What Is Crowdfunding and How Is It Used?

Crowdfunding Purpose

Crowdfunding is designed for creators to gather interest and funding for a planned project. During the open pledging stage, backers may join the campaign by pledging an amount of money toward the project. Sometimes they may expect rewards based on the pledged funds, and sometimes they pledge just to help move an idea forward. Backers may pledge funds, increase or decrease their pledges, or cancel their pledges completely at any time during the pledging period.

What Happens with Pledged Funds?

Once pledges are finalized—usually at a scheduled date and time, sometimes only if meeting a stated funding goal or other criteria—the pledged funds are collected. Credit card processing systems collect a fee for every pledge payment transaction. Crowdfunding platforms (such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo, BackerKit, Patreon, and others) charge a percentage of total funds collected. If a separate pledge manager or other backer or project tracking service is used, further fees are paid by the creator. Depending on the platform and currencies accepted, currency conversion fees will also be assessed. The remaining collected funds are provided to the campaign creator, who then uses those funds to move forward with their project plans.

Refunds for Crowdfunded Projects

Crowdfunding campaigns are not designed around refunds. Full refunds not only remove pledged money from the campaign, but may cost the campaign additional money to cover already collected, non-refundable costs related to the initial collection of the pledged funds.

Crowdfunding and Dragonsteel

Why Does Dragonsteel Use Crowdfunding?

Dragonsteel uses crowdfunding for occasional projects intended as high visibility, high participation events. Examples of this are the leatherbound editions of books from Brandon Sanderson’s best-selling series The Stormlight Archive™ and “A Year of Sanderson” subscription boxes. Additional campaigns for new projects will be run in the future.

Crowdfunding allows Dragonsteel to have a unique, single-use site and backer tracking system separate from the store or Dragonsteel’s charity organizations. It also allows Dragonsteel to know beforehand the expected required inventory for fans, ensuring no launch sells out too quickly, preventing fans from having a chance to obtain a popular and high-demand product. It also allows Dragonsteel to have a dedicated channel to provide updates about the project progress, and a dedicated place to track customers and fans interested in the project. Fans are able to have a known, dedicated site to go to for updates and information specifically about an active project without having to search through social media posts, YouTube video updates and streams, other product pages, or forums and fan sites.

Crowdfunding by Dragonsteel has also helped the greater community by bringing attention to crowdfunding as a source to find new authors. It contributes to Dragonsteel’s goal to provide small boosts to competition in the indie print, ebook, and audiobook markets, which Dragonsteel hopes will help drive innovation, lower costs, and provide better protections for authors of all types in years to come.

Dragonsteel's Crowdfunding Refund Policies

While Dragonsteel’s partners and publishers may run their own crowdfunding campaigns for books or licensed products, these policies apply only to campaigns run directly by Dragonsteel. Dragonsteel has a long and established track record of creating high quality products and meeting or exceeding expectations, both with products sold directly to fans and with past crowdfunding campaigns. If you pledge to Dragonsteel’s campaigns, you can be confident that you will receive the rewards you are pledging for, and receive transparent updates of the processes beforehand.

Dragonsteel recognizes and acknowledges that emergencies arise, and money pledged to the campaign may desperately be needed to help cover unexpected expenses prior to fulfillment of promised rewards. Refund requests are ultimately processed on a case-by-case basis, but will generally follow these guidelines:

Full Refund: Available Until Crowdfunding Concludes

Full refunds are available up until the fulfillment window closes and cards are charged. Once your card has been charged, Dragonsteel is unable to cancel and refund your payment.

Refunds Unavailable: Crowdfunding Concluded

Removing your pledge or changing your payment information was available while the campaign was live. Once a card is charged, no refunds will be processed.

Please note that pledges with incomplete payments will not be eligible for a refund, partial or full.