Thoughts from a first-time self-publisher Part 21: Different paths to success w/ special guest: Emily Willix.
Welcome back! This blog will be a little different as I have invited Emily Willix of Small Furry Games to share her approach to her current Kickstarter, Bah Humbug! I’m not just bringing Emily on because she’s a friend (nor because one of my designs is part of her Kickstarter), but because she has bucked so many of the standards of crowdfunding while still having a remarkably successful and consistent campaign.. I think looking at how she has approached it offers a very different, and hopefully inspiring, take on what’s required and what works best for a small self-publisher using crowdfunding. Enjoy!
Best Part of my week (so far): If you like listening to me talk, it’s a great week for that! Matthew Rodela just released his follow-up interview with me for his Kicksaga series. Check that out here. I also had the privilege of being on the Crowdfunding Nerds Podcast! Both are really great conversations that I hope other aspiring self-publishers will find useful! I’ve also done the “soft opening” of my late pledge store (will advertise for it more in the New Year). If you missed Super Snipers, you can still grab it and get it when the Kickstarter delivers!
Most stressful part: The holidays mean it has been challenging to use “my time” in the ways I need to. Feeling a little behind, but not too bad.
Onwards to my talk with Emily!
Tell us a little bit about who you are and how you got into self-publishing.
I’m Emily, and I’m the owner/founder of Small Furry Games. We are a small game design and publishing company. We just incorporated as an LLC this past summer. I've been designing games since 2020 but just got into publishing this year.
The thing that catapulted me into game design was entering a contest on TheGameCrafter.com in early 2021, and then participating in some virtual conferences where I could speed-pitch my games to publishers. I think I morphed from being a designer into being a self-publisher slowly, over a period of time. At my core, I’m as much a marketer and a community-builder as I am a creative. I think that has naturally led me down the path of publishing. There were a lot of things—like prepping sell sheets and landing pages, pitching games, proofreading rulebooks for other people, making overview videos, and signing a game with a publisher—that required me to put on different hats beyond just “game designer.” I found I enjoyed those things just as much as designing games.
The big thing that made me think "I want to publish games" was hosting the Small Box Challenge on The Game Crafter in 2021. I got to see all the brilliant designs from other designers, and decided I wanted to dedicate more time to publishing games that were already well on their way, rather than just designing my own games from scratch and pitching my own prototypes. I guess I really wanted to see things get finished. And I felt like I had the skill set, time, and work ethic to get it done, not just with my games, but with other people’s games. And being selected as part of the GAMA Horizons Fellowship program this year has really helped me pursue that goal.
Can you talk about your current project on Kickstarter and your approach to including other designers?
In September 2021, I challenged myself to design and publish a game, no matter how small, by Christmas. I wanted something that you could take with you when visiting family and friends during the holidays, so whether you were with your grandma, or kids, or friends, there would be something easy you could play that wouldn't be too intimidating for nongamers, and something you'd want to play a few times in a row. The result was Bah! Humbug! which is a bluffing game with cards based on the gifts in "The 12 Days of Christmas" song. I ran out of time to print the game last Christmas, but I released it as a PNP. And I think it brought some joy to the world.
I knew I wanted to print the game eventually, but I knew that if I wanted to make a profit, or event cover my time, I’d need to sell it at a certain price point, and I didn’t think a 15-minute filler game was worth 100+ cards and $30. I knew it would be difficult to decrease the cost, so I figured I would find ways to increase the value. So I thought about other ways to use the deck and the tokens, and I invited my friends and members of the community to contribute. I’ve always had a love for travel-friendly games in small boxes, so why not 12 more, to go with the "12 Days" theme? That’s how we ended up with 13 games in one box. Here’s the link to our Kickstarter for Bah! Humbug! and the 12 games of Christmas.
Tell us a little bit about your preparation for launching: How much did you invest in pre-marketing and what types? How large was your email list? How many followers on your page before you launched? What role did the previous PnP only campaign play in your pre-marketing strategy?
MY MARKETING BUDGET - about $500?
