As a writer or creative of any media, finding creative inspiration that resonates with an audience can be hard. For today’s guest, the inspiration that came from her life, and her community helped her achieve that balance. Oriana Leckert is the author of Brooklyn Spaces: 50 Hubs of Culture and Creativity, which grew out of a multi-year project chronicling the rise and fall of under-the-radar creative places across New York City. Tune in to her chat with Ella Barnard on how this project opened doors for her and the community she forged along the way. As the Director of Publishing & Comics Outreach at Kickstarter, Oriana also helps creators bring a marvelous array of literary projects to life. Don’t miss out as she shares valuable tips to help you succeed on the platform.
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Finding Creative Inspiration In Real Life With Oriana Leckert
We are here with the lovely and beautiful Oriana Leckert. She is the Director of Publishing and Comics Outreach at Kickstarter, where she helps creators bring a marvelous array of literary projects to life. She has written and edited for Vice, MTV News, Slate, Hyperallergic, Gothamist, and Atlas Obscura. Her first book, Brooklyn Spaces: 50 Hubs of Culture and Creativity, grew out of a multi-year project, chronicling the rise and fall off under the radar of creatives places across New York City. She has done a lot.
Thank you so much for having me on.
One of my favorite ways of connecting with people is being vulnerable and goofy. It works perfectly and I would love to find out more. I was one of the faces in a Zoom call and Oriana was speaking at the Romance Author Mastermind in 2021. Kickstarter is pretty freaking big and exciting now. That is why I reached out to her. As I got to know her a little bit, she also is an author herself. First, let’s do the author’s journey and then do Kickstarter. Tell us about your author’s journey.
I live in Brooklyn. I spend a lot of my free time in the weird underground participatory art world of fire dancers, aerialists, abandoned buildings, raves, treetops, and things like this. What’s going on in Brooklyn now is a real moment. It is one of those times that people are going to want to know later, “What was it like? What does it feel like? What does it look like? What does it smell like?” I do not play a flaming saxophone or tap dance or anything like that. What I can do is write.
I started out of love and a desire to uplift all these crazy creative people who had made my life so enjoyable. I started writing profiles about people and spaces around New York City, primarily in Brooklyn. I had been working in the publishing industry for my whole career. Around 2007 or ’08, I went to a literary agency that I had used to work for. I said, “I want to write a book about Brooklyn.” They said, “I do not know if Brooklyn has a national appeal that would be necessary to get a traditional book deal,” which now is a LOL comment, but in fact, she was right.
In 2007, people in Brooklyn were aware that Brooklyn was becoming a thing. In order to sell it nationally, people in Idaho have to care for people in Austin, etc. She said, “Why don’t you start and put it online? See if you can generate a fan base. We can maybe work on some blog to book a deal once you have a certain number of followers and fans.” It was perfect advice. I have always been a writer, but I am not traditionally trained as a journalist. I started mostly talking to people I was friendly with, where the stakes were low and easy. I learned how to do good interviews and ask questions since I am covering an audience or a creative community doing things largely outside legal culture.
Were they not getting all their permits and things for what they were doing necessarily?
You might make an assumption like that. It was important for me to do some work to make sure I was trustworthy in the community and not going to blow up anybody’s spot, get somebody arrested, or reveal too many details. This is a long story, but the point was it worked. I was doing it online, I cemented my ability to interview, and write these profiles. I called myself a Cultural Hipstorian.
Eventually, we were able to get a cool book deal. My book is published with Monacelli, which is a fascinating little piece of the publishing landscape. It is an independent art and architecture press, which was at some point bought by Random House. Later, they bought themselves back. They are partially emancipated.
You could be the art that you want to see in the world.
It was a small press sensibility with a large press reach because they maintain a distribution relationship through Random House. I got a lot of one-on-one attention. My editor is wonderful. Once the book was published, they were able to not get it into local Brooklyn bookshops. It came out a few years ago, but for a while, it was in the Brooklyn Museum gift shop and places like that.
