What Happens After a Kickstarter Ends

Kickstarter campaigns are, as my grandmother used to say, like running all over hell’s half-acre. Lots of up-front work. Wrangling cover art, illustrations, formatting, and more. Designing the campaign itself and deciding what backers would like. Pressing the “Launch!” button and hoping you’ve got everything right. Writing updates, meeting goals. The gratitude to perfect strangers taking a chance by becoming a campaign backer for my books (or series!). The thrill of seeing the email that says the campaign was a success and funds are coming. We don’t often talk about what happens after a Kickstarter ends, and what happens next.

First, Relax and Regroup

First, I take a breather. I don’t have to check my campaign multiple times per day to see if someone has a question or posted a comment, or to check the progress. After thanking everyone and telling them what’s coming, I get to relax a bit and feel pleased that I made it across the finish line.

Of course, now I have to do all the things I put off until after the campaign ends, such as shopping, laundry, and other real-life activities.

The Organization Phase

My recent campaign for my space opera romance series was deliberately simple (a lesson learned), so there aren’t an insane number of choices for who gets what. My proverbial hat is off to the beautiful campaigns that have books in many flavors, stickers, bookmarks, art prints, treasure boxes, and the like, because the after-a-Kickstarter work must be tremendous. In my operation, I streamline as much as possible because my only helpers are cats. My adorable little slackers would rather chew on the bookmark’s tassel or sleep in the treasure box than put it together.

Kickstarter tells me who backed the campaign for which level in a report. While it has the data, it doesn’t seem to be designed for ease of use. In the past, I had to poke and prod the spreadsheet by hand to make it cooperate. This time, I got help from an A.I. worker-bee, which is a much less stressful way to go.

While I’m doing that, I also send off for final proof copies of books and other rewards to make sure they look good. I’d hate to send flawed limited-edition books to backers, so this is for my peace of mind.

Out With You, Then — The Delivery Phase

Once the stars are aligned and the spreadsheets tamed, digital rewards — ebooks, coloring pages, etc. — go first. Once I have everything set up, these rewards get sent lickety-split to backers. I notify the backers and send them their goodies and voilá! They’re done.

Paperback books (and someday, hardcover books) go directly from the printer to each individual backer. My campaigns are small enough that print-on-demand services are cost-effective and efficient.

On the other hand, shipping — especially international shipping — is a crap shoot. Some countries are great; some, not so much. Customs and post office assess taxes and fees, and some delivery drivers apparently take their aggressions out on innocent boxes of books.

Both these happen in two waves. Most rewards go out about a month after the campaign ends. A second, smaller wave goes out after backers who used Kickstarter’s pledge-over-time feature, about three-and-a-half months later.

If one of my future campaigns takes off like a rocket and I need to look at print houses and fulfillment services, I will definitely be hiring specialists for that. See above comments about how this would be a tremendous amount of work with only cats as helpers.

Celebrating a Successful Campaign

When everything is out the door and in the hands of backers, all that’s left is for me to mark the campaign as “Delivered!”, we’re done. Hooray! My cats get catnip, I get a meal with friends, and I start contemplating the next campaign.