In case you’ve heard of crowdfunding, you then’ve in all probability heard of Brandon Sanderson.
Apart from authoring wildly widespread books and sequence like Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive, Sanderson and his firm Dragonsteel Leisure have change into most identified for having run the #1 most funded crowdfunding mission of all time – a mission launched in 2022 that surprised Sanderson followers with a shock launch of 4 secret novels he wrote through the earlier two years of the pandemic.
In March of this yr, Sanderson and group returned to crowdfunding with their first follow-up marketing campaign on BackerKit: Phrases of Radiance Leatherbound.
Very like The Means of Kings, Sanderson’s first crowdfunding mission, the Phrases of Radiance marketing campaign headlined with the 10-year anniversary leather-based sure rerelease of Phrases of Radiance, initially printed in 2014 and the second installment in The Stormlight Archive sequence. However in true Sanderson trend, the marketing campaign additionally got here with a shock announcement of a “New Secret Challenge” – the title of which was later revealed to be Isles of the Emberdark.
Phrases of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson makes historical past 🏆
The marketing campaign closed on the finish of March and raised a whopping $23,756,818 in funding with the help of 102,089 backers, making Phrases of Radiance Leatherbound:
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- #2 Most funded crowdfunding mission of all time
- #2 Most engaged backer neighborhood of any crowdfunding marketing campaign
- #3 Highest variety of backers of any crowdfunding marketing campaign
“We hit 23 million which is greater than I had guessed for this. We solely had two books this time, and we did greater than half once we had 4 books, in order that’s fairly unimaginable.” – Brandon Sanderson
Sanderson now claims the highest #1 and high #2 rating on the crowdfunding charts for many funded with Phrases of Radiance securing the #2 spot in each classes – second solely to Sanderson’s penultimate mission Shock! 4 Secret Novels (2022).
As well as, Phrases of Radiance takes the #1 spot for many engaged backer neighborhood, racking up a complete of 10,416 feedback on the mission – 31% extra feedback generated than Shock! 4 Secret Novels which had beforehand held the document.
Missed the marketing campaign? Say the phrases right here >> Phrases of Radiance Leatherbound Pre-order Retailer
Phrases of Radiance broke extra information in different classes, together with:
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- #1 Quickest to achieve $10m in crowdfunding: Sanderson’s 2022 marketing campaign held this document,reaching $10m in underneath 10 hours – a document Phrases of Radiance shattered by over half the time, elevating $10m in slightly below 4 hours. That’s a funding charge of $41k pledged per minute.
- #1 Greatest Day-1 whole in crowdfunding (first 12 hours): Sanderson’s 2022 marketing campaign held the Day-1 whole document of 13,047,944 as reported by Kicktraq, a complete which was raised within the first 12 hours of that marketing campaign. Sanderson beat and as soon as once more set a brand new document withPhrases of Radiance, which surpassed that whole in slightly below 10 hours, subsequently reaching $13,657,708.89 inside the first 12 hours. Watch the second Sanderson and group crossed that threshold and celebrated the milestone with their followers.
Apart from setting crowdfunding {industry} information, Phrases of Radiance made BackerKit historical past and now holds the titles for:
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- #1 Most funded marketing campaign on BackerKit
- #1 Highest backer rely on BackerKit
- #1 Longest Backer Practice on BackerKit: Upon the second it launched, Phrases of Radiance started the longest recorded chain of continuous consecutive pledges that lasted 4 days 14 hours 47 minutes and 58,758 backers lengthy.
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- #1 Longest Extra time Mode on BackerKit: At BackerKit, each mission has an opportunity to tip into Extra time Mode if a last Backer Practice begins within the last minutes of the marketing campaign and extends when the Backer Practice stops. When Phrases of Radiance went into Extra time Mode, the marketing campaign prolonged previous its authentic finish time by practically a day and a half – 33 hours and 33 minutes – whereby 3,601 backers raised an extra $543,410.
Phrases of Radiance additionally topped a few of Brandon Sanderson’s private bests as a crowdfunding creator:
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- #1 Quickest funded mission for Brandon Sanderson and Dragonsteel Leisure: Phrases of Radiance reached its $2m funding aim in solely 12 minutes and eight seconds – 2.75x sooner than Shock! 4 Secret Novels took to achieve its decrease $1m funding aim.
- #1 Most engaged backer neighborhood for any mission by Brandon Sanderson and Dragonsteel Leisure
Brandon Sanderson and BackerKit: A partnership years within the making 🤝
These spectacular numbers solely inform a part of the story of this historic marketing campaign – a narrative that truly started in 2020 when Sanderson ran his first crowdfunding mission.
“We’ve already had an amazing relationship with BackerKit, utilizing their Pledge Supervisor to meet our final two campaigns,” mentioned the Dragonsteel group. “As soon as BackerKit launched their crowdfunding platform, we felt a streamlined course of on the identical platform would offer the perfect expertise for our followers. And BackerKit has executed an amazing job innovating their platform to convey our imaginative and prescient for the marketing campaign to life!”
Throughout these first two large tasks, BackerKit fulfilled over 200k pledges and likewise raised hundreds of thousands in extra funding by means of post-campaign add-ons.
Why BackerKit? Why did we transfer to BackerKit this time?
“We actually appreciated working with BackerKit. They’ve acquired some glorious, glorious software program – the perfect we’ve encountered – and it made our life manner, manner simpler.”
“All the things that went by means of BackerKit final time was simply the best it could possibly be,” mentioned Sanderson. “And so we take pleasure in working with them and so we’ve moved over there as a result of one in all our primary causes for doing that is due to how a lot simpler their software program makes making an attempt one thing like this, the place we’re going to be transport out tens-of-thousands – final time it was hundreds-of-thousands of books – so we actually admire the work they’ve executed behind the scenes.”