It turned out that my timing was excellent. By 2015, we were at the apotheosis of Brooklyn as a brand. This store in Paris, which I understand is the Urban Outfitters France, was a Brooklyn exhibit of some kind. They had Ricks Pickles, Brooklyn Hard Candy, and my little book for sale in Paris for a period of time while they had that display. That is my writing journey.
Let’s do the mechanics of the writing because it is hilarious. I went from, “I do not know if anybody cares about Brooklyn,” to, “We will publish this book, but we have to publish it now. It is going to end soon. Nobody is going to care anymore.” When I got the book deal, it was to write the whole book in three months, which I do not recommend doing. Do not do that. It is a bad idea. The book profile is 50 different spaces and in three months, I had to do about 75 interviews and 40 or 50 photoshoots.
I had to transcribe, edit, write, etc. I have been a freelance editor for a lot of my career. I am capable of forgoing sleep, sense, and sanity to make a thing. It is the logistics and cat-herding of like, “It was not me.” I had to get work with all these other schedules of all these flaky artists. It was bananas. I turned in most of it on time and it was certainly still getting those last couple of pieces in the next week or two. I launched the book with all due modesty, the best book release party of all time at this former cannonball factory. I had a 50 piece all-female drumming troop play. We had wall walking aerialists and flaming saxophone.
Think about what you were interviewing and what the book is about. You are going to be like, “Now we are going to sit here and do a book.”
I had to be pretty over the top. It was also a photo exhibit. A lot of my photographers showed and sold their work. You said this is going to be a short time, but I am very long-winded.
I know this is not going to be a lot of people who are reading the story, but it is very interesting to me. It sounds like you had a moment. One of the things I focus on with the people I work with and who I know are reading is finding the moment where inspiration meets what people want. It is true for anybody reading. Creative projects sometimes get an audience in that moment of like, “I am feeling some inspiration about this underground art world in Brooklyn,” and you have some passion behind it. When was the time period between when you had the idea? You did the blog, and then?
I did the book proposal in 2009. I did the blog for 2 or 3 years. I got the book deal in ’13 or ’14, and the book came out in mid-2015. It will be a through-line for this whole interview. You are right about that match between inspiration and audience. Without needing to, I found myself a real ideal niche. There were not a lot of people writing about that stuff. Certainly not people who were trusted participants in that community. When the book was on deck to come out, my editor was like, “Can you write some other things? Can you get your name out there so we can build the buzz around this?”
I thought, “Sure.” I was able to pitch and have pieces accepted in Gothamist, New York Post, and Brooklyn Magazine. I had contact with all of these weirdos that nobody else could reach. Through all that work, it was all in service of uplifting and supporting that community. I also did events editing for Gothamist, Queens.com, and several other New York-based sites where I was listing the legal events, or at least those that wanted publicity that these folks are doing and helping to bring people in. There was a lot of symbiosis between what I wanted to do, what I was able to do, and the wants and needs of the world I was covering.
It is also in the interest of the people who are going to read the book at some point. I also have another question because I want to talk about bringing and living life into writing. Here is something interesting. I lived in Queens for two years in 2005 and ’06. Before the year 2007, I did not have access to any of that good stuff. There were no fire saxophones when I was living in Queens. This is why I am very curious, for my own sake, especially since COVID is happening. It is harder for me to find the life experiences to inspire creativity because I am not going out that much.
Sometimes I watch certain shows and things. I can see the person who created this had so much inspiration. Creativity is overflowing that I get some for mine because they put so much into this. It is two questions. If people were interested in that, how do you find yourself in your life in this creative art world? The part two question is, how would you say that the vibrance or whatever those happening down there inspired your creativity?
