Wow. My coauthor (Brigitte Yearman, Don’t Say Anything to Anybody, 2017) and I are still reeling from how well her campaign turned out! It ended this Tuesday morning at 153% funded ($5673 of a $3700 goal).
This true-story portrayal of Nazi Germany from a little girl’s perspective will finally hit shelves this May. Because of the support that came in over-goal, we are able to pay our Kickstarter fees, fulfill all rewards, and pay for postage on all the review copies that will be sent out, all without tapping more than a few hundred dollars in our own personal funds.
Through this campaign, our backers made it possible for us to go from a very small local-only book launch to a much more national/global reach:
- “Don’t Say Anything” paperbacks heading to backers in: Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and all over the United States.
- Review copies going to a list of 100 possible purchasing venues: German American Societies, select academic programs, and several therapeutic organizations.
- Paperbacks and e-book versions to be shared with over 30 backers whom we’ve never met. How cool is that?
- 80 backers plus another 2 dozen or so who “aren’t into the internet” and prefer to give privately–over 100 supporters all told!
Because of Brigitte’s Kickstarter campaign, the book will be more polished too. And that lends us more credibility when we shop it to bookstores and university department heads. It will be professionally copy-edited by an editor with decades of experience in the publishing industry and dressed up in a cover crafted by an award-winning graphic designer.
Our backers made all that possible!
Now the fun begins. Facebook and website thank-yous will be posted this weekend, so watch for your name in those lists. We (Brigitte and Anika) are meeting tomorrow to look over the new draft of the Acknowledgements section (with several of your names added) and to polish some Epilogue material that was requested by our beta readers. Early next week, we’ll deliver the manuscript to our copy-editor and set up our initial meeting with our graphic designer.
Our rough timeline looks something like this:
March 13-31 – Copyediting and cover design underway, hopefully complete by end of month. Meanwhile we’re working with CreateSpace to craft our book jacket text and optimize descriptions for the Amazon listing.
April 1-19 – Final files delivered to CreateSpace, who will design our interior pages, register with the Library of Congress, print the paperbacks, and convert the book to Kindle format.
April 20-26 – We expect to see the e-book and Amazon listing posted sometime in this date range. At that point, the book is officially published.
April 26-May 10 – Begin fulfilling all e-book and paperback Kickstarter rewards.
May/June – Arrange local and regional public Book Release event and signings.
Throughout this process, we’ll share some private behind-the-scenes posts with our Kickstarter backers as part of our thank you to them. Once we have a set publication date, we’ll share that here as well—along with information about local and regional book signings.
Now, a quick note to anyone who wanted to support the book or reserve a signed copy but didn’t make it to Kickstarter in time. Please contact Anika at: anika (at) montanacoauthor.com She can make alternate arrangements to include you in this exciting time!
Again, thanks so much everyone. We are so grateful!
-Brigitte and Anika
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