If you happen to’ve heard of crowdfunding, you then’ve most likely heard of Brandon Sanderson.

Other than authoring wildly fashionable books and collection 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 venture of all time – a venture launched in 2022 that surprised Sanderson followers with a shock launch of 4 secret novels he wrote throughout the earlier two years of the pandemic.

In March of this 12 months, Sanderson and crew returned to crowdfunding with their first follow-up marketing campaign on BackerKit: Phrases of Radiance Leatherbound.

Very like The Manner of Kings, Sanderson’s first crowdfunding venture, the Phrases of Radiance marketing campaign headlined with the 10-year anniversary leather-based certain rerelease of Phrases of Radiance, initially printed in 2014 and the second installment in The Stormlight Archive collection. However in true Sanderson style, the marketing campaign additionally got here with a shock announcement of a “New Secret Mission” – 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:

• • #2 Most funded crowdfunding venture of all time
  • #2 Most engaged backer group 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 after we had 4 books, in order that’s fairly unbelievable.”  – 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 venture Shock! 4 Secret Novels (2022).

As well as, Phrases of Radiance takes the #1 spot for many engaged backer group, racking up a complete of 10,416 feedback on the venture – 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:

• • #1 Quickest to achieve $10m in crowdfunding: Sanderson’s 2022 marketing campaign held this document,reaching $10m in below 10 hours – a document Phrases of Radiance shattered by over half the time, elevating $10m in just below 4 hours. That’s a funding charge of $41k pledged per minute.
  • #1 Largest 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 just below 10 hours, subsequently reaching $13,657,708.89 throughout the first 12 hours. Watch the second Sanderson and crew crossed that threshold and celebrated the milestone with their followers.

Other than setting crowdfunding {industry} information, Phrases of Radiance made BackerKit historical past and now holds the titles for:

• • #1 Most funded marketing campaign on BackerKit
  • #1 Highest backer depend 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.

• • #1 Longest Time beyond regulation Mode on BackerKit: At BackerKit, each venture has an opportunity to tip into Time beyond regulation Mode if a remaining Backer Practice begins within the remaining minutes of the marketing campaign and extends when the Backer Practice stops. When Phrases of Radiance went into Time beyond regulation Mode, the marketing campaign prolonged previous its unique finish time by almost a day and a half – 33 hours and 33 minutes – whereby 3,601 backers raised a further $543,410.

Phrases of Radiance additionally topped a few of Brandon Sanderson’s private bests as a crowdfunding creator:

• • #1 Quickest funded venture for Brandon Sanderson and Dragonsteel Leisure: Phrases of Radiance reached its $2m funding objective in solely 12 minutes and eight seconds – 2.75x quicker than Shock! 4 Secret Novels took to achieve its decrease $1m funding objective.
  • #1 Most engaged backer group for any venture 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 really started in 2020 when Sanderson ran his first crowdfunding venture.

“We’ve already had an excellent relationship with BackerKit, utilizing their Pledge Supervisor to meet our final two campaigns,” mentioned the Dragonsteel crew. “As soon as BackerKit launched their crowdfunding platform, we felt a streamlined course of on the identical platform would offer the most effective expertise for our followers. And BackerKit has performed an excellent 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 via post-campaign add-ons.

Why BackerKit? Why did we transfer to BackerKit this time? 

“We actually appreciated working with BackerKit. They’ve obtained some glorious, glorious software program – the most effective we’ve encountered – and it made our life method, method simpler.”

– Brandon Sanderson

“Every little thing that went via BackerKit final time was simply the simplest it might 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 every of our most important 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 recognize the work they’ve performed behind the scenes.”

So when Sanderson determined to run the Phrases of Radiance marketing campaign solely on BackerKit, we knew we had a singular alternative to ship Sanderson and his loyal fan base their first end-to-end crowdfunding expertise – all the pieces from pre-launch to pre-order and success would run fully on one platform.

This offered one other alternative for us at BackerKit to use the identical product growth strategy and ethos we’ve carried forth since our founding:

Innovate by fixing actual issues alongside actual creators
and take a look at all the pieces in actual, reside 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 🤫

Under are a few of the key options we secretly co-developed with the Sanderson crew, unleashed in beta to the 100k+ backers of Phrases of Radiance, and which can quickly be launched globally on BackerKit. 

1. Follower-Unique Content material boosts pre-launch followers and pleasure

Brandon Sanderson could 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 venture?

Sometimes, creators drum up pre-launch consciousness via a collection of electronic mail campaigns directing their viewers to a pre-live marketing campaign web page weeks forward of launch. We needed to take that strategy a step additional and provides creators like Sanderson a method 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 Get together web page that enabled the Dragonsteel crew to supply an incentive for following the venture tha their viewers would discover arduous 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 via Follower-Unique Content material.

2. Trivia Challenges and Leaderboards preserve 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 think about this to be the pure development of a marketing campaign, however did it have to be?

What if we stored as many backers as potential engaged all through the marketing campaign? Would a extra satisfying marketing campaign make an impression on essentially the most engaged followers?

We needed to experiment with a brand new expertise that will attraction to the Sanderson viewers – one that might maintain the eye of Sanderson followers and likewise faucet into the wealth of fabric the Sanderson lexicon presents.

So via 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 via every day trivia challenges that examined followers on their mastery of Sanderson lore. Everybody can take part and proper solutions contributed to their crew’s remaining standings.

The Phrases of Radiance group participated straight away: 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 every day trivia stored backers coming again and the feedback rolling in, contributing to the whopping 10k+ remark depend for Phrases of Radiance.

3. Pay Over Time provides backers selection and suppleness when pledging

Phrases of Radiance supplied backers 8 completely different pledge ranges starting from $10 to $650, plus a number of 30+ add-ons to select from, giving backers the power to help the marketing campaign at any stage and customise their good mixture of reward tiers and add-ons.

Understanding the extremely anticipated marketing campaign would drive curiosity for the premium high-value pledge ranges, we labored with the Sanderson crew to supply their backers extra selection when making their pledge by introducing Pay Over Time – BackerKit’s versatile pledging choice that spreads pledge funds throughout a number of months for pledge quantities totaling $150 or extra.

This new versatile pledging choice proved fashionable for many 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 continues to be in beta however will quickly be out there for all BackerKit creators to decide on for his or her subsequent venture. Join our Neighborhood Publication to maintain up with the latest BackerKit updates and releases.

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 will we proceed to crowdfund?”

Sanderson goes on to share 3 most important causes:

• 1. Crowdfunding is a lot simpler as a result of it serves as a very exhaustive pre-order.
  2. Nice software program like BackerKit makes crowdfunding quite a bit simpler.
  3. We discover it numerous enjoyable!

And we couldn’t agree extra: Crowdfunding will proceed to meet its unique mission of serving to creators rally help to supply an impressed venture.

However as industry-leading creators like Sanderson show with every new marketing campaign, crowdfunding has additionally developed into a sturdy, viable—and for some, most well-liked—various to conventional technique of manufacturing like publishing.

Sanderson’s openness to experiment and his deal with group 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 via Phrases of Radiance will quickly be used and undoubtedly improved upon by BackerKit creators and backers, and what new prospects they may unlock subsequent.

It’s been a tremendous expertise for all of us at BackerKit to work with Sanderson and crew on this historic venture, and we thank and congratulate them and all of the backers who made it so successful.

Till the subsequent one, we’ll be saying the phrases right here. We hope you be a part of us.

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