So when Sanderson determined to run the Phrases of Radiance marketing campaign solely on BackerKit, we knew we had a novel alternative to ship Sanderson and his loyal fan base their first end-to-end crowdfunding expertise – all the things from pre-launch to pre-order and success would run totally on one platform.
This offered one other alternative for us at BackerKit to use the identical product growth method and ethos we’ve carried forth since our founding:
Innovate by fixing actual issues alongside actual creators
and take a look at all the things in actual, stay marketing campaign environments.
And that’s precisely what we did. So taking inspiration from Sanderson, we’re thrilled to say…
Shock! 3 Secret BackerKit Options 🤫
Beneath are a few of the key options we secretly co-developed with the Sanderson group, unleashed in beta to the 100k+ backers of Phrases of Radiance, and which is able to quickly be launched globally on BackerKit.
1. Follower-Unique Content material boosts pre-launch followers and pleasure
Brandon Sanderson might have a bigger viewers than the common crowdfunding creator, however he nonetheless addresses the identical query all creators do forward of every marketing campaign:
How do I get my viewers engaged and excited for my subsequent mission?
Usually, creators drum up pre-launch consciousness by means of a sequence of electronic mail campaigns directing their viewers to a pre-live marketing campaign web page weeks forward of launch. We wished to take that method a step additional and provides creators like Sanderson a technique to flip extra web page guests into engaged marketing campaign followers quickly after touchdown on the web page.
We unveiled Follower-Unique Content material capabilities on the Phrases of Radiance Launch Occasion web page that enabled the Dragonsteel group to supply an incentive for following the mission tha their viewers would discover laborious to withstand – a weekly dose of unique content material, movies, and discussions tailored for Sanderson followers.
Be taught extra about how Sanderson and Dragonsteel drove peak pleasure months forward of their launch date by means of Follower-Unique Content material.
2. Trivia Challenges and Leaderboards hold backers engaged with pleasant competitors
Most crowdfunding campaigns expertise a u-shaped curve in exercise: site visitors and funding peak in the beginning and finish of the marketing campaign and dip within the center.
Many take into account this to be the pure development of a marketing campaign, however did it have to be?
What if we saved as many backers as potential engaged all through the marketing campaign? Would a extra pleasurable marketing campaign make an impression on probably the most engaged followers?
We wished to experiment with a brand new expertise that may enchantment to the Sanderson viewers – one that might maintain the eye of Sanderson followers and likewise faucet into the wealth of fabric the Sanderson lexicon provides.
So by means of Phrases of Radiance, we rolled out Trivia Challenges and Leaderboards which enabled Sanderson backers to decide on an “order” – representing the orders of the Knights Radiant from the Stormlight Archives – and compete in opposition to different orders by means of day by day trivia challenges that examined followers on their mastery of Sanderson lore. Everybody can take part and proper solutions contributed to their group’s last standings.
The Phrases of Radiance neighborhood participated instantly: 73% of backers selected an order, 21% of whom participated in trivia challenges all through the marketing campaign. The pleasant competitors spurred playful chatter as members of every order rallied to dominate the leaderboard. The day by day trivia saved backers coming again and the feedback rolling in, contributing to the whopping 10k+ remark rely for Phrases of Radiance.
3. Pay Over Time offers backers selection and suppleness when pledging
Phrases of Radiance supplied backers 8 completely different pledge ranges starting from $10 to $650, plus a choice of 30+ add-ons to select from, giving backers the flexibility to help the marketing campaign at any stage and customise their excellent mixture of reward tiers and add-ons.
Realizing the extremely anticipated marketing campaign would drive curiosity for the premium high-value pledge ranges, we labored with the Sanderson group to supply their backers extra selection when making their pledge by introducing Pay Over Time – BackerKit’s versatile pledging possibility that spreads pledge funds throughout a number of months for pledge quantities totaling $150 or extra.
This new versatile pledging possibility proved widespread for individuals who had been eligible to decide on it, with 16% of Phrases of Radiance backers that pledged $150+ electing Pay Over Time.
Pay Over Time remains to be in beta however will quickly be out there for all BackerKit creators to decide on for his or her subsequent mission.
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A historic marketing campaign shaping the way forward for crowdfunding – and publishing 💫
In his video Brandon Explains: Why Crowdfunding?, Sanderson voices a central query many have been questioning:
“Dragonsteel has been very profitable in crowdfunding, and we do have the assets. So why can we proceed to crowdfund?”
Sanderson goes on to share 3 primary causes:
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- Crowdfunding is a lot simpler as a result of it serves as a extremely exhaustive pre-order.
- Nice software program like BackerKit makes crowdfunding loads simpler.
- We discover it numerous enjoyable!
And we couldn’t agree extra: Crowdfunding will proceed to meet its authentic mission of serving to creators rally help to supply an impressed mission.
However as industry-leading creators like Sanderson show with every new marketing campaign, crowdfunding has additionally advanced into a strong, viable—and for some, most well-liked—various to conventional technique of manufacturing like publishing.
Sanderson’s openness to experiment and his deal with neighborhood engagement allowed us to check new concepts and push our collective concepts and expectations of what a crowdfund marketing campaign is and will do.
We’re excited to see how the options co-developed by means of Phrases of Radiance will quickly be used and undoubtedly improved upon by BackerKit creators and backers, and what new potentialities they may unlock subsequent.
It’s been a tremendous expertise for all of us at BackerKit to work with Sanderson and group on this historic mission, and we thank and congratulate them and all of the backers who made it so successful.
Till the following one, we’ll be saying the phrases right here. We hope you be part of us.
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