I spent $0 on traditional advertising before the campaign. I collected a lot of emails with Google Forms (free) and SendFox ($99 lifetime). And I use a Google Site ($12/year). I attended BGG Con ($150) and showed off my game in the prototype area, but I was already in the area and wanted to attend the conference anyway, so I don’t quite consider it a marketing expense for this game specifically.
My whole budget for the Kickstarter page build was $250, and that was all for video. ($200 for a voiceover artist and about $50 for stock video). I did the scripting and editing myself. I know a lot of folks spend more budget on video or hire a pro, but I was really inspired by campaigns like Ben Downton’s “Micro Dojo” campaign and Tim Eisner’s “Canopy” campaign, and how simple and straightforward their videos were. And my other “jobby” is running a YouTube channel, so it was something in my wheelhouse already.
I spent a couple hundred bucks on prototype decks and parts from The Game Crafter so I could send out copies of the games and have them at local events, like BGG Con in Dallas. But I considered that more of a prototyping and design cost vs. marketing. I also didn’t print boxes or rulebooks, because they were the most expensive part of the game, and I knew they were subject to change. So having a “bare bones” version made preview copies less expensive.
Later in the campaign I did end up running a giveaway with the Giveaway Geek for a pretty great deal (it was sort of a fire-sale offer price because nothing else was running at the time). In this format, people could enter to win a copy of the game by doing any or all of a list of things like watching our YouTube video, liking us on facebook, etc. I believe that resulted in about 20 email sign-ups, though most who signed up with email did not check their email and confirm their subscription, so it wasn’t super fruitful. But it’s been good to boost our social media following in general.
MY LIST
Our email list was about 1000 people when I started. They came from a variety of places. I started collecting emails through a google form 2 years ago, and have grown it slowly ever since. But one of the mistakes I made was not emailing them often enough in the past 6 months to warm them up for the Kickstarter. I didn’t maintain that list as well as I would have liked, so it was really more like 500 active emails. A lot of “colder” emails have dropped off that list.
We had just under 300 followers on Kickstarter when we launched. I’d guess about 100 followers came from the PNP campaign—either people who bought the PNP, or who didn’t want a PNP, but gave $1+ to stay informed about the physical version of the game coming later. One thing I am glad I did was prep the prelaunch page for this campaign immediately after (actually during) the PNP campaign, so my final update and my PNP page could point to it. My PNP kickstarter ended and I already had 50+ followers on the next campaign.
What was your approach to previews and reviews?
I sent out 8 or 9 review copies, just a week or two before the campaign. It was something I had a hard time getting excited about, versus some of the other prep work for Kickstarter. So it became a bit of a last-minute thing.
Honestly, less than half of the copies I mailed out resulted in actual content so far. (That could be due in part to the time of year and the lack of lead time for them, but I’ve also heard other creators talk about getting ghosted by reviewers, so I know it’s not uncommon.) Every time one of the reviews did hit, I got 1 or 2 backers, but there was not a huge driver of our growth so far.
I think the biggest “preview” for me was releasing the PNP last year, developing a page on BoardGameGeek.com, and taking good notes so I could retain quotes from some of the playtesters. These were grassroots things I could do to curate content from those who already liked the game.
In the future, I might pay for one or two larger, more reputable channels to preview the game. The amount I spent producing and shipping prototype copies to 10 people might have been better spent with 1-2 content creators instead. (That said, thanks to Board Game Gumbo and The Cardboard Cantina for their free previews!) The biggest impact was a few backers who came from watching a quick live stream from Bower’s Game Corner, who knew one of the codesigners. The video gave an impression of our Kickstarter page and helped us spot some things that could be cleaned up. I saw a bit more action after I updated our project thumbnail with the price, for instance.
How did you determine your funding goal?
I knew that I didn’t want to set a fake funding goal. I wanted to be able to celebrate the moment when I hit the KS funding goal, and have it be a real success—I did not want to bite my fingernails waiting to meet my secret, “actual” goal. I knew this was a risk. So many people had told me I needed to set the bar low and smash that goal in the first 24 hours. But I decided I wanted to be real about it, and not play that particular game.
