Kickstarter with his sister. His advice was to tweet like a madman for the rest of the campaign, since that’s how they found people of the right age to love their project. How does a madman tweet, I asked. Ten times a day or more, he said. Christ, I thought. Time to roll up my sleeves. 5,000 engagements a day. I’ve got this.
I’ve been majoring on posts about classic tracks by artists like Change, Chaka, Shannon and Prince. This is the sort of marketing shit that I could easily hate, but it’s great music and it earned me a lot of likes when I @ed at relevant people. This got into some back and forths with fans and industry-types, which has been quite fun even if it has yet to make any real difference.
I’ve been writing to influencers to see if they might give me a big endorsement, including big DJs, rappers and the like. I am still waiting for one to come good. But one of them has to. Right? They’ll know they run the risk of bumping into me on The One Show. If they’d been blanking me in advance, that would be like cringe.
Kickstarter never replied to my original request to be favourited. Did they lose it or something? Having updated my campaign page, I wrote them again at the suggestion of my crowdfunder guy, but so far they’ve ignored that too. Do they do this to most hopefuls? Have I done something really wrong? Do they only show love to projects that look like they’re going to win? I will harass an answer out of them yet. I love the user experience and how everything looks on their platform, but meeting campaigners with silence feels weird.
All this has taken up an insane amount of time over the past couple of weeks – not even mentioning stuff like Instagram/Facebook/Reddit posts and Photoshopping accompanying pictures. I might have hoped for a bit more improvement by now, if I’m honest. I never thought this would be easy, but my experience is that you’ll usually see some pay-off from crazy persistence.
Saying that, I’m now convinced that you need to have a solid fanbase before you launch a crowdfunder. I may have previously joked that this was for teachers’ pets, but what I meant to call them was Kickstarter assassins. You really can’t just rely on friends and family and hope that the rest will come later. I wonder if this might be the single most important thing that decides whether you’re in the 34% of Kickstarters that succeed.
Is there a way back for Operation LetTheMusicPlay? I hooooope soooo. There still has to be a decent chance that I’ll strike a bit of success and then realise I just have to adjust the controls by one degree to come good.
This reminds me of a time I was axe-throwing at a stag party. You had to hit a target from a few feet away, but mine kept going clean over the top. Every single one: lob, lob, lob, lob, lob. The same thing was happening to one of the other guys, and everybody was getting amused by our shitness. But since we’re both nearly 6.5 feet tall, we tried moving the oche back by a couple of paces. After that, we were hitting bulls eyes!
So look out Kickstarter. This may be the words of a madman who has tweeted until he can see blue birds with his eyes closed, but there are still 17 days to go. We surely live in a world where 200 people would be willing to fund a book about how the Prince generation used a few Yamahas and Oberheimers to invent modern pop.
Maybe they’re all at an 80s conference or something. They’ve probably got better things to be doing than spending their days on social media. But I KNOW they are out there somewhere. If you come across any, just tell them I’d very much like a word.
Back my project, you’ll be glad you did! The campaign page is here.