A growing number of booksellers are turning to crowdfunding platforms to fund the launch of their business or to finance their growth. Contributing author Hallie Busta talked with the operators of three independent bookstores, who completed successful crowdfunding campaigns in the last year, to learn what worked and what didn’t. Here’s what they said:
1. Work Your Network
It may go without saying, but personal and professional networks are worth mining for interested investors. That’s especially apt for booksellers already in business. When general manager Cindy Dach and the team at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Ariz., wanted to open a new location of the 40-year-old Phoenix-based new-and-used bookstore, they turned to Indiegogo to raise the $80,000 needed to buy inventory.
“We have a pretty good Facebook fan list and we have a pretty good Twitter following and we do an email newsletter, so we are a pretty active store to begin with.”
In Vallejo, Calif., owner Rar Farmer used Kickstarter to crowdfund part of the launch of her store and reading room, Koham Press, raising $5,515 to build bookshelves and buy inventory. To get the word out, she turned to Facebook and Twitter, and sent personal emails to her network. Like Dach, she sought out potential funders. The store opened in January 2014.
“We did a lot of face-to-face events with people, passing out flyers at the farmers market and at the local theater across the street [from our store]”
Naomi Chamblin, owner of the Napa (Calif.) Bookmine, used her network to drum up extra attention for her Indiegogo campaign as it neared its end. At that point, her business partner’s parents offered to match $1,000-worth of incoming donations to help them reach their $15,000 funding goal.
“We didn’t ask them to do it,” she says. “But if you have people close to you who you know are going to be donating a large sum of money, [ask that they] wait until closer to the end.”
2. Market Your Bookselling Expertise
Business owners with a book-selling pedigree can benefit from flaunting their experience. Having hosted celebrity authors from Stephanie Meyer to John Krakauer, Changing Hands already had a social network in place to cull donations. Many funders were locals aware of the flagship store’s historical presence in Tempe. “We had some longtime fans that said their children grew up here and that if this is what we wanted to do, they were going to help us grow,” she says.
The store’s robust campaign required approximately 40 hours of work each week, split among three of four staff members and occurring during December 2013, retail’s busiest month of the year. She recalls: “Every staff member was toggling on their computer to the [campaign page]. There was a buzz around the store with a lot of people there, watching the numbers go up. We’d get another thousand dollar donation and there’d be a shout and the customers would be like, ‘What happened?’”
Chamblin grew up working at her father’s bookstore, Chamblin Bookmine in Jacksonville, Fla., which opened in 1976, and was able to leverage that experience and the store’s following into donations. “A lot of people that I knew from Jacksonville, even if they didn’t know me, they knew his store really well and that brought a legitimacy.”
3. Pick the Right Perks
It’s no secret that good perks spur investment—but just how personalized should they be? Despite Changing Hands’ longstanding community presence, convincing existing customers of its funding needs proved challenging, Dach says. “People were a little confused as to why we were raising money,” she says. “We were able to clarify that message along the way.”
One way the team did so was by asking local artists to donate their time—in exchange for gift cards to the store—to design literary-themed t-shirts, greeting cards, calendars, tote bags, and prints. The perks were offered to funders at fair-market value, Dach says, on par with their donations. “If we really wanted to raise the money, we had to reach people who wanted stuff,” she says.
Chamblin offered a stay at her home, complete with a homemade breakfast, for those donating $500. “We live in a destination,” she says. “When I visit a place, I like to stay at somebody’s house vs. a hotel, so we knew that we could offer a stay at our house and then making breakfast … just felt like a really homey, nice thing to do for somebody who obviously believes in you.”
4. Use the Media, but Control the Message
A dramatic take on a business’ fate may sell newspapers, but it requires damage control. Chamblin’s team told an area paper that they planned to open on Aug. 1, 2013, but when logistics forced that date back a month and a half, they had to reconcile with would-be-customers asking them what went wrong. “It wasn’t the donors who were banging down the doors,” she says. “It was people who lived nearby that just really wanted us to open up.”
When forecasting the store’s opening to the media, Chamblin advises, keep it flexible and offer a season rather than an exact date.
Changing Hands also received media attention for its much-anticipated move into Phoenix. The team was already financing the renovation of an existing building to house the new store and purchase initial inventory, and they were using Indiegogo to build out a more robust interior.
Because the store’s opening didn’t hinge on the successful completion of the crowd-funding campaign, early media coverage tended to misrepresent their mission. “We were coming, we just didn’t know if we were going to be able to do all the things that we wanted to do,” Dach says. “You don’t want to turn those stories down. We did have to do a lot of explaining when they came out.” Her advice?
“The more short and to the point we could be, the better the news story works for us.”
5. Don’t Fly Solo—if You Don’t Have To
Outsourcing a crowdfunding campaign isn’t often viable for nascent operations, but established businesses may benefit from working with a design professional to craft the campaign best suited to its target audience. Dach and her team knew they needed to create a campaign that would build momentum for the store. “We had already started construction, so we couldn’t say, ‘If you don’t fund, we’re not coming,’” she says. “So we said, ‘Let’s be funny.’”
The team paid local artist Safwat Saleem, who had already completed a number of his own crowd-funding campaigns, to help produce theirs. “Don’t try to do this yourself,” Dach says. “Find a local expert, because everything that he told us was going to happen has happened.”
Hallie Busta is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist covering start-ups, small business, and architecture and design. She can be reached @halliebusta and halliebusta@gmail.com.