In the mid-2000s, there were mailing lists and a little bit of people listing events on Facebook, but probably not much yet. My main entree was Nonsense New York, which is a weekly newsletter by this incredible guy, Jeff Stark, who did the introduction to my book eventually. It is still in my heart. I do not know how I originally found it. I know that I read it for a long time before feeling brave enough to show up down a dark alley at an inexplicable time of the night without any real knowledge of what I was going to find there.
I love the performance, but the thing I love the most is participatory art. I also, through all of this, became involved in this participatory art community that does things like the Idiotarod, which is an annual shopping cart race, and The Battle for Mau Mau Island, which is like a DIY boat building in the middle of the water, somewhere off the coast of Queens. That was happening when you were living there.
I also profiled a lot of underground punk music venues. This is not a visual medium, but I do not look like a punk. It is not like I had access to every creative community in the city, but once you start to find one and talk to people there, they know folks from the DIY movement. There were a lot of crossovers between aerialists, metalheads, and things like that. At the end of every interview, I always ask people, “Who else should I talk to? Is there any that inspires you that I should look into?” It is allowing the community to shake to the top the most exciting and important things.
To your second question, I do not know how to be anybody else. To me, it is seeing something creatively. I am going to go on Sunday to this high-end burlesque art production play place. I know they have opera-singing aerialists. They have the Beard Ball, who is this stunning tenor with a big beard and who wears a dress. I cannot see those people and do not want to talk to and be inspired by them. I overflow myself with that creative output from it.
I do not know if you know Delia Cai. She writes for Vanity Fair now. She does a newsletter and a lovely media person. She and I were going to do something together. We are going to do a panel discussion. That was a Kickstarter-Buzzfeed crossover, but COVID happened. In one of her newsletters, she talked about inputs and outputs. At a point when you find yourself creatively stymied, it might be that you need more or different kinds of inputs, which could be a different television show, a walk, or a road trip, something to suck in creative stuff to replenish that well for your outputs.
I find myself sometimes doing this, especially for these kinds of topics. I feel almost like a translator. I am like, “This is what Oriana is saying, and here is how you, readers, can apply this.” Plus, I am a little bit woo-woo. I do not know if you are, but I am going to take this to woo-woo. You are on a newsletter. At some point, you enjoyed it. I am on a bazillion newsletters. That is the starting point from where you went into this whole world. You had an inspiration to go, and that changed everything. It can be as simple as a newsletter. I did it for a while, and it is easier in New York. There is a lot of stuff happening in New York. I am in Boise, not as much or ever the same kind. It is not like aerial opera singers in Boise.
When I was not living here in Boise, I was living in a different part of Idaho. I am from California. One of the things that drew me to Boise was there was a workshop for female standup comedians to go for a day and listen and learn from them. We did a little bit of standup workshoppy stuff. I loved that. I was like, “This is amazing.” I am in Boise and it is not a big town.
Kickstarter is the best place for project-based fixed funding.
I am not surprised that there are funny ladies in Boise.
Me neither, but during the workshop, I was so excited. I do not think every place has that. I have been thinking about moving. I was moving and was doing some visualizations, like, “What would make me feel good where I move?” I want to learn pole dancing. I am like, “I want to feel sexy in my body.” For the first time in my life, maybe I can do that. I am like, “Are there pole dancing places in this place that I am looking at? Yes. There is one.” I am like, “Okay.”
Even if you live in rural Wichita, if you want a pole dancing place, maybe somebody else does too. You could start it and be the art that you want to see in the world. That is always an option that is available. You could be the one who puts it out in the paper and says, “Any other female standup comedians who are looking for a place to connect?” If you thought of it, somebody else probably has to and is longing for that community connection.
There might be somebody who already knows how to do it and is like, “Who has had the idea and thought about it?” It was like, “Would anybody be interested?” If you put it out into the universe, they are like, “Yes.” They start organizing it. My juices are flowing from talking with you. I wish I had been in the art world when I was there, but I was in the teaching and eating lots of delicious food world.
