Our Blog

Today, we’ve got a quick Q&A with Don Steinberg, author of The Kickstarter Handbook. Read on for some useful tips, and learn how he picked the campaigns he highlighted in the book.

Q: Out of thousands of successful and not-so-successful projects on Kickstarter, how did you pick the campaigns featured in The Kickstarter Handbook?

A: The purpose of the book is to give everybody who wants to launch a Kickstarter campaign some useful strategies, ideas that will help a project succeed, no matter how big or small or what type of project. So I sought out a wide variety of examples: projects with fundraising goals of $100,000 or more, projects with targets under $5,000, and many in between. Kickstarter has thirteen creative categories, from the new product inventions to performing arts like music, dance and film, and I wanted to get useful examples and strategies from as wide a range as possible. I also looked for Kickstarter campaigns that were extreme in some way to show how they did it—like a few people who raised an insane amount of money in their final hours. And there was stuff that I just thought was cool, like the guys who raised money to erect a statue of RoboCop in Detroit. Who wouldn’t want to read about that?

Q: What’s the biggest mistake one can make when attempting to fund a project through Kickstarter?

A: The biggest mistake seems to be the “set it and forget it” mentality—thinking that simply posting a project on Kickstarter is all you need to do to bring in all kinds of money. Kickstarter isn’t a magic pot of gold. It’s a great place to explain a project you’re passionate about and collect pledges from people who want to support it, but it’s still fund-raising. You still have to work hard to get attention and money. The dirty secret of crowdfunding is that, to a large extent, you have to bring or create your own crowd.

Q: You point out that Kickstarter might not be the right platform for everyone. How can someone determine whether or not they should use Kickstarter?

A: You must be prepared to treat your fund-raising effort like a campaign, almost like a political campaign, grinding it out for 30 days or however long you’ve set it up for. You have to be willing to ask friends and acquaintances for money. Kickstarter removes some of that stigma—it even can make fund-raising cool!—but it’s still not for everybody. You also have to be totally committed to your idea and really at the point where you just need X amount of dollars to finish it or take it to the next level.

Q: Have you tried to run a Kickstarter campaign? If so, what was your experience like? Have you backed someone else’s campaign?

A: I did set up a dummy campaign to experience Kickstarter’s set-up process, to research the book, but I haven’t identified my real passion project yet. The projects I’ve backed have been things I’ve wanted personally as a consumer of creative work. In one campaign, a chef from Idaho offered to send out fresh spice packets with recipes regularly, like a magazine subscription. What a cool idea. I also backed a documentary film about a radio station that I grew up listening to.

Q: You emphasize in The Kickstarter Handbook how unlikely a formula the Kickstarter model is—it seems incredible that so many people would give money to strangers to support a project that is still in the planning stage. Why do you think the crowdfunding phenomenon has caught on?

A: The Web has made so many new ways of connecting possible. I attribute a lot of it to eBay. Instead of Amazon or Walmart selling everything to everybody, it’s everybody selling everything to everybody. These days if you want to find an audience for your writing, music, videos, you don’t need to go through traditional distributors anymore. You also can make a microloan to a farmer in Guatemala, more or less directly, at Kiva.org, without wondering how some big global charity is handling your money. People like the power of making things happen. Kickstarter has the same sensibility—people are more or less voting on what products and movies and music should be brought to life, not relying on some big corporation to give its thumbs-up.

Q: Some campaigns get very creative with their rewards, offering not just T-shirts or tote bags but personal experiences. Have any rewards stuck out to you as ingenious, exciting, or a little bit insane?

A: The new products offered as rewards are definitely “not sold in stores” kind of stuff, and it can be really exciting to get in on the ground floor. Like a phone-controlled mini-robot, or make-at-home designer lampshades, or a clock that takes a whole year to go around and uses colors instead of numbers. I love how creative other kinds of projects have been with rewards—you start to appreciate how many things in life can be rewarding. The chance to be listed as a producer in the credits at the end of a movie—how cool is that? How could you ever get that before for 50 bucks?

Q: Musician Amanda Palmer recently used Kickstarter to raise over one million dollars to produce her own album and an accompanying art book, as well as to launch a tour. Do you anticipate funding like this, where more well-known artists are funded directly by their fans, becoming more common?

A: That’s happening a lot more, and not just on Kickstarter. Artists now have a choice. Labels and publishers and studios can help a project succeed, but if the deal isn’t right an artist has a chance to make it work by taking a creation directly to his or her audience.

