Hey Everybody: Boss Fight Books is considering moving preorders away from Kickstarter, and we want to hear from you about it!
1. Sales have been moving away from Kickstarter and toward the bossfightbooks.com, which runs smoothly on Shopify. Getting orders on Kickstarter means porting them into Shopify.
2. We tried running some preorders from our store, and it worked. A couple of months ago, we opened up preorders for Life is Strange and Dragon Age II (two books already Kickstarted but not yet in stock at the time) and we got a lot of new preorders. I worried it would confuse customers to put in an order and then have to wait for the books to arrive, but we didn't have a single question/complaint.
3. When we run a Kickstarter, a lot of the heat comes directly from the Boss Fight email list. Our sense is that most of our readers just want good books and are not committed to getting them on a particular platform. And for most people, ordering a book on Shopify is easier than crowdfunding it.
5. Books would come out faster (because we wouldn't be waiting on as many steps in the process). We would not be slowed down by the campaign setup, then the campaign itself, then getting backer info, then porting backer info into Shopify, etc., all of which adds months to a book's calendar. We could finish a book, send it to the printers, and then announce the book and preorders in one fell swoop.
6. Books would come out faster (because Gabe isn't overtaxed). It takes so much time to build a campaign, run it well, and then fulfill it. Every time I work on a Kickstarter, other parts of the press grind to a halt -- especially editing and publishing -- and I become a marketing and logistics machine. It's also pretty stressful!
7. The press and the author would make more per sale. Kickstarter takes 5% right off the top (including from shipping), so we'd avoid that fee.
8. A bonus personal reason. I'm about to have a kid, and time is going to be harder to come by for awhile. I'm looking for ways to work smarter, and quitting my job as a crowdfunder hypebeast seems like the most natural change to make for this new season of life.
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