How does a Kickstarter campaign work?
The cover image for Coal Faces, from Janine Wiedel
Image and Reality’s Colin Wilkinson talks about the 30th Kickstarter that he has been involved in and shares some insights into publishing and running crowd funding campaigns, as the Kickstarter for Coal Faces goes live.
This is the 30th Kickstarter I have been involved in and it feels very little different from my first (Peter Dench's The British Abroad - which sneaked over the line thanks to some very welcome support from Olympus cameras).
I have learnt a great deal since then - particularly the value of a supportive community who share my love for British social documentary photography. Your support has seen books by Jim Mortram, Tish Murtha, John Downing, Nick Hedges and so many more make it into print. Thank you!
Now for the latest and most ambitious: 17 photographers have documented coal mining in Britain over the last sixty years, brought togetehr by the book’s editor David Gilbert Wright. The demise of the British coal mining industry is one of the most remarkable and tragic stories of the last fifty years. In 1965, over 455,000 miners worked in coalfields across Britain (down from a peak of 1.2 million in 1920). Today, in 2024, just four underground coal mines remain, providing jobs for fewer than 300 miners.
Coal Faces is a story in pictures of the last 60 years of coal mining in Britain, seen through the eyes of some remarkable photographers. As the government finally puts coal mining to bed in favour of renewables and other greener sources of energy, this book is an epitaph to an industry that powered the Industrial Revolution, provided the fuel to heat our homes and ensured we had the tanks, ships, planes and missiles to fight two world wars.
As Image and Reality we want to challenge the current aapproach to publishing the work of photographer’s as expenseive collectaable editions, out of reach often to the people that they feature on their pages. We decided to make Coal Faces available in two formats; hardback and softcover. These are priced at £40 and £20 respectively.
Unfortunately, just because there are eight billion people on the planet, a common misconception is that there must be a few hundred people prepared to back their idea. Sadly it doesn't work like that. According to the latest Kickstarter stats, just over 40% of projects hit their target. Okay - 60% don't but I think the odds aren't that bad. If you take out the really poorly presented projects - and there are plenty - I reckon a well-presented Kickstarter has more like a 60% chance of success. Perhaps even higher if you have a reasonable social media presence.
Running a successful Kickstarter campaign relies on advice, experience and having a solid book that is ready to be published.
Dig around on the internet and there is a wealth of information to help you succeed:
* Don't run a Kickstarter for more than 30 days - extra days will not add to your chances of success.
* Tuesday is statistically the best day to launch - closely followed by Wednesday. Never launch at the weekend.
* March is the most popular month to launch but May attracts the highest number of pledges. December is by far the worst month but there isn't much variation between the rest of the year.
In Colin’s next post he’ll talk about the economic realities of publishing photobooks.