Indie authors have never let their creativity stay confined to the page. Oriana Leckert, the head of publishing at Kickstarter, has seen that firsthand, in the projects authors have successfully funded using the platform and the rewards they’ve offered their backers in order to get there.

Kat Singleton, a Romance author, created a candle exclusive to her series. Penny Reid designed a custom yarn color to commemorate her series’s main character, who runs a yarn store. Other authors have offered handwritten notes, personalized scenes, or a Q&A with the author. Best-selling LitRPG author Matt Dinniman offered contradictory rewards in the Kickstarter campaign to produce hardcovers of the first Dungeon Crawler Carl book: For $666, he would write you into the series and kill you off. For $777, however, he would let your character live. “We've long seen naming rights in campaigns—we'll name the dragon after your dog, we'll name the villain after your mother-in-law, we'll name the hero after your son—but Matt took it a step further,” Leckert says. 

Since Kickstarter launched in 2009, the platform’s publishing category has seen more than $380 million pledged and more than 69,000 projects launched, according to Leckert in an April interview for The Creative Penn podcast. By every metric, Leckert says—whether it be the number of projects launched, the number of first-time creators on the site, the number of dollars raised, or the percent success rate of campaigns—the publishing category has seen year-over-year growth since before 2020. 

Indie authors and publishers have been a significant part of that. As another form of direct sales, Leckert says the platform’s popularity reflects shifts in the industry toward connecting with audiences directly—something traditional publishers are starting to recognize.

“I think we're in a really fascinating moment in the sort of broader publishing ecosystem, where not just Kickstarter but many of the things that indie authors have been doing and finding great success in are becoming un-ignorable by the traditional gatekeepers and the more sort of conservative folks in the industry,” she says. “[That success is] forcing major publishers to take notice and shift their thinking and maybe eventually … begin to innovate.”

Just as hard to ignore is Kickstarter’s impact on individual indie authors’ careers. In recent years, crowdfunding campaigns have become a key part of many authors’ business models, shaping how they connect with superfans, reach new audiences, and launch and market new titles. Indie authors have long valued the creative freedom that comes with writing and publishing their own stories without a middleman. Today, trends on Kickstarter reflect how that idea is expanding within the industry to every other part of a publishing business as well, from the design of physical products to the choice of printers and suppliers and even management of final distribution. 

Kickstarter and the Industry

As the success of any crowdfunded campaign is influenced directly by audience interest and engagement, it’s no surprise that successful projects on Kickstarter often mirror current trends in the larger publishing industry. Genre fiction—and particularly popular genres with large audiences, such as Romance, Romantasy, and Sci-Fi/Fantasy—tend to perform strongly, Leckert says. “I had a particular focus on Romance over the last three to four years, and so we've really seen that exploding,” she says. 

Campaigns to create special editions are also popular, the reason for which is twofold. On the reader side, interest in special editions has been growing in recent years, a trend publishers theorize in part may stem from reader communities on social media and the growth of bookbox subscription companies, according to an article in Publishers Weekly. In Written Word Media’s 2026 reader survey, at least 30 percent of respondees said they had purchased a special edition, and 23 percent of respondees said they’d be willing to spend more on an enhanced edition of a book that includes features like “bonus content, author commentary, or early access.” 

On the author side, crowdfunding offers an opportunity for authors and publishers to gauge audience interest in special editions or certain aspects of the design before spending money or ordering copies. “Kickstarter is a really, really strong place to do special editions, again, because you get the money first,” Leckert says. “You can start by saying, ‘If we raise ten grand, we're going to do French flaps and sprayed edges,’ and then if you hit that goal, you can say, ‘Well, now, if we raise another two grand, we're doing ribbon bookmarks,’ [and] another couple grand beyond that, ‘We're going to make a full color or vellum art inserts.’ You can really create it in collaboration with your audience as you go.”

Several standout Kickstarter campaigns from 2026 were created to fund special editions of new or existing books, including Jacquelyn Benson’s “1898 edition” clothbound and foiled hardcover of her Historical Fiction novel, Willow Winters’s Kickstarter-exclusive “blacklight collection” of special editions, and Dakota Krout’s campaign to create special editions for books 2 and 3 in his series after the success of a previous campaign for book 1. In May of this year, Kickstarter Publishing also added new subcategories for audiobooks and tabletop role-playing games, suggesting creators are frequently turning to the platform to fund projects in those categories.

Although projects related to popular fiction genres often perform well on the platform, they are far from the only success stories. Leckert says plenty of projects from other genres have drawn just as much attention and support, such as memoir and self-help books, business books, and children’s books. Even those targeting niche audiences can find tremendous success when marketed well. “I think three years ago, our top-funded nonfiction project was an eight-hundred-page oversized coffee table book on the history of computer keyboards,” she says. 

“The ceiling is really, really high. There’s a lot of space,” Leckert says. “Anybody who's got a strong platform, an ability to reach their audience, can really find a lot of success here.”

