Kickstarter Wows, Whoas and Woes

One of the things that I wanted to make explicitly clear in my Kickstarter video was that I have been truly blessed by those close to me.  The Tellest series has always done fairly well, and beaten my expectations thanks to friends and family who help to spread the word, and believe in the material.

Even in spite of that knowledge, it still blows me away to have $843 pledged already in less than a week.  At this point, it’s almost a sure thing that enough money will be raised to be successful.  At some points over the last few days, the project’s projections surged past $6,000!

Still, there are some things I’ve learned about this campaign.

First and foremost, Tellest is so out of left field that I can’t possibly result to mimicry to try and emulate someone else’s success.  Do a search for medieval superheroes and you might find some pictures of the Avengers re-imagined in period-piece armor and costumes.  This makes it incredibly hard to promote the Kickstarter project.  It is nice to know that the Tellest books are pretty much one-of-a-kind though.  Seriously, why has nobody ever thought of this before?

Second, it is really hard for a publishing project to find any traction on Kickstarter.  Seriously, I picked the wrong hobby!  While indie gaming projects are raking in high 5-figure numbers (and sometimes low 6-figure), I’m scrounging for what I consider to be on the low end.

Whereas friends, family, and people who are already keen on the Tellest books have graciously given their time and their contributions to the Kickstarter, the real challenge is finding the people out there that don’t know they’re fans yet.  The Enemy Within was popular on Kickstarter for a day or two before it got buried on the site.  The only hope at this point is some kind of grass-roots campaign to try and pick up the pace.  Maybe, if I’m extremely lucky, the Kickstarter staff will reevaluate my project and feature it at some point over the next week or so.

In the meantime, I’ll just keep chugging along.  Every now and then I’ll blow up Facebook or Twitter, trying to get that one extra person that might be toeing the line.  There’s still a whole lot of time for the pace to go either way.  Who knows?  The project might nosedive at this point and never find its feet again.  In any case, this has been a very interesting learning experience.  It’ll be something I’ll remember either way.

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Michael DeAngelo

Michael is the creator of the Tellest brand of fantasy novels and stories. He is actively seeking to expand the world of Tellest to be accessible to everyone.