Kickstarter: Crowdfunding Your Creativity

Have a creative project you're passionate about don't know how to make it happen? Well then, you should try Kickstarter.

Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform for creative projects. Some categories include art, comics, games, film, and writing and publishing. Founded in 2009, Kickstarter has raised more than $75 million dollars for more than 10,000 projects.

The process is simple. You submit your idea to Kickstarter, and wait to see if they accept it for their website. If you are accepted, you have as much time as you need to set up your page. Along with providing a description of the project, they recommend making a video to entice more potential backers.

There are no donors in Kickstarter. Instead, anyone who gives you money is a backer, and you are expected to offer them some sort of reward for the money they give you. Most projects have a range of rewards, depending on how much money a person gives. Rewards tend to be related to the project, and may include copies of a book, chat sessions, or even the chance to be in a film.

Once you set up your page, you must decide how much time to give yourself to fund the project. You can choose anywhere between 1 and 60 days, though a friend once advised me that 30 days is best, because it gives a sense of urgency to the project. This is a scary decision, because the only way to actually receive money via Kickstarter is to be fully funded by your deadline. In other words, it's an all-or-nothing deal. If you are funded, then up to 5 percent of your money will go to Amazon, a fee for handling the transactions, and an additional 5 percent of your money will go to Kickstarter. So plan accordingly.

On October 18, my friend and I launched our own Kickstarter project. Last June, we started FictionBrigade, an online literary magazine that publishes flash fiction in multiple forms: written, art, and video. So far we have published one issue, with plans to publish our second issue on December 15. But we also have some bigger, long-term plans.

Our goal is to turn FictionBrigade into a place where creative people can connect with each other. The next step is to build a community aspect to our site where writers, artists, and videographers can upload their work and give each other support and feedback. We also want to build up our site through more marketing efforts, and we have plans to form a Limited Liability Corporation.

In order to accomplish all of this, we are seeking $7500 by our deadline of December 2. Our rewards are geared towards writers. At the lower end we're offering FictionBrigade notebooks and pens, and at the higher end we're offering quality editing services to help our backers get published.

FictionBrigade is a quarterly magazine right now, but we hope to expand and turn it into a monthly magazine. In addition to publishing flash fiction, we run contests, write stories via Twitter, and share fiction via our newsletter. We also run a blog where we encourage writers, artists, videographers, editors, and publishers to submit posts that may be helpful to our community. We are based in New York City, so we also have an events page that highlights all the literary events in the area, such as book signings, readings, and book launch parties.

If you are interested in blogging or submitting a story to us, please visit our website at www.fictionbrigade.com. If you liked what you read about Kickstarter, by all means check out our Project Page and watch our video.