Kickstarter and the Individual Author

The keyboard book campaign Leckert mentioned, created by designer and typographer Marcin Wichary, ultimately earned $753,291 from 4,278 backers. Much of the support he received in his campaign came from the audience he’d built over years in the industry and funneled toward the site—something Leckert says anyone who creates a project on Kickstarter should be prepared to do. 

“Generally, for an early career publishing campaign, we see maybe 20 to 30 percent of your audience will come from the larger Kickstarter ecosystem, so that's not nothing,” she says. “You will certainly be growing your audience by being on the platform, but … you definitely need to bring your people to bear first.”

Leckert reminds authors that setting realistic expectations for their campaigns will lead to greater chances of successfully funding their projects. “You have to make sure that your ambition matches your reach,” she says. If you’re an emerging author or starting with a smaller audience, focusing on smaller projects and funding goals initially will allow you to learn the platform and grow your audience before attempting larger-scale campaigns. 

Just as authors should set realistic goals for their campaigns, they can also feel comfortable offering rewards that feel manageable to them. With more campaigns focused on creating artistic special editions of books, many campaigns are also leaning into eye-catching and artistic rewards, such as custom bookmarks, character artwork, or stickers. But Leckert says that isn’t a requirement.  

“Anybody who's got a strong platform, an ability to reach their audience, can really find a lot of success here.”
—Oriana Leckert, Head of Publishing at Kickstarter

“There's a persistent misapprehension that in order to run a Kickstarter, you have to turn yourself into a swag production facility, and that is not true,” Leckert says. Although plenty of Kickstarter backers enjoy physical merchandise, it may not always be the most beneficial or cost-efficient way to attract support. Leckert encourages authors to think about offering rewards that are unique to their project and story worlds, as well as to explore non-tangible reward options, such as the opportunity to create a character later in a series or have their name printed in the final book.

Projects and rewards that have been created using AI are allowed on the site, as long as creators are clear about how and where they’ve used AI tools in the process. Leckert describes Kickstarter’s policy as one of “radical transparency,” so that backers have the opportunity to fully understand a project and how it will be created before they choose whether to support it. Even with this transparency, however, Leckert says she hasn’t noticed trends toward or away from AI-assisted projects on the platform.

Backers on Kickstarter tend to be open-minded about different genres and willing to support unique projects, Leckert says. Whether they’re supporting a grand series of special editions with an array of merch or an emerging author’s book launch with only a few reward tiers, authors can generally find an audience on the platform. 

“I think a really notable thing about Kickstarter Publishing—first of all, the average backing amount last year in publishing was $72. So this is really different behavior than your standard internet book buyer who's trying to spend 99 cents on an e-book,” she says. “People are willing to really invest here, and … there's a real appetite for different tropes, different genres, taking a chance on just supporting the act of creativity wherever it is.”

What to Know Before You Start

Authors new to the platform or curious about creating their first Kickstarter campaign can find a range of resources and advice for the platform on the Kickstarter website. The creator tips page for Kickstarter’s publishing category includes basic how-to guides, marketing and budgeting advice, and more. Additionally, the Kickstarter for Authors Facebook Group, run by Anthea Sharp and Thorn Coyle, provides authors a place to ask questions and learn from other authors’ and publishers’ experiences with the platform. 

One of the best ways to learn how to manage a successful Kickstarter campaign, however, is to look at—and back—other campaigns on the site, Leckert says.

“I am not suggesting that you spend all of your money on Kickstarter the way that I do, but pick five projects, back them for a few bucks, and begin to understand the Kickstarter experience from the backer perspective,” she says. “That will help you know what things you will want to do or avoid as a creator.”

From the initial planning to fulfillment, authors new to Kickstarter should be prepared for a significant time investment when hosting a campaign on the platform. But the more time a creator can dedicate to researching and strategizing before managing a campaign, the more their efforts can pay off—literally. During the fundraising window, Leckert also recommends cross-promoting with other live campaigns to reach a wider audience of potential backers who are already familiar with Kickstarter. 

As time goes on, Leckert believes the success of independent creators on Kickstarter will encourage more readers, as well as the wider publishing industry, to explore crowdfunding. Already, traditional publishers are taking note of the success independent creatives have had with the platform, and traditionally published authors are using the platform to build excitement and interest for their new titles. Earlier this year, a collection of traditional and indie Romance authors managed a campaign for a collection of Dystopian Romance novellas, raising more than $1.4 million in total, and another campaign by Fantasy author Charles Soule allowed him to market a companion volume to his upcoming book before its release with Harper Perennial. “I think the savvier publishers will take note soon that any work done on Kickstarter is also going to augment all of the trad work that they and their authors are doing,” Leckert says. “This is a real rising-tide, lifting-all-the-boats scenario.”

She also hopes the publishing industry’s growing familiarity with crowdfunding and the number of success stories authors have shared will encourage more creators to explore the platform themselves.

“Somebody recently said that doing their first Kickstarter was like getting their first tattoo,” Leckert says. “It seemed like it was gonna be really scary, and it was kind of painful while it was happening, and then as soon as it was done, they were like, ‘Okay, that was so much easier than I thought. Let's do this again. I can't wait.’”