Something cool happened a couple weeks ago. My Kickstarter project for Mostly Lies, a book, was successful. And that’s pretty cool. Thanks to everyone who helped make it happen. I am currently in the planning/rewarding phase of production. The new buttons are, as of this writing, lost somewhere in the postal system. (Remind me sometime to tell you about how I have grown to utterly despise the United States Postal Service.) I’m sure they will turn up soon and then I can get those sent out to all the backers (although it’ll be up to the USPS to deliver them, so I apologize in advance).
In the meantime, I thought I’d offer a brief reflection. Here I go reflecting:
Numbers
- The total amount pledged was $6,197, which is 112% of the goal. (It is also a prime number.)
- The total number of backers was 104.
- The smallest pledge was $1. The largest was $1,000.
- The average pledge amount was $59.59.
People
A total of 104 wonderful people, all of them extremely good-looking, backed Mostly Lies. I always had the secret goal of 100 backers. As much as I appreciate the big donors (which is a lot), one of my reasons for setting the $5,500 funding goal was because I wanted to see if my idea was appealing enough to attract a lot of people, and a lot of different people. And I guess it was.
Rightly or wrongly, I view each pledge as a compliment. It’s a, “Hey, you’re doing pretty cool stuff.” And the best way to get compliments — for me anyway — is from a healthy mix of strangers and friends.
When a stranger compliments you, it means a lot because they have no reason to blow smoke up your butt. You know they’re not just being nice because they’ll have to face you tomorrow. But at the same time, it’s easy to discount strangers’ compliments because, come on, they don’t really know you. Sure, you seem OK — superficially — but dig a little deeper and you probably suck. If those strangers only knew.
That’s how I think anyway.
So it’s nice to get the compliments from close friends too. Those are the folks who have been here all along and, crucially, they’re still here. Maybe you do suck, but you don’t suck enough for those people to completely lose all faith and abandon you.
It’s good to have both. And then, when you add everyone else in between — the person I occasionally run into at the pub, the person I banter with on Twitter, the person I went to high school with but haven’t spoken to since, my friend from first grade — that’s a really satisfying mix.
Serious Business
It’s a really satisfying opportunity to let people down by not writing something great. So now I’ll get on with the serious business of letting you all down.
I really appreciate the chance.