It was a good and excellent world. My mom’s family is from New York. My parents were hippies. I was raised on a farm in West Virginia. After college, when I moved to New York, my grandmother said, “Why New York?” We were so excited to get out of that place. I said, “I do not know what I am going to be or do in my life yet, but I know that I can find it here.” Whatever it is that you want, it is available in New York in a way that it is not in that variety.
It is available. I love to vacation in New York. I struggled in New York because I am super-duper cheerful. Maybe it was the timing or whatever. In any case, I ate a lot of the things that I missed most about New York, like the access to delicious food. If you want inspiration for food, New York is all over Queens. Not Manhattan. It was more expensive.
You have to go to Jackson Heights. It has the most ethnicities in a single neighborhood in the world.
I lived in Elmhurst, which is one stop from Jackson Heights. You have been a writer. You have all this familiarity with writing and stuff, and now you are working at Kickstarter. What happened? How and why? What do you do?
I have had a circuitous career path. I am old enough that I can be like, “I did all of that in that order on purpose to lead me exactly here.” None of that is true. I was bouncing around. I have been half and half freelance and then on staff because my staff jobs are more ridiculous than the last. I usually have to flee from them. I was a matchmaker for ghostwriters and a manuscript reader for a literary agent or a fact-checker for a book packager. I have been all over the place, and yet, each time, I am like, “That was a lot.” I am going to go back to freelance copy editing, where I am proofreading romance novels in my pajamas. That is usually my bounce back.
The job that I had right before Kickstarter was a year-long slow-motion catastrophe. I got tricked into a marketing job. The only time I have ever done that, I was running a website for an entity that did not understand my vision or like it at all. It was bad and hard. I was truly yanking my foot out from that sinking ship. A woman I had copy edited for many years ago got in touch and said, “I do not know if this is something you are looking for, but I am a Kickstarter now. We are hiring for a journalism outreach person. We are trying to grow our journalism category. I know you have done a lot of writing and are involved in the media. If this is something that interests you, you should apply.”
I thought, “Kickstarter seems weird, but I hate what I am doing so much. Why not? Let’s try that.” I got the job. That woman is Margot Atwell, who was my boss for three years, the greatest boss I have ever had. She left and is now the Executive Director at The Feminist Press because she is a total badass. I got hired at Kickstarter. I started on my birthday end of November 2019. The deal was to grow the journalism category, which is the second least successful category on the site.
I did that for a year and had a lot of cool successes. I learned a lot about the crowdfunding landscape and how that all works, then COVID happened. Everything went into a tailspin. I got laid off, rehired, promoted, and Margot left. I am now the Director of Publishing and Comics Outreach. My purview went from this teeny tiny emerging category to two of the biggest categories on the site, publishing and comics. I still do a little bit of journalism when I have time. Journalism is a lot of my heart but a small part of my job. Kickstarter is a tech company. I work on one of the few analog teams and we are a little bit of a ragtag band of subject matter experts and general misfits.
Our job is to be out in the world of our categories, helping people learn more about Kickstarter, understand what the platform does, what makes it unique and different, and help us set them up for success if they decide they want to use it. I work with an insane array of creative projects, from $500 poetry chapbooks to Brandon Sanderson’s record-shattering $41 million campaign and everything in between. I do a lot of stuff like where you saw me at the Romance Authors Mastermind. I speak on panels and do webinars, especially on COVID.
This is her working hours. She did not take off for this. This is in her schedule.
That is what I do. I get to spend my time helping writers and artists make money to fund their dreams. It is pretty ideal.
I am very curious. As soon as you say helping writers and artists make money to fund their dreams, what does that look like with Kickstarter? Many writers’ visions are sitting alone with bourbon and light in the dark in the garage or something. That is part of what this show is about. It opens the readers to all the different ways to write and make money writing. It was not the way we envisioned it. It can be unique to you, but how does it work for Kickstarter?
