Kickstarter Mastery for Fiction Authors and Expanding Your Book’s IP through Merchandising with Dana Claire

330 / Curious how authors can turn their books and stories into brands and unique products—while actually making the process work for them? Dana Claire shares how she founded The Inkfluence agency and what she’s learned about successful marketing, Kickstarter campaigns, and brand expansion.

-From author to founder: Dana’s journey and the birth of The Inkfluence
-What authors need to know about overseas book production and special editions
-Kickstarter campaign strategies and common mistakes to avoid
-Expanding author IP into collectibles, novelties, and mass market retail
-The power of tracking, simplifying your marketing, and building the right author mindset

✨ This week’s sponsor is Bookfunnel: https://bookfunnel.com

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⚡Links:

• Bookfunnel: https://bookfunnel.com 
• theINKfluence.com
• INKGames.com
• Bookmark Bag:https://bycorinemarie.com/
• Cover Swap Bag: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dafk15Fs4ji/
• Dana Clari DanaClaireBooks.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

I'm a small author. I sell a ton of merchandising items when I go to book events and do signings from iMasks to socks to puzzles. I love selling puzzles clearly because that's part of our line. But I think you can merchandise really at any stage when you have a following and you have a go-to-market strategy.

Jami 0:26

Welcome to Wi-Fi Movement Podcast. I'm Sarah Rosette. And I'm Jamie Albright. And this week on the show we have Dana Clare. Dana Clare. It was so good. It was so good. I was blown away by this interview.

Sara 0:40

It was really good. Dana has started an agency called the Inc. Fluence Agency, and it helps authors do different things: Kickstarters, merchandising, things like that. But mostly, I think it began with the Kickstarters, helping authors.

Jami 0:56

Yeah, and she's helped a lot of authors make a lot of money.

Sara 0:59

Yes, that's true. Yeah. So she has just a lot of information to share about how to set up a Kickstarter, mistakes people have made with Kickstarters.

Jami 1:08

Yeah.

Sara 1:09

And then we do talk about IP and turning that into collectibles and novelties. And they have a spin-off company that they're starting up. So we get into that and some really cool ideas of marketing things that people are doing that are probably beyond most of us right now.

Jami 1:26

It is.

Sara 1:27

But they're very cool.

Jami 1:28

But she's working with Matt Denman from Dungeon Crawler Curl. They have had some real success at a lot of these trade shows with the IP stuff and merchandising. And so it is so interesting. It was a really great interview. It was fun anyway, yeah.

Sara 1:46

Yeah. So I put links in the show notes of a lot of the things she talked about so you can go look at them and see the kind of merchandise stuff that they're talking about. And oh, and we should also mention that BookFunnel is our sponsor for this podcast. We're a little out of sync.

Jami 2:03

Yeah, we've been off for a good week. I mean, we were off for a month, then we came back, then we were off for a week. We're just it's summer, y'all.

Sara 2:10

It's it's August, so it's still summer. Yeah.

Jami 2:13

Or the pit of hell, as I like to refer to it.

Sara 2:16

Especially in Houston. It's not just hot, it's miserable hot.

Jami 2:19

Yeah. So what have you been doing? Not a whole lot. I got a dog. Okay, so y'all know I have Tug. This is a long story. Yeah, it's a long story. I'm gonna make it short. Never in my life have I ever. But no, I just meant it's you've got the whole background of the dog. So Tug is a horrible dog. Y'all know that y'all have heard him. He doesn't do what I say.

Sara 2:41

He's a popular podcast guest.

