As you may imagine, we receive a lot of requests to promote things–websites, videos, books, gadgets, games, apps–and lately that includes crowdfunding projects. If you’re trying to get our attention about your project, here are a few guidelines to keep in mind.
1. First, be familiar with our site. We’re a family site, written by parents for parents. Sure, not everything we cover is kid-friendly, but we do steer away from things that are wildly inappropriate.
2. Writing up an article takes time. We don’t cut-and-paste press releases. So if you’re looking for coverage of a crowdfunding campaign, you should contact us as early as possible–ideally, well before you launch. Writing to us in your last week because you’re at 50% of your campaign and really need a boost is probably too little too late.
3. Our preference is to cover things that we’ve actually gotten to experience. Whether you’re making a gadget or an album or a movie or a game, we’re more likely to write about it (and our readers are more likely to be interested) if you give us a chance to try it out for ourselves. Loan us a prototype or see if one of us lives close enough for a hands-on demo. Get in touch early enough to make these arrangements, and our review will be that much more effective.
4. It would be nice (but not required) if you pledged to send us a sample of the finished product if the campaign is successful. We’re helping to promote your product with our time and effort; knowing in advance that we’ll get a review copy later would be a nice gesture.
5. We can’t guarantee that we will write up your campaign, even if you do follow these guidelines. Sometimes we’re just not interested, or we tried it and didn’t like it. And sometimes there’s just not enough time. We’re all parents and most of us have day jobs, and writing for GeekDad is something we do on the side. Because of the sheer volume of requests we get, we just can’t cover everything.
6. Finally: if we can’t write about your crowdfunding campaign, consider getting in touch with us when your product is completed and available. We still do traditional reviews as well, and maybe we’d love to write up your game/gadget/book once it’s been released.
These aren’t hard and fast rules, but they’ll make it easier for us to continue writing about your cool projects. Send us your pitch at pr@geekdad.com, and if it gets our attention, we’ll be in touch. In your pitch, please give us the elevator pitch–enough to give us a sense of the project, but not so much information that we have to wade through it. And, of course, if you have a website link, include it in the email!
Thanks, and happy crowdfunding!
Update: I forgot to mention that we cover projects in a number of different ways. We have a curated page on Kickstarter where we highlight a few of our favorite projects. We write short pointer posts (and roundups of several projects), and we do in-depth reviews. Which type of coverage you get depends on the nature of your project, how much time we have, and where we feel it fits best.
Just wanted to let you know that I really appreciated the crowd funding reviews. I find that Kickstarter and Indiegogo do a surprising bad job of promoting new projects based on the interest of users. I get the generic emails, but by now they should have a pretty clear idea of what I am interested in. The search on the sites is also pretty awful.
Do you have any other sites you use to keep tabs on projects? I missed out on the last Bones event and would have loved to join in. So glad you posted about Dwarven Forge so I could join in the craziness.
Thanks, glad you like them! I know the Dwarven Forge post was by Matt Forbeck—I don’t play a lot of RPGs or miniatures games myself so that’s not my specialty. For board games, we get a lot of PR pitches, so that’s part of it. I find things on Twitter, BoardGameGeek, and from when somebody I follow on Kickstarter backs something (though that system is also lacking). And sometimes I just hit the tabletop section and just keep scrolling. Finally, there are some publishers whose tastes I trust enough that if they launch a Kickstarter, I’ll probably mention it.
The problem with the way things are displayed on Kickstarter is that popular projects are up front, and more obscure things get pushed to the bottom, so you’re more likely to see things you already know about.
These days, though, it’s getting to the point where the biggest problem is filtering it down to a manageable number, and I’m still not doing a great job of that myself.
Jonathan,
As one of the Kickstarter campaigns that you’ve reviewed in recent weeks, I just want to say how much it means to creators like me that you are able to do this at all. When you’re launching your first campaign, and when you’re venturing out into an unfamiliar internet and trying a thing you’ve never done before, it’s a great boost to see someone in the know actually enjoying your game.
I don’t know how many people say thank you properly – perhaps not enough – but allow me at least to be one of them.
(And if anyone hasn’t read the Geekdad review of Stormy Weather, go to http://geekdad.com/2014/04/stormy-weather/ and enjoy)