$3 From Everyone for the People of Greece

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Tom Feeney, a 29-year-old Yorkshireman living in London, set up a crowdfunding campaign on IndieGoGo this Sunday to help the Greek people. Today the campaign really got momentum - so much that IndieGoGo's server crashed this afternoon. 
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The initiator pledged: 
European ministers flexing their muscles and posturing over whether they can help the Greek people or not. Why don't we the people just sort it instead?
The European Union is home to 503 million people, if we all just chip in a few Euro then we can get Greece sorted and hopefully get them back on track soon. Easy.

€1.6bn is what the Greeks need. It might seem like a lot but it's only just over €3 from each European. That's about the same as half a pint in London. Or everyone in the EU just having a Feta and Olive salad for lunch.  He promises that all profits will go to the Greek people, donation perks include a postcard of greek prime minister alexis tsipras, a greek feta and olive salad "fresh to your door" and a voucher for a bottle of ouzo.

€805,171EUR raised by 47,751 people in 3 days

To pitch in and help, go to 

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/greek-bailout-fund#/story

Thom Feeney: "I wondered, could the people of Europe have a crack at fixing this? Less talk, more direct action. So, sat at the table after dinner, I started a crowdfunding campaign to try to rescue the Greek economy. Some basic maths told me that I only needed the entire population of Europe to donate €3.19 (£2.26) to reach the amount of the bailout fund. I included some nice perks for donating, including a Greek salad and holiday in Athens for two, and set up a page on IndieGoGo and a Twitter."
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Meanwhile:
"12 Ultra Rich Greeks Who Should Have Bailed Out Greece Themselves ...
or at least pay their taxes.  While they are hiding 70 Billion Dollars in Swiss and other banks, people in Greece are often rummaging garbage cans for food. Greece's financial troubles forced its people to the streets and its fellow European nations to negotiations about bailing it out." This is from a five year old article at Business Insider - and now the situation is even worse on both sides. Greek people are suffering and no taxes are paid... 

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Writers and Artists: Get FREE Market Research

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Authors who use crowdfunding to finance the production costs of their book get for free what industries pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for: MARKET RESEARCH

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It is certainly an amazing opportunity and one of the starting steps in the publishing process.

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Many Benefits, Beyond the Financial Gains:

• Marketing – project initiators can show there is an audience and market for their project. In the case of an unsuccessful campaign, it provides good market feedback.
• Profile – a compelling project can raise an author’s profile and provide a boost to their reputation.
• Audience engagement – crowd funding creates a forum where project initiators can engage with their audiences. Audience can engage in the production process by following progress through updates from the creators and sharing feedback via comment features on the project's crowd funding page.
• Crowd funding most often grows the overall number of books sold.
• Feedback – offering pre-release access to content or the opportunity to beta-test content to project backers as a part of the funding incentives provides the project initiators with instant access to good market testing feedback.
• Bringing passionate readers along for the publishing ride and creates deeper relationships and reader engagement.

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Quite a few crowdfunding services are available, best known and trusted are Kickstarter and IndieGoGo  - see also a comparison table on Wikipedia.

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Support From Your Customers
Too often, authors write books before knowing the depth of their reader base.  The supporters of your crowdfunding campaign are your future readers / customers.  Crowdfunding is a great way to pre-order books before they are produced – invaluable for a startup author-publisher.  Crowdfunding means: you have readers even before your book is published. 

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The idea of funding books by subscriptions is actually something that was already popular in the 18th century.  Now we are really going back to a time before we had big, trade publishers who used to give writers large advances in the past.  These days authors are using the web to attract readers to their own book project.

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Readers and Reviewers
Authors can offer copies of their book to supporters. Let’s say an author’s book campaign gains the support of a hundred people who will receive a copy of the book as a reward. On launch day the author will already have access to those hundred readers, who will be able to review the book on Goodreads, Amazon or B&N, Kobo or Apple and generate attention and momentum immediately after publication.  If the book is sold in print through bookstores, it has only a couple of weeks to succeed and with an initial boost its likelihood of success is much greater.

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Key to Campaign Success
The author’s knowledge of the audience of their book and how to reach them is the key to success in publishing. Crowdfunding means, an author is able to test the market for the book and find and connect with their audience pre-publication, which gives them a tremendous advantage when the book is published and promoted to a large audience of readers. Get lots of tips for a successful campaign from a former blog article.

Important is that such a campaign is well planned and that authors create a relationship with their backers.

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Read more:
https://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2012/06/17/crowdfunding-success-with-kickstarter-or-indiegogo/ 
  
https://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2014/08/03/crowd-funding-more-than-money-for-your-book/ 

https://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2012/08/04/startnext-crowdfunding-jetzt-auch-in-deutschland/ (German) 

https://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2013/10/13/great-news-for-canadian-authors-kickstarter-is-here/

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To learn more about professional book marketing and publishing, please read also “Book Marketing on a Shoestring” http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UAVL3LE
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