The best Kickstarter book for first-timers

Most Kickstarter books were written by someone selling you an agency.

That isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s the business model. A book that talks you out of launching is a book that loses the writer a £10,000 client. So they don’t write that book. They write the one that assumes Kickstarter is the right answer and works backwards from there.

I’m not running that business, so I could afford to write a different one.

What I actually wrote, and why the first chapter is free

The Honest Kickstarter is a 24-chapter playbook for launching a Kickstarter campaign that actually funds, and, more importantly, actually delivers. The first chapter is free at adamwebb.pro/book, and every new chapter lands in your inbox as I finish it. Roughly one a week.

I’m writing it in public deliberately. Every founder who reads a chapter gets to email me and tell me what didn’t land. Every one of those emails goes back into the next revision. By the time the final PDF ships (late autumn 2026), it’ll be the version thousands of first-timers have already stress-tested, not the one I guessed at in a locked room.

The first chapter asks the question most Kickstarter books won’t

Chapter 1 is called Should You Even Launch?.

It’s the chapter I wish someone had shoved under my nose before I launched Lifelong Deo on Kickstarter in 2020. I’d have saved six months and probably five grand of my own money. Instead I did what almost every first-time creator does. I assumed Kickstarter was the right answer because it was the answer I’d already decided on.

The chapter goes through eight disqualifiers. If two or more apply to your project, you shouldn’t be launching. Full stop. Save the six months, save the £15,000 in pre-launch marketing spend, save the public sting of a campaign that fails in front of everyone you told about it.

It’s not the chapter that sells consulting. It’s the chapter that filters the audience down to the founders who should actually launch. Which, funnily enough, is the audience I want to work with anyway.

What comes in the rest of the book

The remaining 23 chapters are the honest playbook. The maths, the pre-launch, the page, the video, the launch, the campaign, and (the bit nobody else teaches) fulfilment.

A rough map:

• Chapters 2–5: the honest economics, the goal-setting rule that separates funded from failed, why 48 hours decides your campaign.
• Chapters 6–9: the reservation funnel (the £10,000 agency trick you can build in a weekend), swipe-file method, and how to make your page pop with GIFs instead of walls of text.
• Chapters 10–15: the video, story arc, rewards ladder, launch day, PWL + editorial, first-48-hour execution.
• Chapters 16–19: updates, ads, and fulfilment (manufacturing, MOQs, VAT, shipping, the stuff most guides don’t cover).
• Chapters 20–24: the international operator’s edition, teardowns of real campaigns (Pnut, Canairi, FLYTE, Coolest Cooler, Lifelong), why campaigns fail, and when not to launch at all.

The full 24-chapter list (with the ones already available marked as such) lives on the book page.

Who this is actually for

If you’re a first-time Kickstarter creator planning a physical product launch in the next three to twelve months, this is the book. If you’ve already been quoted £8,000–£15,000 by a Kickstarter agency and you’re wondering whether you can do most of it yourself, this is the book. If you’ve read three other Kickstarter guides and they all felt like a warm-up act for a done-for-you retainer pitch, this is the book.

It’s not the book if you’re launching a piece of software, a service, or a pure consumable. Those don’t work on Kickstarter, and no amount of playbook fixes that. It’s not the book if you already know the mechanics and just need help on the specific bit you’re stuck on. For that, book a £60 strategy call and I’ll answer the one question in an hour.

Why free? Isn’t this suspicious?

Fair question. The honest answer is that it’s lead generation, and I’ll show you the whole funnel because that’s the whole point of the book.

Chapter 1 is free. Email signup, PDF in your inbox. Read it. If you decide Kickstarter isn’t for you, you’ve saved yourself six months and £15,000, and I never hear from you again. That’s a good outcome.

If you want the whole book today rather than chapter by chapter, that’s €9. A single PDF, instant download. Some people prefer to read cover to cover; the €9 door is there for them.

If you’d rather watch me walk you through it (with slides, platform screenshots and worked examples), that’s the £199 video course. 64 lessons across 7 modules, including 10 lessons on fulfilment that no other Kickstarter course teaches.

If, later, you want one-to-one help on your actual campaign, consulting starts at £60 for a strategy call and goes up to £5,000 for a full done-with-you launch.

That’s the whole funnel. Every price is public, nothing is behind a “book a discovery call” wall, and if the free chapter is all you need, you never pay a penny. The dishonest bit isn’t running a funnel. It’s pretending you’re not.

Why I’m the person writing this

Short version: because I’ve been through it.

I’ve launched three Kickstarter campaigns of my own (raising more than £500,000 combined) and I’m currently mid-prep on my fourth (REEFill, launching March 2027, the extension of my Lifelong Deo brand into hand soap, body wash and shampoo). Alongside that, I’ve consulted on 30+ more campaigns as an official Kickstarter Expert Partner, and those campaigns have raised more than £3 million combined.

That’s not a “£50M raised” number some consultants like to fling around, because I don’t massage aggregates. But it does mean everything in the book has been battle-tested (on my own projects and on clients’) and none of it is theoretical.

Get Chapter 1

Head to adamwebb.pro/book, put in your email, and Chapter 1 arrives in your inbox seconds later.

You’ll also automatically get every new chapter as I finish it (roughly one a week) plus occasional honest field notes from the campaign I’m currently prepping. No spam, no drip sequence, no upsell blast at midnight. Unsubscribe with one click any time.

If Chapter 1 lands, tell one other founder who’s thinking about launching. If it doesn’t, hit reply and tell me why. I’d rather know now than after I’ve finished the book.

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Related on the site: Hire a Kickstarter consultant · Kickstarter Expert Partner explained · The full video course · Am I ready to launch? 60-second quiz