Kickstarter, in my obviously biased opinion, is the best place for project-based fixed funding. There are a lot of writers who require sustainable funding. For that, you want to look at something like a newsletter platform or a subscription platform. We are seeing in the romance space a lot of special edition books, leather-bound anniversary editions, swag boxes, literary ephemera that have to do with the world of you writing a magazine and anthology, things like this.
A project with a beginning and end where you can both visualize and explain why you need $5,000, $10,000, or $20,000 to make it come true, Kickstarter is the best place to do that. Everybody thinks about the funding side of crowdfunding. You are here to raise money, but the real deal with crowdfunding is assembling your crowd. Writers spend a lot of their time alone at their computers, but you also need to be building your audience. Any working writer is well aware of whether or not you find it distasteful, the idea of personal branding and making a platform for yourself, and all of this.
Fundamental to the Kickstarter philosophy is a rising tide lifting all boats.
Kickstarter is where you can leverage all of that work. Anybody can run a Kickstarter campaign at any point in their authorial journey. If you are a brand-new emerging writer who does not have any following on social media or a newsletter of any kind, you cannot assume that you are going to be able to make a ton of money on a platform like Kickstarter. The number one predictor of crowdfunding success is whether and how you can assemble your crowd. Before you start, you got to build that community and have a direct line to your audience.
I imagine your readers know this. The number one thing you should do is choose whichever social platform you would like to spend your time on and have any landing page on the internet. If that is not a website, a Linktree, or whatever, and a capture for email addresses because whatever you are going to do, being able to market through a newsletter is the number one.
When Kickstarter started in 2009, the deal was you would make one post on your Facebook page, all your friends would back your project, and you would make your money and be done. Things are a lot more difficult, sophisticated, and nuanced. However, your view of it is that direct access via individual emails or newsletters to your fans and readers. It is going to be the strongest way to reach the crowd.
I have said that to everybody, but it is nice to have authors say that oftentimes. You are saying it from the Kickstarter, the newsletter. The reason why is because even from the first time I started saying this, as the social media algorithms change, you do not know. Facebook pages and groups were big. They are still pretty big but they were not as big as they were because now TikTok is big.
It gives you a measure of autonomy. We have seated a tremendous amount of control over tech and newsletter platforms. That is true too. I have plenty of thoughts about the leading newsletter purveyors. For now, a newsletter is your most autonomous way to keep control of how you are connecting with your audience and not be at the mercy of algorithmic shifts and all sorts of pivots to video and tech companies all around you.
Let’s say somebody has not had a huge list. They are starting, but they have a list of 1,000 people, which is good and respectable, especially when you are starting out. If you have a 1,000-person list, you are not a Brandon Sanderson. I am so excited for him. You are from traditional publishing, but I love that there can be fewer barriers between the audience and the creator.
That is what Kickstarter is for. Kickstarter has always existed outside the traditional publishing landscape to help people get away from those gatekeepers.
I have said this before. Whatever the centuries, digital publishing has been White male-dominated. How many amazing stories and artists did not get published that we never get to read or experience because somebody was like, “Nah?”
That is one of the things we are the proudest of at Kickstarter for exactly those reasons. This is a tremendously queer platform. It is an incredibly diverse platform. All those people went to a traditional publisher and said, “I am a Latinx lesbian who likes to write about werewolves.” The gatekeepers said, “That is too niched.” Those people can come to Kickstarter and say, “I know there are other queer werewolf lovers out there.” You can fund them. This is exactly how you can assemble those niche, passionate communities.
If somebody has a 1,000-person list, what would you say is a project they could try? I have been doing some research and talking to other authors on Kickstarter. Is it money-making? Is it a project? If you have a passion and want to do it but might not make money from Kickstarter, you might make money after you complete it. Talk about that.
