How Scott Berkun crowdfunded and self-published his latest book

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Author and speaker Scott Berkun has some great books out, including the very well-known The Myths of Innovation.

For his latest book, Mindfire, is a collection of his essays and articles.

Before its release, Scott wrote Why I’m self-publishing my next book, giving some really good reasons:

Here’s why I self published:
1. I have crazy ideas for books. Books I doubt any publisher would accept. I don’t want my creativity gated on someone else.
2. I expect to write books for a living the rest of my life. The more I know about every part of the process, the greater my odds of success.
3. The more I know about every part of the process, the better I can negotiate what a publisher can or can not do for me in the future.
4. I don’t know how well I can promote a book on my own. There is only one way to find out.
5. Every author complains about compromises with their publisher. Self publishing is one way to not to have to compromise on anything. If this book sucks, I have no one to blame. I like having no one to blame.
6. The tools are amazing. Kickstarter, BookBaby and Lightning Source. The hardest part will always be writing the book, but all the other tools make self-publishing easier and cheaper than ever in history.
7. Even if I never self-publish again, I’ll never look at a book the same way. I love books. I want to look at them with great understanding of what’s involved in their creation.

Very interestingly, Scott crowdfunded his book on Kickstarter, raising $5,832 even before the book was published.

The rewards he offered (well worth reading through) ranged from a Kindle copy of the book for a pledge of at least $9, to 25 copies of the book plus a speaking engagement for $4,000. Some of his ‘mid-priced’ pledges were sold out, and really did offer a lot of value, for example:

PLEDGE $150 OR MORE
5 BACKERS SOLD OUT (0 of 5 remaining)
NEW: Due to demand I’m offering 3 more of this popular prize. You will get 5 copies of the print or digital edition of the book + I will write an essay or blog post on the topic of your choice, linking to you and your blog. Add $10 for international shipment. Pledge before 9/1 and your name will be in the book acknowledgements.

Now the book is out, selling well, and getting great reviews.

I wrote about the role of direct distribution of creativity in Chapter 10 of Living Networks, and also wrote about how bestselling author David Maister chose to self-publish.

Today the stigma of ‘self-publishing’ is close to gone. As importantly, as Scott points out, there are new tools to assist the process.

How cool is it that you can make almost $6,000 from a book even before it’s published? In my forthcoming book Getting Results From Crowds we write about how to crowdfund creative projects. One of the issues is that it is a great market test. If enough people pay you know it’s worth doing. If not and the crowdfund project doesn’t reach its limit, you can choose to go back to the drawing board.

Look forward to many more crowdfunded books, where only the best get funded.