About nine years ago I tried raising money to attend a writing workshop with Spalding Gray. I mailed letters to seventy friends, family members, and colleagues, asking them to donate between ten and fifty dollars each so that I could pay to attend his workshop. It was more than a little embarrassing to ask my friends for money, but I really wanted to study with Gray, author of such classics as the Obie-winning monologue Swimming to Cambodia (Theatre Communications Group, 1985) and Gray’s Anatomy (Vintage Books, 1994). At the same time I was applying for a grant to attend the workshop (sponsored by the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York), but I knew my application would be more competitive if I showed that I raised some funds on my own. 

I also had this crazy idea that my friends and family would enjoy helping me finance my study with Gray, considered the granddaddy of the autobiographical monologue and one of my favorite writers and performers. As it turned out, it wasn’t such a crazy idea after all.

Nowadays this type of fund-raising is known as crowdfunding, and it’s become much more sophisticated as writers and artists have turned to websites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, which are designed to help raise money from individual donors. Since it was founded in 2009, Kickstarter has been used to raise $350 million from 2.5 million individuals for thirty thousand dance, film, video, art, and publishing projects, among other ventures.

If you want to raise money to pay for a research trip, attend a career-changing workshop, or publish a book—beyond the usual grants and fellowships for writers—crowdfunding may be the way to go. In addition to being a powerful tool for raising money, a crowdfunding campaign for a book is much like a prepublicity campaign, raising awareness for an upcoming project—which can be even more valuable than cash. 

Crowdfunding is not for the faint of heart; it takes a certain amount of chutzpah to ask your friends for money. But it’s also becoming so common in the arts community that it’s nearly a rite of passage. Nowadays, I receive a couple of donation requests in my inbox every week. The good news is that it’s less stigmatized than it used to be; the bad news is that you may not be the only writer asking your friends for money.

The most popular site for writers is Kickstarter, with Indiegogo coming in a close second. Although there are now many other sites that offer this service, these two are geared most directly toward artists. They are designed to help you organize and promote your project, connect to your social-media community, and raise funds. They can help connect you to individuals you don’t know, such as folks who surf these high-profile sites looking for compelling projects to fund, but it’s more likely that the money you raise will come from people who already know you and trust you and are fans of your work. 

The main difference between Kickstarter and Indiegogo is that Kickstarter only allows projects that culminate in the production of a product. If you’re fund-raising for the publication of a book, that’s fine, but if you want to fund an experience like attending a writer’s conference—even if that experience eventually produces a book—you’ll need to use a site like Indiegogo, which doesn’t have the same restrictions. The other major difference between these sites is that Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing proposition: If you don’t meet your stated goal, you don’t get any of the funds. With Indiegogo, you have the option of “flexible funding,” which means you keep any money you raise even if you don’t meet your goal.

Both Kickstarter and Indiegogo offer a page to showcase your project, with room to include your pitch to donors (also called backers), a video you create about your project, and a list of the different perks backers will receive depending on their level of giving (a signed copy of the published book, their name on the acknowledgments page of the book, access to private project-related websites, and so on). Any crowdfunding site you choose to work with will take a percentage of the funds you collect—between 4 and 9 percent. They also provide detailed analytics that track where your donors come from, so you know what’s working and what’s not. The sites also make it easy for you to send updates as you race to your fund-raising deadline. Kickstarter allows campaigns to last a maximum of sixty days; many are slated for just thirty days. (Sometimes having less time contributes to the urgency of a project and helps raise more money.) 

Author Ariel Gore had already published several books with traditional publishers both large and small when she decided to crowdfund a collection of flash essays, All the Pretty People: Tales of Carob, Shame, and Barbie-Envy. “A traditional publisher didn’t make much sense because the book was so short—almost a chapbook,” says Gore, who raised $3,062 from sixty-eight backers during her thirty-day campaign. She used the money to self-publish the book under her imprint, Lit Star Press, in 2011. 

