Six and a half weeks ago, on December 14 (I had to look that up) I launched my Kickstarter campaign to see if it would be possible to cover  a portion of the hard costs that come with self-publishing. And, I hadn’t even started officially writing “Bats, Balls, and Burnouts” yet at the time. The first hurdle, for me, was getting over my trepidation about even doing a crowdfunding deal. I got past that by realizing that while my wife Barbara is the most amazing and supportive person in the world, by allowing me to walk away from my 20-year NHRA career to take on the challenge of writing my book, she did not necessarily sign up for me to cease having any income while also spending years worth of savings to get the thing printed. The next question was “How much can we raise?”

That was a hard question to answer, and I still don’t think there was any real formula for it. It had nothing to do with how much it’s going to cost to write, edit, publish, and print the book. It had only to do with what friends, readers, colleagues, and family members might be willing to pledge, and how do you know that number? Racers make this mistake all the time, and throughout my career I’ve seen it enough to be well aware of the pitfall. They’ll write down all the expenses involved with running their race car for a year, come up with a total, and decide “Well there you go. That’s how much I need in sponsor funding.”

It doesn’t work that way. Sponsorships aren’t based on what it costs to operate. They are based on what the value is in return for the investment. That value can be assessed through marketing research, and in most cases the sponsor can look at the cash outlay and make a case for why the sponsorship made marketing sense. But a Kickstarter campaign is not about return on investment in the monetary sense. You can only hope the return is emotional and personal. So what would my target be? Who would my backers be? What in the world was I getting into?

I simply picked a number I thought was realistic. I didn’t do any math or analysis. I think I was afraid to do that because the numbers would be too daunting. I simply picked $20,000. It will cost more than that, in the end, to get this book published, but it just sounded right. Barbara thought I was reaching far too high, and her thought was that the target should be roughly half that much, or even less than that. I still don’t know why, but I thought my number was the right one, and off we went.

It wasn’t until we were up and running that I realized I really had chosen a fairly lofty number. I could see the first wave of backers coming on board, and their average pledge was immediately well above the average amount across all of Kickstarter’s campaigns (which is about $30 per backer). And yet, even with these overly generous pledges by a large number of people, the finish line was still so far away. I’ll admit that in late December, when we got back from Kauai, there was some nagging doubt in my brain about whether we could pull this off.

And then the new year happened and people went back to work after spending a lot of money over the holidays, and I got to work on actually writing the book, and in the end I figured out a comfortable way to promote the Kickstarter and, at the same time, promote myself and the book. I needed help.

As a PR guy for 20 years I knew most of the tricks of the trade when it came to promoting my drivers and sponsors. That stuff was easy. Promoting myself was more difficult, for reasons ranging from writing press releases in the third-person (Bob Wilber thought he could never do that but Bob Wilber was wrong) to simply only being able to reach X number of people out there in the social media universe. Like I said, I needed help.

So, I reached out to a large number of NHRA drivers, writers, PR reps, and blog readers. I simply flat-out asked for that help, via tweets and Facebook posts, to help me spread the word. Just like how we got Tim Wilkerson into the Traxxas Shootout (via the social-media fan vote) two years in a row, the secret was spreading the word. And when guys like Antron Brown, Ron Capps, Jeff Arend, Del Worsham, Doug Herbert and many (like VERY many) others started reaching out to everyone they knew, things started to take off.

But social media is a fleeting thing, so I had to come to grips with two more facts. I was going to have to promote this thing myself on a daily basis, because not everyone is on Facebook all the time and tweets on Twitter disappear below the horizon in a hurry. If I lost a few followers due to my incessant promotion, then so be it. I’d also need to circle back to the drivers who had helped me to see if I could get them to do the same, one more time.

I’m not sure I can quantify exactly how much all of those drivers helped the effort, but I know it’s a real number and I know we would still not be at the target without them. When Antron or Ron would post something, almost without fail I’d ring up a couple of new backers whose names I was completely and utterly unfamiliar with. That’s how this thing works.  And that’s exactly how it did work. And a lot of the drivers stepped up to actually back the project. Every time that happened I marveled at their largesse.

As we got into mid-January I ramped it up even more, while still taking time to “go to work” each day to write. And day by day the backers kept coming and the percentage of the target we had attained grew bigger. It seemed like all I had to do was post something on Facebook about what a great day we’d just had and that we were now 71% of the way to the target, and before I could even check back to see if anyone “liked” the post, one or two new backers would immediately come onboard and make that number obsolete. It was fascinating and thrilling all at the same time, yet we still had a long way to go.

But the backers still kept coming and the big names who had helped me so much kept assisting the effort. And the numbers grew. For the last two weeks, there were only one or two days when nothing happened. Every other day, the list got larger and the numbers got bigger.

And then, this week happened. We were still short of $19,000 when a certain actor buddy of mine (rhymes with dollar, no sorry, rhymes with buck, or maybe it just is Buck) made his pledge, to get me over that milestone. As he said “I wanted to get you to the finish line, but I had a feeling it was going to go crazy at the end, and I might miss out if I was at the theater, so I decided to get you over that final barrier before the finish line.” He had no idea what avalanche he’d just created, but I know in my heart he understands how I feel about everything he has done.

