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Books, Startups, The Hawaii Project

Diary of a Kickstarter. Day 11.

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Resistance, Steven Pressfield

It’s day 11 of the Kickstarter for The Hawaii Project, April 12. Sunday.

$7,035, 20% of goal, thanks to a generous donation. Still coming in as a trickle. Not going to make it…..

It’s Sunday. Thinking about dialing it back today. I have one main goal for today. Get in touch with book bloggers. So far, I’ve mailed friends, acquaintances, journalists, librarians (every library in the state of Massachusetts believe it or not!), and gazillion other people. But I haven’t sent any to book bloggers, who should be interested, both for their readers and so they could get their blog included in The Hawaii Project. I’ve been meaning to do this since day 2 of the campaign, haven’t done it….

I start to draft an email, built out of the key messages I’ve crafted and been repeating, but tailored for book blogs (I’ve repeated this stuff so much it’s starting to feel stale). One thing I’m going to offer them is to do a guest post. I start looking around at what’s going on in the books world to see if I can draft off of something, make a topical post.

There’s a HUGE controversy going on right now in Science Fiction land around the Hugo Awards. It’s fallen prey to the same political polarization that’s everywhere else too. Just google “Sad Puppies” and you’ll get the picture pretty quick. There is a blog post to be written, about why the “Awards” mentality is fundamentally wrong, and why The Hawaii Project is on better footing in terms of helping readers, but I look up after about 3 hours of web surfing and realize I haven’t sent my mails.

Uh.Oh. I have encountered the dread Resistance, as Steven Pressfield likes to say (btw Read This Book). Procrastination if you will. That force that helps you avoid doing the things you should be doing, maybe because you’re afraid. I realize I’ve been putting this mail off and avoiding it for a long time. Because most everyone I’ve been in contact with so far has some reason to listen to me and hear me out. They’re a friend. Or a journalist who gets paid to listen to people like me pushing a product.

Book bloggers, well, they are the most bookish of people on the internet. I realize I’m afraid of having my work (and myself) judged. Found irrelevant. Found not worthy of mention. Ah, there it is. That’s why it’s taken so long to write this mail. Gotcha. It’s funny the things you can hide from yourself.

Brief Commercial Interruption: If you’re reading this, you may not know what The Hawaii Project is. The Hawaii Project brings you books and book news you’d never have found on your own, by tracking hand-selected sources of great books, uncovering things that match your favorite authors, personal interests and current events, and bringing them to you daily. 10% of our revenue goes to support 3 great literacy non-profits. 

If you think that’s a worthwhile endeavor, I’d appreciate your backing on Kickstarter: http://www.thehawaiiproject.com/kickstarter

OK, now I have that straightened out, I pick 10 blogs, read them so I understand their audience and profile, and fire off the mails pretty quickly. Not so hard after all. I had a quota of mails to send, and to punish myself I make sure I do more than my quota. (btw I’ve written about this too in Do More Than is Required of You).

And close out the day with the first episode of the season for Game of Thrones. Yay!

(music: Sunday is Jazz day at my place. Dexter Gordon’s wonderful Night in Tunisia and other gems here).

Books, Startups, The Hawaii Project

Diary of a Kickstarter. Day 10.

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BlackLizardShort

It’s day 10 of the Kickstarter for The Hawaii Project, April 11. Saturday.

1 new backer yesterday. We’re at $6870, 19% funded (yesterday’s diary entry had a typo btw, we’re at 19%, not 29% (I wish!). Discouraging. But, lots of time left. I’ve heard from enough people that they really want what I’m doing, that I attribute the state of things to my limited marketing talent rather than a lack of market demand.

Today’s Saturday, going to do some work, but also take some downtime. I’m finishing up a “Publisher” page for The Hawaii Project, where a publisher can have a presence inside the experience. I brainstorm with a friend of mine, finalize some things, and send it off. Vaya Con Dios, Publisher page! Bring back some publishers! (the cover image of this post in a Publisher Page for Black Lizard, a crime novel imprint). (Anybody know anybody at Black Lizard btw?)