Kickstarter should function as a marketing campaign. We are there to raise money, but you should be aware of what your secondary goals are. Raising your profile, building your brand, and creating a press moment can be testing out a moonshot idea and secondary goals for you with your campaign. When you are thinking about what to raise money for or how much money to raise, I do not think that I have explicitly said this, Kickstarter is the only fundraising platform with an all-or-nothing funding model.
If you say, “I am going to raise $10,000,” and only raise $4,000, you do not get any of the money. It is important to be very careful when you are choosing your funding goal. What you want to do is find the balance between what you need and what you can get. What you need is where you are determining what the project that we are making is. Is it a digital poetry collection? Is it a paperback book? Is it a box set? You want to do your homework and a real budget, get your production costs and get your shipping costs. If you are doing rewards, figure out what those costs are going to be, etc. You have got a number.
For me to do this book the way I want it to, with the page count, the trim size, and so and so, I need $10,000. Can you get there? The way Kickstarter is structured, your backers are going to get all those different sorts of rewards. If you have got a $25 book, you have a $10,000 goal. If everybody pre-orders one copy of a book, you need 400 people to back that campaign to make your goal. Is this realistic based on your list, reach, and newsletter? Yes, but also, who else is out in the world who can act as a signal booster for you and amplify you? Are you going to go on podcasts? Are you going to get some press?
It is things like this. Start to piece together what the universe of potential backers looks like for you and get to the point where you can balance from those two directions. Another thing I would say is a starter campaign that people are worried that regardless of their needs, their audience is not going to be big enough to get them there. The anthologies are an excellent way to get your feet wet. If you are one person promoting your project, your audience is only as big as your personal reach.
What if you are working with ten other werewolf fantasy writers? You have got ten people’s audiences, all combined. Fundamental to the Kickstarter philosophy is a rising tide lifting all boats, but finding a project like that is more work. You need a project manager and to corral. Somebody is going to need to be coordinating all this stuff. It is a great way to test the waters and get a sense of how crowdfunding can work while feeling a lot less like all of the onus is on you to make everything happen.
I appreciate that you say it is like a marketing campaign. It is a mindset shift. If you see a Brandon Sanderson, you are like, “He is making money.” Brandon Sanderson is one of those people who write a book, and it goes straight up. It makes a ton of money. You are like, “Not everybody’s story is going to be Brandon Sanderson.” The marketing campaign aspect makes it seem like if you are trying to get a BookBub deal and make that part of your marketing the effort of getting a BookBub deal.
If you are learning Facebook ads and decide to be like, “There is an investment in learning Facebook ads. 1) It is learning it, and 2) It is the money that you put into the ad,” but you get the results afterward and thinking of the Kickstarter project as a marketing campaign where you are like, “I am putting this time into making a Kickstarter, reaching out to my audience and having it be this event.” It is almost like a book launch party, except it is your Kickstarter launch party. The intent is to have it pay for what you are creating. The benefit is the marketing from it.
You want to be thinking all the time about how this is going to help you now and also in the future. A lot of Kickstarter campaigns have a video. People come and say, “I am a writer. I do not know how to make a video. This is so much work.” You do not have to have one, but if you are going to make one, think about what other assets you can also generate for yourself at the same time, whether that is additional video clips or little gifts that you can deploy on your socials during the campaign. You can also post on your website after. Make that stuff worthwhile for you long into the future. If you are going to do a Kickstarter, it is work. Get all that money in.
Build your community. Whatever stage of your journey you’re in, there are other people both above and below you and at the same place. Gather them around you, uplift their work and know that when the time comes, they will uplift yours.
Make sure that it is going to have continuing benefits for you as an author or entrepreneur. The other reframing that I always counsel creators and the biggest stumbling blocks I see is people say, “I could not ask my audience for money. They will think I am a charity case.” That is not at all what you are doing on Kickstarter. In fact, it is not allowed to raise funds for charity on Kickstarter. Kickstarter is only for creative work. Every dollar that you raise is meant to go into the creation of the thing that you are making.
When you are messaging, you are not saying like, “Poor me. Can I have $5?” You are saying, “I am doing this exciting, cool new thing. Would you like to be an early adopter on my creative journey?” You are directly connecting with your most fervent supporters, who are the most excited to support what you are doing from its inception. That is an incredible message. It is so exciting.
They are going to be a part of it. If you were a writer and somebody invited you into their anthology about the topic that you exactly loved, you are like, “Yes, I want to be a part of this.” You are not like, “That is going to be a lot of work.” You are like, “I love this. I want to be a part of it from the get-go.”
You are getting something in return and direct access. You are going to get all their intimate backer updates and be the first one to have this book in your hand. A lot of times, people will have their backers help them shape the project itself. You can do a poll. Do we want the blue cover or the red cover? You can set a stretch goal like, “If you tell five friends that will help me get an extra $5,000, we will have fancy French flaps or a ribbon bookmark. I will get one more story. I will have enough money to pay one extra free.” It makes your readers feel deeply connected to you and your creative process.
That is what I am noticing as we are talking. My mind is circling around. Doing a Kickstarter for an author would not be something to do at the beginning, necessarily of your author’s journey. It would be to turn your fans, whatever level they are at, however many you have, into super fans. It would be the intent. How can I give something back to my fans and, at the same time, turn them into super fans because I am connecting with them? If you had to do fan art, maybe you have people that loved one of your characters.
They are like, “I do a lot of romance like that guy.” You would be like, “I want to make some fan art of this character that everybody loves. Let me do a Kickstarter to go so that I can hire an artist. Here is an artist that I love. Here are a couple of artists that we love. Here is how much it is going to be to have the custom art and make a Kickstarter from it.” That would not even necessarily have to be that big of a Kickstarter, but it would turn them into super fans because now you are like, “I see it.”
Fan art is a beautiful idea. Another wonderful example is Willow Winters. She is already running her second campaign. I have now used this as an example with almost everyone I talked to. She did swag boxes and saw cards from some of her books, including erotic toys. You could act out the scenes in the book with the accessories that she discusses. How incredible is that? I cannot even think of a deeper way to participate in the creativity of an author that you love.
She is also huge on TikTok. I have a list of things that I want to talk about. There are a lot of opportunities. For people reading, a good resource for Kickstarter for authors is Russell Nohelty. He does a lot of comics on Kickstarter. This is a small industry. He has a book that came out about Kickstarter for authors. I interviewed him. He is one of my friends. Read the previous episode about him on Kickstarter.
I was in California for most of December 2021 and got to have coffee with him. It was lovely.
He is such a unique character. I love him with a big heart.
Russell is wonderful, but if people want a less individual-based resource, you can go to Kickstarter.com/Creators/Publishing. It is a creator tips page. It has got webinars, articles, listicles, roundups, and tips and tricks specific to publishing comics and journalism projects that could be a resource for anyone who is Kickstarter curious.
I do have another question. Let’s say they go to that page and you interact with some of these people personally. Is that something you do with everybody? Is that something on occasion? What level of interaction is going on here? What level of help can people get?
There are about 150 campaigns launching each week in my categories. As much as I would like to, I cannot talk to all those people. That would be so nice, but I am one woman. It is not possible. If you have very specific questions, you can reach out to me. I am pretty findable. There are not that many people named Oriana. I am @OrianaBklyn on Twitter and Insta. You can slide into my DMs, and I will do my best to help. I cannot give deep, engaged advice way in the early stages. If you can send me an email with a few questions, I am happy to do my best to answer them. Please be kind to my time management, but I will get to you as soon as I can.
I also do not want everybody getting up into Russell’s inbox, but finding creators who have done this and are doing it out in the world is also helpful. The number one advice I would give anyone who is Kickstarter curious is to choose five live campaigns, back them for a few dollars, and find and follow those creators out in the world and watch how it is done. I can tell you a lot about strategy, but the folks who are doing the work are the most important thing you should see and steal all the best ideas. They want you to reach out to them. Thank them for inspiring you in all your projects together, like building community. All of this is super easy and fun to do.