I set my goals in 4 tiers, based on real numbers in real spreadsheets. (Holy cow, publishing requires a LOT of spreadsheets!)
At the finding goal of $5,075, I knew I could produce about 200 copies of the game on the Game Crafter, ship them out of my home in a small USPS flat-rate box for $10 each, keep all my promises, and I would still have a bit left over as a buffer. This number was just a hair above being a break-even, as a passion project. But I wouldn’t have a cent of debt, I wouldn’t be dealing with the complications of manufacturing in China, freight, VAT…and the project would be fairly straightforward. I decided that at that level, and not a penny more, I could fulfill the backer rewards with joy. That was my real goal. That’s what I needed to feel like this was a success, and have the confidence to run another Kickstarter in the future.
My next funding goal ($14,500) was what I needed to hit to be able to mass produce the game in China, freight it over, pay all the promised royalties to my codesigners, and for me to have about $2500 left for unplanned costs. It would also give me more inventory to sell, beyond just the copies for backers. It was what I needed to feel like I was ready to invest in Small Furry Games as a business, and make a game or two every year and grow my catalog. I’d have more work to do, but I’d be learning a lot that would help me with my next game, so it would be worth it.
The other two goals I consider “frosting” on the top, but each has specific benchmarks and buffers in it that might be a bit too boring for this blog post.
The bottom line for me was that I wanted the campaign to feel like a few short sprints, not like a marathon that I might fall down in the middle of, or never reach the finish line for. And I wanted my backers to know my real goals, and be able to share in the success each step of the way.
I also know that Kickstarter isn’t going to be 100% of my sales or income. I have plans to attend the GAMA Expo in April and approach more retailers once I have copies in hand, so there was less pressure for me to fund EVERYTHING with the Kickstarter campaign. I think that made it easier for me to set realistic goals. I knew this was just one part of a larger marketing and publishing strategy.
Your campaign seems to have avoided the dreaded mid-campaign slump and grown steadily over the course of the campaign. What do you attribute this to?
True, we have had a pretty good growth of 10-15% every day since we launched. I think timing it around Christmas was a real advantage, given the theme. And I think that there were a lot of interesting game campaigns going on in Q3, but fewer in Q4 of this year, so it might have been that I didn’t have as much competition. I will say that we had a HUGE day about 2 days before Christmas, and now that Christmas is over, things have slowed down, and we are starting to see some cancellations (maybe relating to holiday overspending?). Today (Dec 28) has seen some growth, but also those cancellations, so we are pretty flat. So I might not be immune to that slump—perhaps it’s just holiday-season quirks. For what it’s worth, I don’t feel like I had a slump for the PNP campaign either. That was also in December, and Christmas-themed.
I think a lot of this is also about perspective. My goals were realistic, and the growth has been proportional. We made the finding goal in 3 days, not 3 hours. There has been a steady climb. One of the things I like to do is to thank every backer personally with a message. So every morning when I wake up and have 10+ messages to write, it feels like a lot of success to me. I’ve never had a day where I’ve thought “we should have more backers than this” because it always feels like just enough for me to keep up with all the messages. Each one of those messages is a person, and if I had all of them in the same room, that would be a huge crowd to me! I’m really grateful for every person that has backed the project.
Tell us a little about problems that you’ve run into over the course of the campaign and how you have handled them.
Silly oversights I couldn’t fix after launching: I made some silly mistakes before launch, that were just details I missed. One example was forgetting to remove a $10 US shipping estimate I had popped in as a placeholder for one of my pledge levels. Another was including a stretch goal in a description of a pledge level, when that feature wasn’t included in the base level of the game. They were things I couldn’t change once the campaign went live, so they’ve added a few hiccups and things I’ve had to over communicate about. In the end, I’ll honor the $10 shipping for US backers that selected that level. I think it will be about right. Worst case, I’ll be out about 40 cents in shipping, even if I fulfill them myself with USPS small flat-rate boxes. But obviously it would have been nice to offer an exact shipping amount in the pledge manager later. The silver lining is that since I specified a shipping country for that pledge level, backers have been messaging me asking to add their country as an option, and that’s giving me a nice picture of where all my backers live. It’s been a huge help as I’m looking into international shipping solutions.
