Many authors struggle to find the time and money to get their first or subsequent books published. It is a major reason so many books sit on the shelf even in this time of eBook self-publishing. Any author worth their merit knows the importance of doing the best job possible to get a book to market and this involves a professional team to help you with editing, layout, images, book cover design, promotion and marketing. And if you are going to do a physical print of several thousand books, this will cost a lot more.
Traditional publishing houses can cover a lot of this effort and cost for you, but most new authors will not get a chance unless they can find an agent and put together a compelling proposal or have some other inside track to get noticed. Indie authors can publish an eBook for practically nothing, but most do not have the editing, design or technology skills to pull that off in a professional manner. We are all looking for a team to help us provide the best book to market we can. And that costs money.
This is where crowdfunding and Publishizer come in. Crowdfunding is a model which secures small investments and payments which in their entirety are sufficient to launch a new initiative which requires upfront capital. Publishizer provides a risk-free (from author and investor perspective) crowdfunding approach to help authors raise the initial capital it takes to get a good book published. I am intrigued and supportive of the model as it provides a lot of small and new authors the ability to get published.
My friend, Scott Bales, is about to release his book Mobile Ready and using Publishizer to help raise the initial funds to do so. Scott is an IT futurist and leading expert on mobile technology and how mobile is shaping new commercial and social models. As such, Scott is using Publishizer to help raise initial funds by taking pre-orders for Mobile Ready. There are various packages available from ordering a eBook copy, to signed printed hardback copy of the book, to spending time with the author via Skype or in person in this interesting area of being ready for the mobile revolution. I and 75 other people have pre-ordered Mobile Ready and Scott is about a quarter of the way to his funding goal at the time of this post. Publishizer takes a very small cut for providing their crowdsourcing service, but almost all the funding goes to the author to help them get their book published.
Scott’s book is intriguing and so is the model for funding it. I want both to succeed to prove a great model exists to assist indie authors. I am thinking of doing similar for my upcoming book Wine Sense.
If you are interesting in the future of mobile and supporting this model, take a look at Scott’s proposal and consider pre-ordering yourself. I have.
© 2013. Steve Shipley, author of Wine Sense, due out early 2014
Twitter: @inkitpub
Twitter: @shipleyaust
Still Stupid at Sixty (published under my writing pseudonym Blake Stevens)
(Please be assured that I have no commercial interest or relationship to Publishizer or Scott Bales. My comments and recommendations are based on my interest in what is happening and good for the publishing industry.)