Gore’s second Kickstarter project was for the anthology The People’s Apocalypse, coedited by Jenny Forrester and published last year, also by Lit Star. This time, Gore’s decision to use crowdfunding had to do with timing. “We had the collection ready to go, but a traditional publisher would have slowed things down and we wanted to put it out in 2012 to coincide with the rumored end of the Mayan calendar,” she says. For this project, Gore and Forrester raised $5,585 from eighty-eight backers during a thirty-day campaign. 

More than 50 percent of all campaigns launched with Kickstarter fail. The numbers are even more discouraging when you look solely at publishing projects on Kickstarter: Two-thirds fail to meet the funding goal, which means the writer doesn’t keep any of the money raised. Projects fail for many reasons, including setting the goal too high, failing to send compelling updates, failing to offer perks that motivate donations, setting backer levels too high, and, probably the biggest reason, not having a big enough community of fans to draw from. 

How can you make sure your crowdfunding campaign is successful? Here are ten tips:

1. Fund somebody else’s project first. Take a tour of projects on Kickstarter or Indiegogo and find a few that are interesting to you. Make a donation and watch what happens. Do you receive updates that feel relevant and interesting? Nothing helps you more than experiencing firsthand what it feels like to be a backer. 

“Back at least half a dozen campaigns yourself,” says Shanna Germain, who raised $32,700, four times her goal, from 613 backers by crowdfunding the publication of Geek Love: An Anthology of Full Frontal Nerdity on Kickstarter. “This does double duty, in that it shows you as a supporter of crowdfunding—on the Kickstarter site, other people can see how many other projects you’ve backed—and it gives you an insider’s view into important things like updates: How often does the project creator send updates? Are they interesting or annoying? That kind of thing.”

2. Be realistic with your goal. Pick a goal that’s reasonable: not so high that you’re unlikely to attain it, but high enough that you instill faith in your backers that you have enough funds to accomplish your project.  

“I based my goal on my estimated cost of editing and printing three hundred hardcovers,” says Jack Cheng, whose Kickstarter campaign raised $23,810—more than double his goal—from 961 backers to self-publish his first book, These Days: A Novel. “I chose that amount because I was confident I could get at least halfway there through support of friends alone.” 

3. Count your fans. If there’s one thing you need in order to be a successful crowdfunder, it’s a crowd—enough people whom you know and who know you and trust you. If you’re connected via social media with hundreds, if not thousands, of fans, you’ll greatly improve your chances of success. But be realistic about the size of your fan base.

“Kickstarter is a difficult place to make your name or raise money for your first book if you’re an unknown writer,” says Germain, coauthor with Monte Cook of the e-book Kicking It: Successful Crowdfunding (Stone Box Press, 2012). “If you don’t already know how to build a fan base, it’s a really difficult skill to learn in the middle of a campaign.”

4. Lose your shame. To be a successful crowdfunder you have to overcome your embarrassment about asking friends, family members, colleagues, and everyone else you know for money. Applying for a grant proposal is a lot “cleaner,” but it’s also slower, and the odds are against you: There are often many more qualified candidates than grant money to go around. 

Yet even for confident extroverts, asking for money takes its toll. “It was more taxing than I expected when I had to bug everyone who’s ever made the mistake of e-mailing me even once, for a few bucks,” says G. Xavier Robillard, who raised $10,025 from 140 backers to fund the publication of his second novel, Deadfellas: Monsters vs. the Mob, last fall.

Tapping your friends, your family, and your Facebook community will make the difference between a successful and a failed campaign. Your desire to fund your project must trump any potential embarrassment. 

5. Get personal. “At the beginning of the campaign I sent out an e-mail to everyone I knew, in one enormous barrage, and it was hugely unsuccessful,” says Robillard. “Later I went back and crafted hundreds of personal e-mail appeals to friends, family, colleagues, and anyone I’d ever met, and the response was massive.”

6. Plan ahead. You need to plan your campaign at least a month before your launch date. During prelaunch, you should write your promotional copy, make a video, and figure out backer levels and corresponding perks for different levels of contributions. By doing these things you’ll be getting a jump start on publicity. “Treat this prelaunch like your prepublication campaign,” advises Robillard. “Talk to bloggers, local news reporters, podcasters, and anyone you might hook into your project.” Get people excited about what you’re doing.