“A sound mind in a sound body” is attributed to various Greeks & Romans, but whoever said it, it’s good advice. Especially when you’re in those intense work times, you need to exercise. I play in a tennis league, the regularly scheduled matches ensure I play even if I forget to schedule it. I play a singles match and do ok, and a doubles match, and lose, but I’ve had three hours of working out and de-stressing and not thinking about work.

An old acquaintance gets in touch and asks about features for book clubs. Gack! Damn! That’s a whole marketing angle I didn’t chase. Crap. Anybody got a good idea how to get in touch with the hundreds of thousands of book clubs out there in one fell swoop? Me neither. Sounds like “hand-to-hand combat” aka “retail marketing” aka “Do Things That Don’t Scale” is the only way there. Sigh.

Head home, and throw on a James Bond movie (Quantum of Solace, Daniel Craig, seems apropos), and start to mockup another publisher page. Goodnight!

Books, Music, The Hawaii Project

Diary of a Kickstarter – Day 9

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Do The Work

It’s day 9 of the Kickstarter for The Hawaii Project, April 10.

Yay, it’s Friday! Time for the weekend! Oh wait, I’m an entrepreneur. Nose to the grindstone!

Funding is at $6,725, 29% funded, 93 backers, average backing: $72, much higher than my model predicted (more on my model in a post-Kickstarter retrospective post I’m working on). Most of the new backers are people I don’t know personally, an encouraging trend. I think. Still, need some “non-linear” events to make the $ goal, and as you probably know Kickstarter is all-or-nothing.

I’ve pretty much gotten over my mild panic of two days ago. As the title of the great Steven Pressfield book says, Do The Work. Do The Work, Trust The Process, and good things will happen. Maybe not the thing you want, but good things nonetheless. We’ll make the goal, or we won’t. And if we don’t we’ll get up, dust ourselves off, and get back to work. (BTW, I’ve written about handling failure before.) Because we’ve been “doing the work”, we have an enormous amount of marketing material, refined thinking, market awareness and other stuff. If the $ don’t work out, we have all that.

The literary agent/author who was interested in a Founding Author page has seen the mockup and he commits to the reward, which is awesome. It’s the first author I didn’t have a pre-existing relationship with who signs up. Big step. He’s also an agent to many other authors, and he mentions it to them and some of them sign up too! Awesome. He also expresses interest in talking about a publisher page so I create a mockup and more detailed thoughts on that, which takes most of the day. There’s a few details left, will finish that tomorrow.

A big local (Boston) media outfit gets back in touch about coverage with some final questions. I draft a series of responses immediately (immediately!) and get them back. Hopefully that will turn into coverage before too long. I also email a few other journalists I think might be interested in what we’re doing. So far, deafening silence is my response 8).

In the good news / bad news department, the Red Sox beat the Yankees. But it took them til 1 in the morning to do it…..

Today’s music: Songhoy Blues, a west African Stevie Ray Vaughan sounding band. I defy you not to tap your feed to this music.

Books, Music, The Hawaii Project

Diary of a Kickstarter – Day 8

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It’s day 8, the end of the first week of the Kickstarter. I’ve been typing continuously for the last 3 weeks, sending emails (5,000+, literally – of course many via mailing lists), writing journalists, mailing friends, twittering….my carpel tunnel (or RSI or whatever the catchy new name is), is back. wrists hurt and i have to break out the wrist braces again. (note to self: getting old sucks. type less.).

First job of the day is to send a mail to all my beta test users (~150 people) giving them an update on progress and rattling the tin cup. I.e., asking for donations 8). The rattling is becoming a dull roar…I also sent personal notes to all the new backers in the last few days (I always send a personal thank you to them!).