Jami 2:43

Yes. But he's also really sweet and adorable and all the stuff. But I have always wanted a standard poodle, always, like my whole life. And someone in the little town next to my mom and dad's was giving theirs away because they're downsizing and everything. And he's six years old and he was a breeder. And then three years ago they neutered him. And he is so sweet. But he's also it's been an issue. It's been a challenge. He's a challenging dog. He's been with the same family for six years. He's been with us now, not even two weeks. But he's done some things that I'm like, how the heck did he do that? We left him in the bathroom while we went to church one day. We came home and it turned on the water. He clogged up the sink and turned on the water. And we had everything out of there. It was crazy. I had a camera that I had mounted or put up high so I could watch him. He somehow got the camera and chewed up the wires. He's having a little separation anxiety, and I get it. But this week, literally, I have been home every day. I've gone out maybe an hour or two on a couple of days, but I've been home. And so this week I've been doing a lot of social media stuff. I've filmed a lot of videos. So I have a lot of drafts, which is good because I never have any. I'm not sure how those are working. I don't know. They're doing well on social media, but I don't know if that maintenance converts to sales. It's hard to tell. It's hard to tell. I will say that my I'm still seeing an increase in sales from the TikTok influencer that did the book. I think I'm about 20 sales a day. So that's 10 sales over what I normally would be. Something like that. That's good. Um, it's still good. I'm still happy. It's three times now. We're to three times what I spent. So I'm happy with it. Another one, another TikTok influencer that I hired, she is she was 200 pages into the book yesterday. So she'll probably do a video at some point, maybe this weekend or next week. So I don't know. I don't know how she her she doesn't have quite as many followers. And some of her videos get lots of saves and some don't. And it kind of depends on the type of video. But for what I was paying her, I felt like it was a it was good to take the especially good. Well, this other one did to take the chance and see. And then the third one, oh no, she got the book, is all I know. And so we'll see how that goes. But yeah, that's what's been going on with me. Not much. Listen to what he did this morning. I'll tell y'all this. My Tug, my previous dog was pooping, and the new dog, Dak is his name, came up, hacked his leg, and peed all over Tug's back before nine o'clock this morning. I had to bathe Tug outside. That is outrageous. You just were not prepared for this. I was and it's my own fault. I'm like, whose idea was it to get this dog? But yeah, it's fine.

Sara 5:56

Well, so Deb, I told you that the first dog we ever owned, we lived in a little tiny house. It was a rental. We brought the dog home. It was like it was taking in a dog, so it was full grown, not a puppy. Right. And we we everywhere we left it when we went to leave, it could get out. But we put him in the basement one time. We had a little finished basement area with the laundry and stuff. And we came home and he was in the backyard. And we were like, what? And the door was still closed, all the windows were locked. What's going on? And our basement had these little tiny windows. And the dryer vent went out of one of them. And he had popped the dryer vent off and wiggled out. And he was a big dog. It was a little window. And we were like, okay, we should have called him Houdini. I don't know why we what we were thinking, but so I sympathize. But think of all the newsletter fodder. You're getting it. I know. I but I can see on your face you don't think it might be worth it.

Jami 6:49

Oh, one one writer thing that came my audio book is now available. Did I mention I don't know? I had gotten the well, I had seen it, but I hadn't gotten the notice that it was live. But yeah, it's live and it's I'm selling copies and I haven't really even advertised it. Uh that's what I'm gonna do today while I'm sitting here is do some clips from it and stuff. But yeah, yeah.

Sara 7:14

I have a feeling that the audio is gonna resonate. I think your target audience has a lot of listeners. Yeah. All right, so that's me. What's going on? We went out of town last week. We were gone. We recorded it in advance, so that's why we're a little out of sync with all this. We went to Wyoming, went to Cheyenne and Laramie, then we drove up to Sheridan because we knew some people there, and we went to and a lot of people told us you need to go see Sheridan. So we went up there. There were fires everywhere. So it was really hazy, so we couldn't really see the mountains really well. But we went ahead and drove into them, and it was gorgeous. We drove through, I'd never heard of Bighorn Canyon, which we drove through to get to Yellowstone. Bighorn National Park, I think is what it was. And it was beautiful. You went up into the alpine meadow, and then on the same drive, you went down into these, you could see these big huge canyons from the road, and then you drove down into the canyon and came out through like all the red the landscape change was just beautiful and amazing. We saw moose, deer. We got to Yellowstone. We went there for part of the time, saw bison and the hot springs and the geysers. It was crazy. We were exhausted. Exhausted from all that driving.

Jami 8:30

Planchar butt in the sand kind of vacation.

Sara 8:33

No, but we were in the car a lot because it was I guess when you see the West, you just have to be in the car a lot, you know. Or on horseback, yeah. And that's not happening for me. I'm just not a good horseback rider. I have tried. I am a Texan girl, so I have tried riding horses, and they terrified me as a little girl. So I've not been up for that. But yeah, it was beautiful. We want to go back. We wanted to go down and see Grand Detonts, but it was just we just didn't have enough time. So we're like, we'll weigh it, go back, do that, and maybe try and do glacier.

Jami 9:06

National Park. Yeah.

Sara 9:07

Yeah, maybe. I don't know. That would be a huge road trip too. So we'll see. But it was great. Loved it. Highly recommend five stars, even with fires. Yeah, awesome.

Jami 9:18

And just to as far as the fires go, just know that if you're in the path of the fire, they're getting close. Gosh, we're thinking about you and we hope you're safe. So yeah.

Sara 9:28

Yeah, some of the areas we drove through had you could tell there there had been a fire there and they were just wiped out. It was like in the national forest, so there were not hardly any houses or buildings, but just devastation. And we didn't know if they would let us into Yellowstone. We checked and it didn't say it was closed, so we drove. And when we went in, we were like, What is all this smoke? And the woman who was at the gate and took our gave us our pass, she said, So it could be Canada, it could be she named off four or five places, and she was like, Take your pick, it's just blowing from all over. And it was thick smoke. I was surprised they even let us in, you know. Yeah.

Jami 10:07

This month's sponsor is BookFunnel, and BookFunnel is a book delivery service built for authors. It sends ebooks and audiobooks to readers on any device, powers giveaways and group promos and gets your arcs out for reviews. It also handles the reader tech questions. Thank you, Jesus. So you don't have to. And you can find out more at bookfunnel.com.

Sara 10:36

Yes, we highly recommend them. We both use BookFunnel and just love their consistency and their willingness to work with authors and just provide new features all the time.

Jami 10:48

I really feel like the consistency, like that is so underrated in this business right now. In the world. In a world of inconsistencies, they are just as consistent as the day is long.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

So yeah, we love.

Sara 11:03

We do. And thanks to all our continuing supporters. We don't have any supporters this week, but we really appreciate the supporters that have stuck with us and are just so faithful. And so if you want to support the podcast, you can go to wish I known for writers.com/slash support and you can find us there, or you can also find us on Substack. And when you do that, you'll get a shout-out on the podcast and access to our backlist of supporter episodes. If you've gotten value from the podcast and would like to send value back to us, that's one way you can do it. So we appreciate that.

Jami 11:37

Yeah. For less than a, what does Joanna say? A coffee a week or something? Oh yeah.

Sara 11:40

It's not a huge ask, but it does make a huge difference to us. It really does.

Jami 11:45

It does. Yeah. We all everybody wants to know people appreciate what you're doing. So yeah, we appreciate it. And we just have a huge if you're new to listening, we have a huge backlist podcasts that are still relevant. And so yeah, you can find those on the website or in the podcast link or podcast app. So yeah.

Sara 12:09

Yep. And you guys can text us if you have something you want us to talk about. If you have questions for us, we would love to do another QA type episode. So let us know your thoughts and questions, and we can put something together. All right. We should get on with the episode. All right. Here is Dana. Today we're really excited to have Dana Clare here. How are you doing today?

SPEAKER_03 12:29

Great. Thanks for having me, ladies.

Sara 12:31

We're glad to have you back. Let me read your bio in case people aren't familiar with you, and then we'll jump into the questions. Dana Clare is an award-winning young adult author and accomplished marketing professional who founded the Inc.Fluence, a premiere agency dedicated to empowering authors with world-class design, global printing, IP expansion, and strategic support to help them build lasting literary empires. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 12:56

I think that's my old bio. I can't wait to tell you what's added to that bio. Okay.

Jami 13:01

Well, we can't wait to hear it. But first, tell us how you get started like working with authors.

SPEAKER_03 13:06

Yeah. I as we mentioned, I'm an author. So about six years ago during the pandemic, which I can't believe it was six years ago, right? Oh wild. Time just flies. I had been out of work and I was an English major and got back to my roots of writing and finally published my first book. And when I got into the industry, I just noticed that there were some holes in overseas production. So I was making these special edition books with the sprayed edges and the foil. And this was before it became really a fad and a trend on book in Bookstagram. And people asked me at events, who did this? Where did you get this done? And I was like, I did it actually. And that was really what led me to the influence was starting to help some authors. And I didn't start with two shabby authors, Melanie Harlow, Curt Michaels, and Amy Dawes were my first three clients. So it was a pretty amazing opportunity with some fabulous human beings. Yes. And they just told other people, and those people told their friends. And before you knew it, in six months, I had a full company. That's amazing.

Jami 14:17

That's so fantastic.

Sara 14:19

Love it that it came from you being an author. We love it when people actually know know that side of the business and start that way. Because you seem the those people have the best understanding of what's going on, I think.

SPEAKER_03 14:30

Yeah. Because you live the pain points. You know what it feels like to spend all the money if you were doing it stateside on a special edition. And they're gorgeous and it's great, but there's not a lot of margin there, and it's a lot of design. So it was really exciting to do something that I've done. I've been an importer since I was 23. And I don't want to brag, but I'm 46. So it's been quite good. A little bit of Botox and some face cream. In 23, 24 years of working overseas and having that expertise and being able to bring that to an industry I'm very passionate about, with who I consider almost co-workers, right? Because being an author is a lonely world. So your author friends are your co-workers, because you get to talk about all the things you're doing, being able to help them and really elevate their business was important to me.

Sara 15:25

What do you wish authors knew about what you do? Because that's we don't have a whole lot of knowledge about this type of import-export type thing. No, no.

Jami 15:33

Yeah. And I think just influence in general, like this is your opportunity, just tell us everything about influence. We want to know it all.

SPEAKER_03 15:40

Yeah. It just organically just took on a life of its own. Before we started recording, Jamie and Sarah and I were talking about how, as an author, you have characters and you might plot it out or outline it, and you're like, this is what they're going to do. And then you start writing, you're like, oh no, they took a life of their own. They've decided to change the story. And I really feel like that's what happened with the influence. I just really wanted to help people and maybe make some additional money on the side. At the time, I was vice president of sales for a SaaS company. So I had a big day job. Um, but I really loved this industry. So I did start with special editions, helping them print and manufacture overseas and bring them into the states at a lower cost and a higher quality. But from there, people were asking, hey, can you also do the design? Can you also do the fulfillment? Can you do the campaign management on Kickstarter that I want to run this on? And I was like, why not? I can do anything. I always have the, I can do anything mentality. And because my love language is acts of service, I always want to serve my community. And that was really how it started and grew exponentially by those areas. So design services, we do everything from special edition design to storyboards and building out campaign design. And then we do Kickstarter campaigns so we help people crowdfund. We're a partner of Kickstarters now. We're the number one Kickstarter campaign management company in the publishing industry, which is wild. We've done 85 campaigns.

Jami 17:18

It's crazy. Successful campaigns, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:22

Yes. We have a 99.9% success rate. We only had one campaign that didn't fund, and it was not in the publishing industry. We took a campaign outside the publishing industry, which looking back, it probably shouldn't have done that, but you don't know till you do. And then also a book production. Our main thing is manufacturing overseas. And with that, we grew a second company, which started at the end of last year, early this year. And now we have a company called Ink Games Publishing, where we take IP and we expand it into novelties, games, and anything collectible. So collectible items, shelf-worthy items. And as of Monday, we are now in mass market. So you could walk into a books a million and you'll be able to see Ink Games products.

Jami 18:13

That is crazy. That is, I've just got chills. That is amazing. Yeah. Wild.

Sara 18:19

So what you started out doing, helping authors do their Kickstarters, that was a huge need that many authors wanted to do it, and we just don't have the time. But there's also novelty products. That's something that authors are interested in, and we would love to do it, but it's usually just such a big like you've got to figure out how to do it, and then you've got to do the manufacturing and the design and all that. So can you tell us a little bit more about that? I think people would be interested in that.

SPEAKER_03 18:45

Yeah, so Ink Games is a licensing and consumer goods company. So we're Inkfluences All Service. So everything we do at Influences service-based design, manufacturing, Kickstarter services, Ink Games is all product. One of our IPs or is Dungeon Crawler Carl. I don't know if you guys have it's everywhere. So this is one of the products that's in stores. It's a retro lunch tin, and but it's a great shelf trophy too. It can sit by all your folks. So we will license that out and then bring it into stores. So it's a little different. You can't necessarily come to us and say, hey, I've always wanted to do a blanket or tumblers, and then we do it for you on Ink Game side. Ink fluence can do that actually. If you have any merchandising that you want to do, that's a service. We can do that for what we're licensing, where we're putting the money out and we're working with the mass market. We're we're really not going to them. We're actually having people come to us. We just got fourth wing. So fourth wing will be in stores. I know. I'm very excited about that. Dungeon Crawler Carl's been really amazing. I actually have we have a puzzle set that looks like a special edition, but it's a 500 wooden piece puzzle. We were just at an event with Matt, and people sat down at our table and put together the puzzle day one, and we were shocked. Yeah. That's crazy. That is so cool. Yeah. In fact, you can kind of see it. See where my finger is? Yeah. That's me trying to put it together. I am not the best puzzler, but I'm doing my I'm doing my darndest. So that's pretty much what ink games is. So we have licenses that we've obtained through mutual contacts or through literary agents or even merchandising agents for some bigger IP. So it's been that's been really fun. That's where I've been focusing a lot of my time. And I mentioned I've been traveling a lot and it's been for ink game events.

SPEAKER_02 20:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:47

Wow. Incredible.

Sara 20:48

This is I love hearing about stuff like this because it just shows you what's possible.

SPEAKER_03 20:52

Yeah. And what to dream. One of the things that I always talk about is brand identity and IP expansion. So Disney used to be a client many moons ago. And I love, I always say the Disney playbook. I love the Disney playbook. They don't just put out a movie, they put out a brand. So whether it is Aladdin or whatever the movie is, they're going to have pajamas and tumblers and blankets and all of the products that are going to surround and elevate the book, or not the book, the movie or the book. And that's where this comes from. Think of all the cool adaptations that have happened lately. Every summer after to every year after on Amazon, off campus by L Kennedy, right? These things are blowing up, but they're not blowing up with the IP expansion that they could be. It's a hot market. So I want authors to think more about when you're launching your book, think more about how you're launching your brand or your series.

Sara 21:51

Right. Let's talk about that a little bit because what type of author, like this, I know that there's a certain type of author. That is ready for this, who would that be?

SPEAKER_03 22:03

Yeah, ink games is a little different than even merchandising because you could I merchandise for me, and I'm a small author. I sell a ton of merchandising items when I go to book events and do signings from eye masks to socks to puzzles. I love selling puzzles, clearly, because that's part of our line. But I think you can merchandise really at any stage when you have a following and you have a go-to-market strategy. I'm a first-time author. Okay, build that list a little bit if this is your debut. Because you're not gonna come out and sell 5,000 books day one. But if you're going to book two or book three, it's the same mentality that I say when you have, when am I ready for special editions? Whenever you're ready. That's just another product and skew in your line. So I wouldn't necessarily say a brand new author should launch a bunch of merchandise because I think you potentially might have some issues selling. We want to make sure your go-to-market strategy is strong. But I think for your second, third, or your next series, it's a great way to amplify that series and then create more of a brand around it. As far as mass market and retail, that's gonna be how it would be at any stage in your career. Mass market's gonna be interested in you when you have an audience. It is. Think about all of the authors that got eaten up into all these contracts from TikTok.

SPEAKER_02 23:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:28

Right? Remember when you had all of these different publishing houses going to these book talk sensations, meaning like we want your print rights. And it's the same thing. I wish they said we want your print rights and we want your merchandising rights, because that would be great. And we are starting to work with publishing houses a little bit more on their merching rights, merchandising rights and how to expand that because I believe we are in a great space for collectibles and novelties for IP for books. I just don't think that we are leveraging enough.

Jami 24:00

Yeah, that's true. When you think about like the fourth wing and dungeon crawler carl curl, there are people that are just they want those things. They want those things on their shelves, in their hands. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:13

Yeah. I love that. We um one of the items that we have for Dungeon Crawler Carl is Mongo. He's a pet in the storyline. He's a dinosaur pet. And we have him as a building brick set. We call them story builds. Yeah. And we built him, he's 636 pieces, but we built him, and everybody at the event that we just came back from was playing with him. They were like moving his hands. Somebody put him on a beach pose, holding his chin up. It was adorable. And think about how popular Legos are. Building brick sets are huge. So, like, that's another great one. We've got Taryn and Adarna on a mountaintop building brick set that we're coming out with in Q4. So for holiday. Yeah. So there's so much we can do, ladies, in this industry. I'm excited.

Jami 25:06

I just love how you're not limiting yourself or the authors. It's it feels like, well, let's try this, let's do this. Well, what do you see? What do you see authors doing in this space that they think they need to do, but it's not really producing results?

SPEAKER_03 25:23

I think they're spreading themselves out too thin. In general, if somebody asks me what would be your best advice to authors is for them to simplify their marketing plans and their sales strategies and then do the thing that they do well better instead of doing so much. I think there are things that are important, newsletters, social, but I don't think you need to be on every social site or sending out four to six newsletters a month. You have to figure out what that looks like for you. I also think authors aren't journaling their plans. And I say journaling because it feels like a safer word than go-to-market strategies. But it is, they should be writing what they're and go-to-market strategy is just a term that we use in marketing. Yeah. They're go-to-market. How are you bringing your book, your product, whatever it is to the marketplace? And what does that look like? 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. And then give yourself a schedule and an outline and stick to it. Just don't take on more than you can. And I think that's really hard for authors to say no. They want to say yes to so much because they are so excited. But at the same time, they don't want to miss an opportunity. No, and I get that, but I think you end up missing opportunities when you do too much. And that would be my biggest advice is just reel it in and do the things that you can do. I'll give you an example of myself because I am not immune to this. I am not good on TikTok. My staff makes fun of me. I don't really know how to use it. I don't know how to I can't I want to use it on the web. It's not good on the web. So I'm not on TikTok. I tried it for six months. I it didn't, I barely had anyone viewing any of my things because it was just too time consuming. I didn't really like doing it. It didn't appeal to my marketing strategies. It's something that I ended up not doing anymore. And it was great. And I just focus on Instagram and my newsletter. And those are the two areas that I grow and I track the growth. So something that we talk about in marketing and sales is KPIs. It's key performance indicators. Every month are authors tracking their growth. Not really, but they should. We need to know what's working, what's not working. And just knowing that last month you had a thousand followers on Instagram or 500 on your newsletter, and that you grew to 575 or you grew to 1500, that will help you be able to grow more because then you can define and depict how you were able to make those moves and transitions. If you're not tracking it, you just don't know and you're flying by the seat of your pants. And that's why my biggest advice is always to do less and then whatever you're doing, just do that well.

Jami 28:08

Yeah.

Sara 28:09

That's great. I think a lot of authors, we might look at that and say, oh, I only got 25 new followers on this account, or I only got 10 new newsletter subscribers. We and we're like, we discount the oh, that's not important enough to track, really.

SPEAKER_03 28:23

But it is, right? Oh gosh, it's so important. You don't know the difference from month over month. I don't care if it's 10 and 5, 20, and it goes back to 10 or 5. You need the data points to be able to make decisions or to to see patterns. It's my husband, I love my husband. He's my my my man, I love him, he's the best guy in the whole world. But he'll be like, I felt good in the last month. And I'll say, I'll have you written down like when you didn't feel good, something to bring to the doctor, like some data points. Meanwhile, he only hasn't felt good for three days, ladies. I love my husband, but yeah. So he'll probably kill me if he ever saw this because he'll be like, man. But if he tracked it, he'd have those data points to be able to be like, oh, it's really only been four days. Yeah, yeah. I'm dehydrated, and that's why I have these headaches for the last like it. There is some, it sounds so simple, but tracking those metrics are really going to help you learn and better understand. And 10, 20 more followers or subscribers, you didn't have them the month before. Congratulations. Small wins are still wins.

Sara 29:35

Yeah, exactly. What are some of the most common mistakes with either the Kickstarters or the merchandising? Oh God, we have more than how long do we have?

SPEAKER_03 29:47

Okay, Kickstarter, I'll start there. Because I would say this is the biggest mistake I see is not budgeting. So you'll think of this product cost X, and then that's all you put in your budget. What about the packing, the shipping, the tape, your time? Like all of these things cost money and they should be part of your spreadsheet or your cost analysis and your objective. It depends what your objective is as well. But that's like what I see as the biggest mistake. People forget about shipping or packing materials or their time. For a greatest example is they'll say, I'm gonna do the fulfillment, and then they end up having 200 backers. Yeah. That's a lot of time to do fulfillment. Yeah.

Sara 30:38

That's a lot of time you're not writing or whatever you don't normally do.

SPEAKER_03 30:42

Marketing or moving the needle. Um, I was one of those authors. I've ran three Kickstarters, and my first Kickstarter, I think I did about 5,000. My second, I did 20. And for the life of me, I cannot remember what I did for my third, but something around 20. And the one that I, the first one that I did at 20, I was like, oh, I'll do it. Because the first one I did at 5,000 was only 72 backers. And it was super easy. I think my girlfriend came over and we had pizza and wine and we did it in one night and it was fun. But then when I did 20,000, I had over 200 backers and I was like, oh, this isn't fun. Yeah. I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this. So that's those are the things that you don't think about when you're doing the budgeting. We on our website, we have webinars where we go over this. So I always say, do your education and your research, back a Kickstarter campaign, see what the experience is like so that you can, from a first party standpoint, have feedback. What did you like? What didn't you like? So those are the things I would say most common mistakes are going into it thinking you're gonna do six figures. You're not. You might depends who you are, but probably not. Not your first one. You could build to that, not budgeting very well because you're not thinking about the little things because you haven't gone through the experience. And then three, just not doing enough research, becoming part of the ecosystem as a backer, creating experience before becoming a user. And I think that's really very important.

Jami 32:14

Do you recommend people have multiple tiers? I think that's what scares people off sometimes is having to either create new content or create new items to give to the back.

SPEAKER_03 32:27

I like the KISS method, and I tell all my clients this keep it simple, sweetheart. Yeah. Keep it simple. Just keep it simple because one, you don't want to overconfuse your audience. Right. You're gonna have to nurture them and explain what Kickstarter is and be the expert on it so they know how to utilize it. Maybe 50% of your audience is on Kickstarter, maybe 25% of your audience is on Kickstarter. So how do you convert them over? And it is important to have an audience. That's another misconception. You cannot go into Kickstarter and not have an audience because you won't, it won't translate at all. So I would say for the tiers, figure out what your thing is. What's the main thing you're gonna give away? Or not give away. You're no one's giving anything away. Scratch that one. No giveaways. This is all paid for. No, what's your main thing? Is it the first book? Is it all four books in a slipcase? Whatever it is, that's your median tier. Yeah. And have at least one tier that's an entry-level bear, low barrier to entry. So something around $10, $25 max. And then have a high tier. So the main item with some extras. Those extras can be pins, they can be bookmarks, they could be stickers. Keep it light so that your shipping doesn't cost a lot.

SPEAKER_02 33:48

Right.

SPEAKER_03 33:48

And then so those are three. And I'd say a minimum of three tiers. I really like a minimum of four, but three is fine. And then I would say a max of 10.

Jami 33:59

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:00

I've seen campaigns where they have 20 rewards. And the biggest complaint is I do not understand this.

Sara 34:07

From the reader going to look at it. There's too many things, right? Yeah. Yeah. What do you think about stretch goals?

SPEAKER_03 34:14

Love stretch goals. Yeah. You want to fund fast. That is the big thing. Fund fast so your algorithms pick up. Right. And then use stretch goals to move the needle. So when you set your goal, of course, budget, and we want to make sure that you make the money you need to make the product so that the Kickstarter doesn't fail. But also set it around what your budget actually is so that you can use stretch goals to make your margins and make those very strategic. Those should never be anything that way because you can't add any more weight to shipping. Think of things like bookmarks or stickers or a special edition, adding a ribbon bookmark, or adding art prints, or adding art inside illustrations or anything that enhances potentially the rewards you already have or digital content. Write an extra chapter, give an extra epilogue, do a side character that as a main story have its own chapter. There's so many things you can do that might cost time, but they're not going to be physical. Allow somebody to name a character in one of your next books.

SPEAKER_02 35:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:21

Those are all great. Yeah. There's so much you can do outside of making it a physical item.

Sara 35:27

Yeah. For mine, one of my stretch goals on the first one I did was to make the map inside color. Yeah. So it was just one page. But then I ended up doing more color because it worked out. But yeah, that's an easy thing to do. We're getting close to the end of the time, but what are your most interesting or coolest things you've seen people do at Kickstarter?

SPEAKER_03 35:48

Oh gosh. I'll talk about Matt because Matt did something really cool. And I just adore him. He's the best. He he would kill you for $666 in one of his. Oh my gosh. I love it. $777. He's going to bring you back to life. That is next level. I love it. I love that. That one's really cool. That was a digital item that I love. A physical item that was fun and wonky. Kat Singleton, we ran her campaign and she did candles that smelled like the main character, the men, in all the books. That's really good. Yeah. And our book Pat Girlies love their candles. So that was a cool one.

Jami 36:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:34

We have Penny Reed book was about a woman. I think she owned a yarn studio, or it was about yarn, something like that. But it was because her best friend actually had a craft shop and she made a special dyed color yarn for the campaign. So and and remember book bookstagrammers, book talkers, book lovers, crafting is a big crossover. They loved it. And you got this special PMS matched yarn that was sold nowhere else except for this campaign. That was really cool. Yeah. So there's so many things that you can do. You could, if you're an author that has a brand that could partner with another brand, we just we ran one for Julia Quinn in February, and that's what we did for her. She partnered with two brands and made a specific for the campaign, Julia Quinn. It's a bookmark purse. It's called by Corinne Marie. So they're bags that are made with the bookmark? They're bookmarks, but they have a chain. So you can put your book over it. Oh my god. I love it. Isn't that cool?

Jami 37:45

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 37:46

It's so neat. It's such a like neat, cool, girly item. And you can put your bag over it. So that was really neat. We did Ink Games did a partnership with Penelope Douglas. And we have a trademarked bag called cover swap bags. And you can take the if I can show you, it's really cool. Yeah. You can take the cover of the crossbody bag. Let's say you were in the mood for Jane Eyre bag, but you were like, oh, I'm kind of feeling Withering Heights today. You then could take Withering Heights, or this is the Pride and Prejudice. Withering Heights, we have too. You could put Pride and Prejudice on it. And now with the simple snap, you have Pride and Prejudice. Pride and Prejudice crossbody bag.

Jami 38:34

That is adorable. Isn't that fun?

SPEAKER_03 38:36

Wow. Fourth weight bag is coming out too.

Jami 38:39

Yeah.

Sara 38:40

Wow. I'll put links to those in the show notes so people can go look just for ideas.

SPEAKER_03 38:45

Yes. I love these. We have so many orders for these. They're in production right now that we've outsold what we're in production for. Wow.

Jami 38:56

Yeah. I can see why. So cute. That's a book girly's dream right there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:02

And to be able to throw the that was so dramatic, but being able to put whatever cover you want on. Say you're going to a book signing with Rebecca Yarros and you can put your fourth one cover on.

Jami 39:12

Yeah. Awesome. That's so good. This has been amazing. We could talk forever. But tell us what you think. I want two questions. What you think you've done to set yourself up for success? What characteristics in an author do you see that are successful with Inkfluence or Ink Games? What are those characteristics do you think?

SPEAKER_03 39:31

Yeah, I think just anybody who's willing to try to think about their brand like any other consumer product brand. That's the I think I don't know if it's a characteristic. I think it's a mindset, right? I think the mindset more than anything. Yeah. Yeah. It's if you've got that mindset, which everyone should, but I understand there's definitely some imposter syndromes that might hold people back. But truly, we are a brand with products. Those are the best fits for us because that's where we can take you and elevate you, whether it's our services or licensing products and getting it into mass market. I forgot the first question. The other one was what have you done to set yourself up for success? I mean, surround myself with the most amazing humans. Yeah. It's the the my staff makes a difference, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. My staff is incredible. We are a service. We are here to serve our community. And there's not a soul that I've hired that doesn't have that same mantra and mindset. So it's always our authors first. And we started this, it'll be our from the beginning of this podcast till now about talking about how me being an author has been really helpful. And I think because of that, I know the pain points and I know what value propositions we bring to the table. So I'm really able to help and empathize with all of our clients with where they're at and in what stage they're at, too. So I think success for me has really been defined by the people around me and then the opportunities that have I've been given by Matt and Rebecca Yarros and the Entangled team and Books A Million and all of the mass market retailers that have shown interest. I just blessed. I'm really grateful for that. So I think it's the people around me that have really made the success of the company. I don't feel like it's me. I feel like it's us.

unknown 41:23

Yeah.

Jami 41:24

Excellent. Excellent.

SPEAKER_03 41:25

Tell everybody where they can find out about influence, ink gang, all the things. Okay. So you can find out about ink games publishing at inkgamespublishing.com. And then Instagram, follow our Instagram because it's so fun. We do so many events. We're really interactive there. And then the influence is the influence.com. Our Instagram is the influence agency. So you can find us there. We have all of our Kickstarter stuff on there, lots of education there as well. And then you can find me at Dana Clare Books if you want to see some of my personal stuff and my book things. And that's where I live.

Jami 42:02

All right. Very good. Very good. Thank you for being here. This has been amazing.

SPEAKER_03 42:07

Thanks for having me, ladies. I love it. It's been so nice seeing you guys and catching up and just appreciate your time. No problem.

Sara 42:14

Thanks for being here. We appreciate it. And we will have all those links in the show notes. And if you want to support the podcast, you could go to wishidknow.com. And don't forget our sponsored book funnel that we'll see everybody next week. Bye bye.