It began as most things do: with good intentions. Just before Christmas, 2012, I launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for my book Bedtime and Other Tales of Terror. As of this writing it is February 2016 and the project hasn't been completed yet. I know a few writers have decided to go down a similar path and so I thought it would be useful for them to learn a little from the decisions I've made, good and bad.
I then found a few people sharing it claiming authorship and even including it in portfolios to showcase their writing skills to publishers and agents. I assume they thought it was a nameless "creepypasta" and that they wouldn't get caught.
This horrified me, so I panicked.
I knew that I had to do something, and other than sending emails and leaving comments I didn't feel I had many options open to me with regards to stopping the story being circulated as someone else's. I decided therefore that I had to self-publish the stories. This became even more troubling as doing a simple search showed that two or three different individuals had actually already published my story on Amazon as part of anthology collections -- they were making money from a story based on my childhood.
Nonetheless, I had one thing going for me, I knew that I had access to this post. It was the first place Bedtime ever appeared and so I felt I could at least prove to most that it was indeed mine. But this wasn't widely known, so I still thought I had to put out a complete version of it and the sequel stories so that ownership would never be an issue.
I didn't want to just package the story and publish it as is, I wanted to do something special with it and create a book around it which would thrill and surprise even those who had read the original. The problem was I just didn't have enough time. I was working horrendous hours as a freelancer for very little pay and, after writing sales copy all day into the evening, I was too exhausted to write my own material.
It was then that I saw what Dathan Auerbach did with his story, Penpal. He ran a brilliant crowdfunding campaign, raised enough money to produce physical copies and get it out there. At that point I felt like a solution had been found: I would crowdfund, hopefully raising around $2,000 and have enough left over after perks to take a month or so off from work, expand Bedtime into a short novella and combine it with some unpublished short stories I had written.
What could possible go wrong?
Why I Chose to Crowdfund My Book
I launched my crowdfunding campaign through Indiegogo for two reasons. The first was that several people had plagiarised a story I wrote called Bedtime. At that point it had been a success across various horror websites, being included in a number of top 10 scariest stories lists and reaching a level of exposure for which I was unprepared. It was being shared everywhere, which I was so excited by, but unfortunately my name wasn't being credited.I then found a few people sharing it claiming authorship and even including it in portfolios to showcase their writing skills to publishers and agents. I assume they thought it was a nameless "creepypasta" and that they wouldn't get caught.
This horrified me, so I panicked.
I knew that I had to do something, and other than sending emails and leaving comments I didn't feel I had many options open to me with regards to stopping the story being circulated as someone else's. I decided therefore that I had to self-publish the stories. This became even more troubling as doing a simple search showed that two or three different individuals had actually already published my story on Amazon as part of anthology collections -- they were making money from a story based on my childhood.
Nonetheless, I had one thing going for me, I knew that I had access to this post. It was the first place Bedtime ever appeared and so I felt I could at least prove to most that it was indeed mine. But this wasn't widely known, so I still thought I had to put out a complete version of it and the sequel stories so that ownership would never be an issue.
I didn't want to just package the story and publish it as is, I wanted to do something special with it and create a book around it which would thrill and surprise even those who had read the original. The problem was I just didn't have enough time. I was working horrendous hours as a freelancer for very little pay and, after writing sales copy all day into the evening, I was too exhausted to write my own material.
It was then that I saw what Dathan Auerbach did with his story, Penpal. He ran a brilliant crowdfunding campaign, raised enough money to produce physical copies and get it out there. At that point I felt like a solution had been found: I would crowdfund, hopefully raising around $2,000 and have enough left over after perks to take a month or so off from work, expand Bedtime into a short novella and combine it with some unpublished short stories I had written.
What could possible go wrong?
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