Q: After interviewing the many different people featured in The Kickstarter Handbook who used Kickstarter and learning about their varied experiences with the site, what’s the single best piece of advice you can offer an aspiring creator?

A: Is money what’s preventing you from accomplishing your creative goal? Think about what’s really standing in your way. Is it money, or something else? If it’s something else, deal with that first! If you’re ready to roll and it really is just dollars holding you back, with Kickstarter that doesn’t need to be an obstacle—or an excuse—anymore.

Photo via Archie4oz

Today we will delve into The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Work, to find the solution to a common problem for anyone who has ever been an assistant. The cubicle.

1. Select a good location: Opt for a cube away from main hallways, bathrooms, supply rooms, and other high-traffic areas, if you have the choice. Avoid cubes within the boss’s line of sight.

2. Use comfort devices: Requisition a more comfortable chair, or select one from an empty cubicle or office (some styles of chairs may be assigned to employees above a certain level, so be careful about what you borrow). Alternatively, obtain a doctor’s note stating that you require a comfortable chair for medical reasons—your employer will be obligated to provide you with one. A back pillow and footrest will also make cube life more comfortable and relaxed. Do not attempt to fit in recliners, love seats, or hammocks.

3. Install convenience items: A wireless telephone headset will give you increased freedom of movement. Noise-cancelling headphones (with an extra-long cord) will eliminate outside distractions. A small fan is effective in filtering out annoying noises such as typing and phone conversations. (The fan will also make it more difficult for co-workers to eavesdrop on your conversations.) Small refrigerators, hair dryers, televisions, VCRs, and blenders should not be easily visible.

4. Personalize your space: Decorate your cubicle with your family photographs and drawings, as well as other pictures and cartoons you like, giving your cube a homey touch. Avoid hanging too many items or you risk a cubicle that looks like a dorm room or refrigerator door.

5. Build upward: There is usually no limit to the amount of vertical space you can occupy. Stack in/out trays high atop elevated surfaces for additional room. Staplers, tape dispensers, card files, and other items that traditionally occupy valuable space on top of a desk can be suspended from the ceiling to create a more spacious environment below.

6. Use mirrors: Hang a large mirror on the cubicle wall to create the illusion of spaciousness.

Be Aware

• Health and safety codes dictate that cubes may not have roofs. Do not attempt to construct a fully enclosed cubicle for privacy.

• Adding a small, stick-on, wide-angle mirror to the edge of your monitor allows you to see if someone is peering into your cubicle from behind.

• Notify your supervisor that you would like to sit in a “double-wide” cubicle if one becomes available. Standard cubes are 8 by 8 feet and 4 to 6 feet high—double-wides offer twice the floor space of standard units, plus an L- or U-shaped desk. The double-wide cubicle does carry some risk: If office space gets tight, you may find yourself with a cube-mate, a particularly undesirable situation.

After spending so much money on an e-reader, you wouldn’t want to accidentally spill something on it, drop it, or ruin it in any way – but few (if any) of the cases you’ll find in stores are anything special.

If you’re tired of your bland Kindle cover or your overused Nook case, look no further: Nimoo on Etsy has the answer.

These covers are made to order and can be made to fit any type of e-reader. Aside from having adorable patterns, they’re multi-functional. The pocket on the front can hold small notebooks, pens, pencils, phones, spare change… the possibilities are endless.

The padding inside will protect an e-reader from most damage, and it even has a button to keep it safe and secure. There are many fabric options, and each one is handmade. No more awkward moments when someone has the same Kobo cover as you do.

Scope out Nimoo’s store on Etsy, here!

If you’re a lover of both literature and body modification, you’ll understand the longing to get a book tattoo.

Between quotes, illustrations, and tattoos of just books in general, we’ve compiled some amazing pieces of ink! Here are ten of my favorite, beautiful book tattoos.

And if you can’t get enough of them (I sure can’t), check out the website Tattoo Lit, now a book published by our friends Harper Perennial.

I’ve been answering the End of the World question for years.

One usually first confronts it around middle school. Without probing too deeply I realize that I had never really revised my answer since that time. A voice from the Id, something along the lines of: “Yeah! I want a seraglio full of Penthouse models all dressed in hooker costumes, and all the chocolate chip cookies in the world!”

Filled with incredibly obscure references that send watchers stampeding to Wikipedia (ie: Who am I, Alan Turing?), Archer isn’t only one of the funniest shows on television. It’s also one of the smartest.

And wow, does this show love making literary references. From Tolkien to Shakespeare, Melville to Orwell, the past three seasons of FX’s Archer has been full of them.

So read on, and share your favorite literary moments in the comments.