We’ve been calling 2025 the year of the bookshop, but it isn’t until the last few days we’ve really been able to mean it because we have now successfully raised OVER the full £25,000 needed on Kickstarter to open the Paper and Word bookshop! You all helped us smash our goal with our final figure sitting at £25,940.  Here’s a look at the steps along the way, the fumbles and the leaps it took us to reach this point.

Dreaming up the idea for the Paper and Word Bookshop

When I first started Paper and Word I didn’t expect it to be a business, I just wanted a little extra pocket money to buy more books. When it turned into more than that and I started dreaming of the future, of course a bookshop made top of the list. It kept being on the end goal list, never moving into the present. But last year I realised I’d ticked off all of the intermediate goals, and only the big ones were left. This was a real turning point as I had a bit of an internal crisis about where to set my sights, what’s next, how do I say ‘I did that thing’ at the end of the year, when I don’t know what I’m aiming for now? That time when I wrote down my goals, the bookshop made it onto the to-do list.

Could we really do it? Understanding how to turn this dream into a reality

The first thing I did was sit with Liam and go through the practicalities of it - it would mean a huge lifestyle change for me, was I ready? Was our little family ready? We decided yes, so spent a weekend looking at cost and budget estimations. It definitely felt possible from an ongoing basis, but we would need an influx of cash to get going. I began keeping an eye out for commercial properties that would fit our budget and requirements, and a few popped up that ticked a box or two, but something was always lacking. We were walking through our local village one day and I said to Liam that it would be the perfect location, but only two of the shops had the ‘feel’ I was wanting, and both had been occupied for decades. Within a few days, one of them came up to let… 

We went to see it ‘just in case’, despite deciding that we wouldn’t make moves like this for another 6 months. We had to see it just in case, you know? Of course it was exactly what we wanted, although very rough around the edges. 

Cue more maths, budgets and discussions, and we had a rough start up cost and timescale. We got to work IMMEDIATELY on contacting those that could help move plans forward.

Deciding to start the Kickstarter process, planning and working out how to market our project.

The next thing was deciding how to fund the set up. We’re only a small business so we don’t have tens of thousands sat in miscellaneous bank accounts waiting for a fun day (sadly). After lots of research we decided that a Kickstarter would be best, if we could pull it off!!

Cue a LOT of research. I looked at so many other Kickstarters and YouTube videos around the subject. I looked at other bookshop Kickstarters (successful, unsuccessful, active and launching soon), but also at game campaigns as they always do really well and have epic visuals and social media presence. I also looked at recent local projects and through the ‘Projects We Love’ section. I made notes on things I liked, didn’t like, common threads, most/least funded reward types, branding, wording, linked social channels and how they were used and more. I then looked at my own project and business and made a plan.

Due to us finding the property first, we needed to go quickly. From announcing the bookshop to becoming successfully funded took us only five weeks. If all stays on schedule, we should get the keys two weeks after the funds clear.

I needed to get my head around the rewards first, as it’s a space wanted to fund, not an item. How could we offer a bunch of really special, exciting rewards, without having to spend our entire budget on buying a load of rewards? I could have offered more items - I had a lot of DM’s requesting this - but the truth is that I would have had to increase the goal to begin with, or we’d be eating into the budget we needed to open the shop.

Once the rewards were settled, it was back to the maths. How many of each reward could we offer, and how many did we need to reach our goal? We set up a spreadsheet to estimate this, including costs for items, fees for the platform, shipping etc. The end result was far from our estimations in terms of popular reward choices and volumes!

When we felt confident the maths was mathing, I took a brain break and made the visuals. What would *i* want to see and feel if I was deciding whether to back the bookshop? I’d want to know what it would look like, what stock there would be, what the vibe was. I worried over this as lot, as there are many Kickstarter rules against using sketches, CGI’s, AI etc. I couldn’t show the shop as it was at the time, as it was still very much another business! So I gave Kayleigh, our brand designer, a bunch of examples of other campaigns that I thought covered this well. Kayleigh then created a set of visuals teasing the bookshop brand and our merch. I can’t tell you how many people have contacted me saying how much they love this!

I then began the story of our next chapter. Why now, why this place, what is so special? How can I get this incredible vision of a place that doesn’t yet exist onto paper. Will it be enough for people to believe in the bookshop and back it? I worked around the clock for days on end to perfect it. Writing, rewriting, adding and deleting.

Finally, I submitted it.  

…and it was rejected.

Take two, resubmitting

I had a frustratingly vague automated email with reasons that I really didn’t feel were applicable to the project. It then explained we only had one chance to rectify the issues and resubmit, before the project would be cancelled and banned from Kickstarter.

I finished eating my dinner and crawled back into the studio to see what could be done to fix it. I took everything literally in their email and made adjustments. I wrote two pages of explanation and evidence to submit with the appeal too. To then find out upon pasting it in that I was only allowed 500 characters. I went for a bullet point list of the essentials, submitted it and went to bed.

