1: Getting started

In this series of three articles, I’m going to look at how I crowdfunded my novel, Work in Progress, through Unbound’s unique crowdfunding model.

I wrote my book with two pals, Martin and Alex. It was originally called Kitten on a Fatberg, and it tells the story of a group of eccentrics, aspiring writers who form a critique group to offer feedback on each other’s work.

We wrote the story in a spontaneous, open-ended way, and somehow it turned into something quite farcical. All the characters are larger than life in a comic sort of way, and there are lots of feuds, misunderstandings, romances, and petty rivalries. We hoped it might be as much fun to read as it was to write.

Unbound is an international publisher based in the UK with a different model. It accepts authors from the UK, US and around the world. It’s been covered quite widely in the media in the UK, and I’ve always liked the sound of it. Soon I was on the Unbound site, and looking at how to submit our manuscript.

Unbound bills itself as “publishing for the 21st century.” As far as I know, it’s the world’s only book publisher to use crowdfunding to raise funds for the publishing process. It’s published over 250 titles, with a community of over 300,000 people pledging more than £11million. Authors include Monty Python’s Terry Jones, Raymond Briggs, Alice Jolly, and YouTuber Stuart Ashen.

Here’s how it works. You submit online, and if your book is accepted, you’re set an amount to raise in pre-orders for your book. This puts the onus on you, the author, to raise the money, but once the target is hit, the book has covered its costs and demonstrated a market exists for it. There is no advance to work off, and on additional sales you get paid on a 50:50 profit-share basis rather than the traditional small royalty per cover price.

The online submission process was very straightforward. You answer some questions about yourself and how you might promote the book (they like it if you’re active in social media), then upload the manuscript, either complete or sample chapters.

Within a week, I had a response. Commissioning editor Beth said she loved the book and wanted to proceed. She explained a bit more about the process and was very positive and encouraging.

We knew Unbound was reputable, and we jumped at the chance to sign up. Unbound publishes an eclectic list, with some big names and well-known titles, and we were proud to be part of that.

Beth invited us in for a workshop on fundraising and social media. We were advised to work through our list of possible buyers slowly, and not to use the language of charity or fundraising. After all, we were selling advance copies of a book, not begging for donations.

We worked on promotional material for the Unbound website, and drafted a pitch email to send to potential buyers. The amount to raise was not small (somewhere in the mid five figures in dollars), but we were confident that with three of us we would be able to soar over the line. Most books take months or years to close; a few rare ones (usually by well-known names) can hit their target within days. We had dreams of taking the book world by storm!

Little did we know.
– – –

Read Parts 1 , 2 , and 3 of this 3-Part piece at FundsforWriters.com.

Read more of Dan Brotzel’s articles on writing fiction and content at https://danielbrotzel.medium.com/