I spent an hour talking with old friends my “kitchen cabinet” for The Hawaii Project, Thomas Jensen (http://twjensen.blogspot.com/) & Lynn Thorsen-Jensen (https://twitter.com/lynnktj). Their assessment is similar to mine but more pointed: current course and speed on backing won’t fund the project. Their counsel – work Facebook and book bloggers more, stop sending bulk mails (aka spamming) and chasing publishers, which I’ve been spending time doing. Up my game on Twitter – so I’ve been doing more (Buffer is a great tool), and different kinds of tweets than I have been doing. And, write a daily diary about the Kickstarter and process and post it. So here we are.

I spent awhile working on trying to get coverage from the American Library Association – which would be good on its own, and would give me a good reason to be in touch with every librarian in the country, many of whose email addresses are available online. They are an important constituency for the project. Also got back in touch with Robert Scoble, who covered my last company. May or may not get his attention, as he’s back from a long break.

I continued a few refinements to the Founding Author page, and have seen some inbound interest from more authors about it. Yay!

Finally, I play some tennis around 9pm. When you’re cranking, physical exercise is important to blow of some steam, keep the body going, and give the brain some time to think about other things.

I’m also using Rescue Time to keep track of how my time is spent. Here’s what it looked like yesterday:

Screen Shot 2015-04-10 at 10.30.44 AM

Today’s Music: Al Di Meola. His jazz/rock/fusion keeps the neurons firing. https://player.spotify.com/artist/3bBWKHfpepPOychRNFzg4q

Books, The Hawaii Project

Diary of a Kickstarter. Day 7

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caesar_right_short-001_600

It’s day 7 of the Kickstarter for The Hawaii Project, April 8.

Early morning good news is we’re on TV! Hawaii news now covers us on the Kickstarter. This is a follow-on from Ryan Ozawa, with whom I had an on-air interview on Hawaii Public Radio the day before we launched.

I’m having a mild panic, as we’re at $6k out of $35k and the big rush at the beginning is over. Current course and speed, we don’t hit our goal. Need press. need donors. need Food. It’s 2pm and I forgot to eat!

More good news. A pretty well known literary agent who shall remain nameless for now, picks up one of the author rewards, which is a branded Author Page. I’m psyched. He’s forward looking and wants to be on the cutting edge. I scramble to implement the page which I’ve had in my head for awhile, it takes me the better part of yesterday and today to get it finished, but this seems like a great investment, as he’s a sounding board as I create something new, and hopefully he can influence his authors to go for it to.

I’m working various journalists I’ve been in touch with with. Following up with them on pieces they’ve written in the books space, or keeping them up to date on what’s happening with THP. Mailed the Wall Street Journal. again. Met with Marilyn Matz, the ceo of Paradigm4 and old friend. Didn’t know she was “bookish”. We had a great chat about why Amazon and Goodreads don’t work for her. She turned me on to the fact that renowned book reviewer James Wood lives in Cambridge not far from where I live, and that he’s married to famous author Claire Messud; I was ignorant of both.

I saw a Coyote in my back yard. Seriously. Hide the cats & dogs.

Researched a bit more on sources for Tshirts, so I can fulfill my rewards when time comes. Inventory issues on the shirt I picked out. Sigh.

Finally, I wanted to learn more about the publishing industry in Boston, so I went to a local publishing networking event. (Bookbuilders of Boston was having pizza, beer and bowling. It was interesting, fascinating, depressing, all at once. The publishing industry is contracting and a few folks had been out of work for almost 2 years. Very educated, smart Ph.Ds in literature are proofreading for a living. But the discussion was lively. Sometimes literary, sometimes quirky (lots of Corgi videos, for some reason). Lots of educational publishing, and some very bad bowling. Home at 9. more email, a stiff drink or 3, then off to bed. Rinse & Repeat tomorrow.

Today’s Music: Irish Music is great working music. Always moving. Today it’s Lunasa: