Cindy Safronoff has certainly found the SLPA meetings to be helpful throughout the process of writing her book. The various expert speakers at the monthly meetings have given her important information and tips, ranging from what formatting to use in a word processor document to how to hook the interest of a potential reader in the book description. She participated in a day-long SLPA-organized workshop for aspiring authors last fall, which gave her a useful overview of the whole process of completing a book and self-publishing. Being able to engage with other authors has given her greater confidence in her work. Throughout her involvement with the SLPA, Safronoff has openly shared about her book Crossing Swords at the meetings. She has announced the achievements of progress along the way, asked questions, and on two occasions has willingly taken the hot seat in the front of the room to get feedback and suggestions by the whole group.

One recent guest speaker, author Jean Ellen Whatley, was especially helpful in inspiring her to try a Kickstarter campaign. The article in “The Book Corner” on page 2 of the January SPLA newsletter focuses on the recent Kickstarter campaign for Crossing Swords and the pre-publishing publicity it has created, which continues to ripple out.      

The SLPA is affiliated with the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) and Small Publishers Association of North America (SPAN).

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The Crossing Swords fundraising campaign has received yet another boost from the staff at Kickstarter.com! On November 27, 2014, Thanksgiving Day, the Crossing Swords project was selected to be the one and only “Featured project in Publishing” on Kickstarter. This was a huge honor!!! To put this into perspective, there are nearly 5000 projects in the Non-Fiction category alone, and a total of 21,162 in Publishing. 

What does this mean? The staff at Kickstarter sees great potential in this project! One of Kickstarter’s Publishing Community Managers was excited to see this project and chose to promote it above the thousands of other publishing projects in 14 different categories. So when visitors to the website went to “Discover” new projects in publishing, they saw the Crossing Swords image featured above even all the other “New and Noteworthy” projects.

This is the second time Kickstarter has featured the project. On October 29, 2014, Crossing Swords was selected as a staff pick to be one of 54 “Noteworthy” projects highlighted that day. Prior to that, on October 28, according to Kickspy.com, which ranks the popularity and success of active Kickstarter projects, Crossing Swords reached as high as #12 in the non-fiction category.

As of this writing, there are four days remaining in the Kickstarter project. Pre-order your copy now! 

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