7. Offer enticing perks. If you’re crowdfunding the publication of a book, it can be hard to think of exciting perks to lure your backers. This is where researching successful campaigns on the Kickstarter site can be very useful. It’s especially motivating if backers receive something unique, designed exclusively for donors to this campaign. If the book is illustrated, consider offering limited-edition prints of artwork, or a limited-edition copy of the book that features illustrations not in the regular edition. 

8. Set a microgoal. If this is your first time crowdfunding, Germain and Cook suggest setting a small goal, such as five hundred dollars. At that level, you’re likely to succeed, as long as you can dream up a project or a portion of a project where a microgoal makes sense. This approach “puts you in a much better position to launch crowdfunding campaign number two, with a more ambitious goal,” Germain and Cook write, “but now you have the benefit of having experience under your belt and a small number of satisfied backers who can vouch for you.” 

9. Create a fun video. This tip could be a subset of “Lose your shame.” Many writers won’t relish being in front of the camera, but a short, fun video posted on your crowdfunding page will greatly increase your chances of success. At Kickstarter, projects with a video succeed 50 percent of the time, whereas projects without videos succeed only 30 percent of the time. Again, check out other project videos. Some are very slick, but even the homemade ones, if sincere, can be effective in showing your potential backers how much you care about your project and their support.

10. Make your campaign the priority. “If I did my crowdfunding campaign over again I would have chosen a time when I didn’t have any other work on my schedule and when I wasn’t traveling,” says Germain. “You really need to be able to check in regularly during a campaign and to change plans at a moment’s notice. This is especially true if your campaign takes off; I felt like I was scrambling to keep up.” 

Robillard estimates that he spent two hours a day for thirty days sending out press releases, writing e-mails, and “turning over digital rocks to locate anyone I might have forgotten about,” he says. Robillard had already published one novel with HarperCollins when he decided to crowdfund his latest. “I did my Kickstarter campaign to gauge interest in my book,” he says. “It’s the bootleg version.” Now, if he tries to go the traditional publishing route, he’ll have thousands of people who’ve already heard about the book and a much better handle on where to find his readers. 

A few days after I dropped my letters requesting funding for the Spalding Gray workshop into the mailbox on the corner, an envelope fell through my mail slot. It was an angry letter from my sister who told me to “get a job” if I needed money to attend a workshop. A few more days passed with no news. Several close friends ignored my request altogether. 

Then, Spalding Gray was reported missing. A few days later he was presumed dead—an apparent suicide. (Two months later, his body was found off New York City, in the East River.) Now I wasn’t just devastated that the world had lost this talented artist, I was also ashamed at what seemed like my misguided fund-raising effort. 

But then something amazing happened: Cards and notes started falling through my mail slot with checks ranging from twenty to fifty dollars. As it turned out, some friends and colleagues sent money anyway, knowing that I would find a different workshop to attend to help bolster my writing and performing career. 

And I did. I applied for a professional development grant for eleven hundred dollars from the Regional Arts and Culture Council of Portland, Oregon, to attend a voice workshop at the Banff Centre for the Arts with the world-famous teacher Richard Armstrong. I showed on my budget the three hundred and fifty dollars I had already raised from my letter campaign. I won the grant, and with that money and the funds I raised from my community I covered all my expenses, including airfare, housing, meals, and tuition. 

Was it worth the writhing embarrassment? You bet. Would I crowdfund again? When I have the right project and the energy for the campaign sprint, I won’t hesitate. 

Gigi Rosenberg is a writer, artist coach, and author of The Artist’s Guide to Grant Writing: How to Find Funds and Write Foolproof Proposals for the Visual, Literary, and Performing Artist, published by Watson-Guptill in 2010. Her work has been published by Seal Press and the Oregonian, performed at Seattle’s On the Boards, and broadcast on Oregon Public Radio.