Not hearing back from so many previewers: I mentioned this earlier. It’s the holidays, so I’ve sort of let them go. Since it wasn’t a huge investment, I don’t feel too bad about them not becoming anything right away. I do think I will be able to keep in touch with the folks who have prototypes, and do some promotion in 2023.
So much time looking into international shipping. Something I knew was going to be a lot of work was calculating international shipping prices and making numbers work.
Just to give you some background info, I chose not to do any work pre-campaign to prepare for international shipping, because I wanted to reach my initial, US-only goal first. (Why put in all the time researching global logistics if I only have a few international backers, right?) The scope of the campaign slowly creeped up to include Canada too, just because there was so much interest right away. For everyone else, I started with a pledge level called “Joy to the World” where backers outside North America could pledge just $2 and get a message from me asking where they were, so I could generate a list and find shipping estimates. I’ve been able to communicate one-on-one with a lot of backers this way, and add new countries one-by-one. Many “Joy to the World” backers have ended up converting to $29 pledges, or even $51 pledges. Others have just opted for a PNP. Some left after seeing the shipping numbers, and some are happy to stay at $2 and get access to the pledge manager later.
I haven’t seen anyone do international shipping this way before. I’d say it’s a lot of work, because it’s very high-touch, but it’s been worth it. Now, 3 weeks into the campaign, I’ve got estimates for just about everywhere, but I’ve done it incrementally. And I’ve been motivated to do all the work (which is a lot of work) because I know there are people who are interested in backing my game, and I want to make it work for them.
BUT the problem is, you can’t make all the numbers work for everyone. For retailers in other countries, for example, they get a deep discount on games, but still have to pay shipping and VAT, and that can make their margins unsustainable. I will barely make any profit, and they will barely make any profit. I’ve been looking for solutions, and I’m sure I’ll find one, but it really comes down to this—if there are only 1000 copies of a game, and you’re selling 1, 2, or 10 at a time, the profit margin per game is going to be much lower than if there are 10,000+. I’ve had to have that conversation with a lot of people. And I’ve had to learn that I can’t please everyone. (But I can still keep in touch with them, because things might get easier later).
Your campaign has certainly bucked some of the common knowledge/myths about what is required for a successful crowdfunding campaign. What do you think you’ve done that you’d encourage others to try out?
Starting with a PNP Kickstarter campaign last year was great. I can’t recommend it enough! There was a very low risk, and it gave me a chance to get to know the platform, and experience the ups and downs of using it. I launched with just 50 followers, and brought in over $1000 to support my game. In the end, I just had to send one email message to fulfill the campaign rewards digitally. That was awesome. It boosted my confidence in running this campaign. It was an easy win.
I haven’t tried to be bigger than I am. It’s easy to spend a LOT of money on marketing, advertising, video production, and building hype, and hoping your campaign will “blow up.” Yes, you have to spend money to make money, but there’s a lot you can do by using your strengths and creating a community one fan at a time.
I haven’t done anything knee-jerk or in a panic. I knew my numbers, and I set reasonable goals. (There are SO many spreadsheets I could share with you). I made my decisions based on logic. I think that kept me sane, kept my expenses in check, helped me keep my life in balance, and helped me grow this campaign slowly.
Don’t stay in a bubble. Surround yourself with other people who do this all the time. I reached out to ask for mentorship. I made phone calls, sent messages, and asked questions—especially the questions I thought were “stupid” questions. I’m sure I’ve talked to 30 people one-on-one about Kickstarter campaigns over the last year. And I’ve consulted many of those people during the campaign. It’s helped build my confidence, my capabilities, and my network.
Where can people learn more about Small Furry Games?
www.SmallFurryGames.com and check out all our links at https://linktr.ee/smallfurrygames. And if you’re interested in smaller, sustainable game publishing, join our facebook group, Small-Batch Game Publishers.
As always, thanks so much for reading and I hope this deviation from the norm was helpful. I am amazed at what Emily has accomplished and her success will definitely keep me thinking about the money I spend and where I invest in the next go-around. Until next week!