Grabbing my phone the second my eyes were open at 6am, the email was already there - project approved! Thank god.

Now to get to work on marketing it.

I can’t stress how far out of my comfort zone any form of self promotion is. I knew I had to lock those feelings away to get this done, so I made a list of ‘what would X do?’. X is much more confident than Abby, and she does not fail. So here was the rough plan: 

• PR - approach all local news outlets to see if they wanted to discuss or feature the bookshop or Kickstarter.

• TikTok - a super fast daily update with the total and what we’re doing. 

• Instagram - the big one! Daily updates on targets, backers and whatever news is going on. This eventually happened as a banana and I wholeheartedly believe that filter won us the campaign 😂. Schedule posts for every single day it’s live.

• YouTube - launch our channel and create longform content talking about the bookshop and Kickstarter.

• Mailing list - send semi regular updates with bookshop details and reward info. Update the ‘universal footer’ across all automations/flows so that there was a link in every email to the Kickstarter. 

• LinkedIn - post here regularly with ‘business’ type updates. I think I only did this twice.

• Website - mention the Kickstarter at the very top. 

• Misc - email signature link, cross pollinate all IG posts to FB, throw some stuff on Pinterest just in case, email every bookish contact I have to tell them the news, regularly remind everyone to share the info, create campaign graphics that can be shared, put posters in the bookshop window as well as the local bottle shop and boardgame cafe, and stick a giant QR code sticker on every single order I shipped for over a month.

There was likely a little more than this too.

Going live and the manic month of running the Kickstarter

I was incredibly lucky that a random TikTok went viral locally, and we gained about 7k followers across all platforms. We also constantly had people sharing the news including authors, publishers, other small businesses, local council MP’s, influencers and more. The news spread like wildfire! I had a constant stream of comments, DM’s and emails, and I held myself on demand to answer everything as quickly as possible. I didn’t turn off. 

 I showed up on every platform every day in some way. One thing I can honestly say is that if we didn’t reach our goal, I absolutely knew I couldn’t have done any more. It wouldn’t have been my fault. 

That being said, it was absolutely exhausting. I was ignoring the stress, ignoring how tired I was, ignoring my emotions. I just had to keep going. If I could get through the month, that was all that mattered. It was a privilege to be in the position I was in, and I wasn’t going to let worrying ruin the journey or risk the plan. 

I kept a ‘smile file’ in Notion of everything good that was happening. Again so that if we didn’t reach the goal, I still had a huge list of positives from it. Some of it was in note form, some screenshots of messages and emails, or other people’s stories and posts. 

Another thing to note here is that my partner Liam kept our lives afloat. He took my half of the school duties (we have a 4yo!), he made dinner every day, he brought me coffee every morning, he let me crawl from studio to dining table to bed every day and didn’t complain (mostly). We talked about the need for this beforehand, so he was prepared going in! 

At the beginning I was convinced we’d reach our goal. I couldn’t have done it without that feeling to be honest. In the middle though - I wasn’t so sure. I know every Kickstarter dips in the middle, but I didn’t expect to get quite so close to the end before it picked up again. I even started getting texts from people asking what our plan B was. 

I wasn’t accepting a plan B! I pushed harder, tried different content, kept showing up as a damn banana every day (long live Bananabby🍌).

Crossing the finish line and the next steps!

The final three days were wild. Something clicked (and payday arrived), and everyone started backing the Kickstarter! We had huge pledges over £1k coming through, people constantly choosing more add-ons or increasing their bonus pledge amounts. It just didn’t stop. There was also a wild comradery of backers egging each other on to hit the next milestone. It was amazing!

When we hit £20k it really felt like we were going to do it. We decided to host an Instagram Live to countdown the final 30mins with everyone and (hopefully) celebrate. I’ve never had so many people turn up to a live! Despite having to run to the toilet halfway through as the nerves got to me. Liam might genuinely never recover from me abandoning him to sit there on his own. He was mortified! Soz pal.

But we made it. We went over! We ended on £25,940 and were surrounded by hundreds of people celebrating alongside us. There were a lot of tears and a lot of prosecco.

One thing I didn’t expect was how bereft everyone would feel without the daily banana or need to refresh the Kickstarter total! In those few intense weeks it really became a part of everyone’s daily lives.

We’re on the other side now. The pledges are being collected and we’ll see the money in a few weeks, just in time to grab the keys and begin renovations. We did it!!

We’ll be ordering all of the goodies soon and have everything shipped and sent by the end of May. I’ll be taking you along for every step of the journey of course, so hop over to Instagram and YouTube for the behind the scenes. If you’re a backer, you’ll also get campaign updates straight to your inbox.

I can’t tell you how much blood, sweat and tears have already gone into this bookshop (although maybe this post gives you some idea). Thank you so much to everyone who backed the Kickstarter or shared it with someone else. You made my dreams come true, and I’ll be making the most magical bookshop for you in return!

Look at what we did together?! Incredible.