I like that better. Russell is like, “I wrote a book.” I got my copy because I backed his Kickstarter. It is massive and everything is in the book. I do love the idea of following others. When people are like, “What do you do for your marketing?” I am like, “I copy other people. I go and see what they are doing. I will be doing this.”
Tell and thank them. There is nothing wrong with it. They will be thrilled. Katie Roberts also ran a pretty massive Kickstarter campaign. It is one of the first big romance novel projects. Every subsequent romance novelist who I talked to is like, “I saw Katie doing it.” I was like, “I wonder if I can do that too.”
Look for campaigns that are making it. If you are going to copy somebody, mimic or join, do someone who is made their goal and still has time left or is almost all the time left. You will see what works. It has been two different interviews, but I love them. It is two completely separate topics but also both awesome. What piece of advice would you give to creative people who are working on their goals now?
This will surprise nobody but build your community. Whatever stage of your journey you are in, there are other people both above and below you and at the same place. Gather them around you. Uplift their work and know that eventually, when the time comes, they will uplift yours. Make friends and find the thing that excites you. As we have been saying throughout this conversation, you are not the only one who thinks walking aerialists at an abandoned warehouse is cool.
Find the other folks who are into that. Figure out how you can work together, collaborate, uplift one another, and encourage one another’s creative work. The business of writing involves a lot of solitude and writing, but it also involves a lot of community. This is how we keep ourselves sane, inspired, excited, and passionate. That is always my number one advice for any creative pursuit.
There are lots of ways to build audiences and meet people and community without having to be an extrovert if you are an introvert. There are ways which I can talk about in various other courses and things that I offer you all. You need to be in alignment yourself. One of my best friends is an introvert. One of my top recommendations for building community is to find somebody who has not become good friends with somebody who has similar passions but is not an introvert. Let them invite you to everything.
That also works in my personal community. It is bringing all of my normal friends who are curious about the weird stuff, hauling them in for their first weird stuff.
I did not sense that about you pretty easily. I was like, “If I was in Brooklyn now, I would be like Oriana,” and you would be like, “Come on.” Thank you so much. Where is the best place for people to find you/Kickstarter you?
It is sweet of you to say this is two interviews. All my shit is one thing. It is all me. There is a lot of talk in the world about work-life balance. I do not know what that is. I am all one thing in all the ways. My website is Oriana-Leckert.com. My Twitter and Insta are @OrianaBklyn. Those are the places where I am. If you want to talk to me for any purpose, that is where to start.
Thank you so much for sharing your time, expertise, and enthusiasm with me.
This was super lovely. I am thrilled to do it. Thank you so much for reaching out.
Thank you, everybody, for reading. Hugs and happy offering.
Important Links
- Brooklyn Spaces: 50 Hubs of Culture and Creativity
- Romance Author Mastermind
- Monacelli
- Queens.com
- Nonsense New York
- BookBub
- Willow Winters
- The Battle for Mau Mau Island
- Vanity Fair
- The Feminist Press
- Russell Nohelty – Past Episode
- Katie Roberts
- Kickstarter.com/Creators/Publishing
- Oriana-Leckert.com
- @OrianaBklyn – Twitter
- @OrianaBklyn – Instagram
- Oriana@Kickstarter.com
About Oriana Leckert
Oriana Leckert is the Director of Publishing & Comics Outreach at Kickstarter, where she helps creators bring a marvelous array of literary projects to life. She’s written and edited for Vice, MTV News, Slate, Hyperallergic, Gothamist, Atlas Obscura, and many more. Her first book, Brooklyn Spaces: 50 Hubs of Culture and Creativity (Monacelli, 2015), grew out of a multi-year project chronicling the rise and fall of under-the-radar creative places across New York City.