Literally, within about two hours we went from thinking we were pretty sure we’d make the target by Sunday night, which is the end of the campaign, but that it might go right to the wire, to thinking “Well gosh, this could happen by Friday, or maybe even Thursday.” And then a certain famous NHRA personality took it into his hands to get me there, with an overly generous pledge I never saw coming and never anticipated.

Every time I get a new backer, I get an alert from Kickstarter via email, and I have the notifications set up to ring a chime every time that happens. I was just marveling at how we’d gotten into the final stretch and I was allowing myself to actually think “Okay, we’re going to do this” when I heard two chimes from my email program go off almost at once.

I clicked over there and saw two new emails from Kickstarter. The second one down the list was the standard “New Backer Alert” but the one on top of that had a subject line that stated “You made it!”  I made what? I had no idea what that was about and I was a little stunned and confused. If real life was the Saturday morning cartoons, I was the character sitting at his desk with animated question marks flying around his head. Then I opened the “New Backer Alert” email and saw that one particular gentleman, who I have known in the NHRA world for a long time, had done it single-handedly.

He doesn’t want the public recognition (as he said “I didn’t do it for that”) so I won’t betray his trust. I was simply blown away.

I sent him an email and his line was “I think what you’re doing is really bad-ass and I wanted to help.”

We all flippantly talk about “having chills” when something momentous happens, but right then and there I felt the real thing. I’d been working on this deal for a month and a half, day in and day out, wondering if we’d make it to the finish line in time or end up being totally embarrassed. And then… BAM. There we were. Barbara was traveling across the country that day, but I caught her on the phone and via email to let her know. And she said “You knew all along. You had to know. Deep down inside you had to know. I wasn’t sure I knew this would work, but now I can tell that you did all along.”

I don’t know if that’s true. I launched this deal at a tough time, right before the holidays, but I felt I had to do it then before everyone forgot who I was. And then I had to get over the nervousness and embarrassment of promoting myself. And then I had to ask some famous people with large hearts to spread the word and help me out. And friends came through. Strangers came through, Celebrities came through. And the chills shot right down my spine.

And what’s amazing is that it’s still happening. The campaign doesn’t end until midnight Sunday night, but the chimes are still chiming (one just came in right now, with a new backer alert from an esteemed PR and Media Relations person I’ve known in the sport for a long time).

As I started this blog, we were up to 88 total backers and 106% of the target. Now we’re at 107% of the total and 89 generous backers. That 107% figure is really important, and it’s the one milestone I really didn’t think we’d make. You see, Kickstarter exists and makes its money by charging a fee for all successful campaigns, and that fee is 7%. Now, at 107% we’re within just a few dollars of netting the goal, instead of grossing it. In effect, we’re “in the money” now.

And here’s the most humbling part of this. It’s incredible that the average pledge is still up around $240, but the most heartfelt ones and the ones I appreciated at a whole separate level were many of the smaller pledges. On the morning when it all happened, one longtime blog reader and huge NHRA fan, who I know works so hard to make a living but she is by no means rich, went back and increased her initial pledge by $15. A wave of positive karma came over me when I saw that, and within hours it all exploded and we shot right past the target. Things like that make you realize that people out there believe in this. I have earned their trust and they believe in what I’m doing. And they want to be a part of this.

Ron Capps is hilarious, and when we reached the target he tweeted something along the lines of “Hey you’ve made it! Now you don’t have to tell that one story. Nah, go ahead. Tell ’em all!”

I’m not sure I can possibly tell ’em all, but I’m enjoying the writing process far more than I thought I would, and I think (hope) the stories that do make the book will be enjoyable.

Right now, I’m four chapters in and I allowed myself to take the blinders off for a moment yesterday, because after four chapters I knew I was about 60 pages and 28,000 words into this. When I started, I knew I’d have to just focus on each word and paragraph, and not allow myself to stare up at the mountain top, because it would always be too daunting and too far away. But yesterday, when I got to where I thought Chapter 4 should end (it’s about those awkward high-school years) I let myself add up my progress. I think I’m about 10% done with the initial writing, and maybe I’m a little further than even that. It would be a 600 page book if I’m truly 10% done, and that’s a lot to ask people to read.

But the stories need to be told. Heck, the stories I’ve written so far are rich and full of characters I really knew, and at this point in the book I’m still a teenager and I’m still 20 years away from seeing my first drag race. There’s a lot of ground yet to cover.

So, thank you all from the bottom of my heart. Every one of you. And if you know anyone who wants to be a part of this adventure, there are still a few days left to participate. It would be very cool and a huge honor to hear that chime and see another “New Backer Alert” before the weekend is over.

Now it’s time to wrap this up and send it out to the world. Before you know it, we’re going to have a book in our hands.

Bob Wilber, at your service.