Kickstarter: the Future of Self-Publishing?

We all know where books come from: a human and a muse meet, fall in love, and two months to twen­ty years lat­er, a book is born. Then, as with oth­er vari­eties of babies, the sleep­less nights start as a writer search­es for a home for the book, col­lect­ing rejec­tions like badges of hon­or, tes­ta­ments to deter­mi­na­tion.

Well, that was the old-fash­ioned way. We’ve all heard how the inter­net has lev­eled the play­ing field, allow­ing any­body to pub­lish work and find an audi­ence. How­ev­er, this eas­i­er path to pub­li­ca­tion hasn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly solved an even old­er writer’s conun­drum: How to pay for it.

That is, how to make enough mon­ey to sus­tain your­self as you write (day jobs aside). And so writ­ers must become even wil­i­er. Though you may make mon­ey from the sale of a book, how do you fund your­self before the book?

Seth Har­wood, the author of three books, is at the front of the move­ment to find alter­nate and cre­ative ways of not only reach­ing audi­ences, but pur­su­ing the writ­ing life. Since grad­u­at­ing from the Iowa Writ­ers Work­shop in 2002, Har­wood has built up a loy­al fan base—his “Palms Mamas and Palms Dad­dies” (named for one of his pro­tag­o­nists, Jack Palms)—through social media and free pod­cast­ing. Har­wood is sus­tain­ing a writ­ing life along a path that is like­ly to be more and more com­mon for writ­ers.

After offer­ing his first nov­el, Jack Wakes Up, as a free audio­book, Har­wood pub­lished it in paper­back with Break­neck Books in 2008. The Ama­zon sales, pushed by Palms Mamas and Palms Dad­dies, land­ed the book in #1 in Crime/Mystery and #45 over­all, bring­ing the atten­tion of Ran­dom House, who re-pub­lished the book one year lat­er.

Look­ing out­side main­stream avenues, Har­wood secured fund­ing for pub­li­ca­tion of his next ven­ture, Young Junius, with Tyrus Books by pre­selling signed copies through Paypal—before the books exist­ed in phys­i­cal form. And now he is one of the ear­ly adopters of using Kick­starter to pay for the ges­ta­tion and birth of not one book—but five pre­vi­ous­ly-writ­ten works in the next six months–as he puts it, “rais­ing the fixed costs of bring­ing these books to the mar­ket­place.” His Kick­starter cam­paign based around This Is Life, the sequel to Jack Wakes Up was—impressively—fully fund­ed with­in 25 hours—and with a few days still left to go, it has exceed­ed the orig­i­nal goal by over $2000.

What can a writer offer besides an auto­graphed copy of the to-be-writ­ten book, or a men­tion in the acknowl­edge­ments? For Harwood’s project, the pledges range from a dol­lar to $999, with thank-yous span­ning from the afore­men­tioned to—at the $999 end—an orig­i­nal novel­la writ­ten accord­ing to the donor’s wish­es and pub­lished as a one-off hard­cov­er.

As more and more writ­ers become cyn­i­cal about the main­stream pub­lish­ing indus­try, and the lim­its it places on writ­ers, and as the inter­net breaks down bar­ri­ers between writ­ers and read­ers, alter­nate paths of draw­ing audi­ences to the writing/publishing process may become more and more pop­u­lar. In none oth­er than the New York Times Book Review, Neal Pol­lack recent­ly declared his inten­tion to self-pub­lish his next book using Kick­starter to gen­er­ate his fixed costs and “an advance,” and last week best­seller Paulo Coel­ho dis­cussed his deci­sion to offer his nov­els for free online. (You can find free ebooks by Coel­ho here.)

Indeed, now more than ever, it seems essen­tial for authors to meet read­ers at least half-way. Har­wood con­sid­ers him­self an “author-pre­neur,” devel­op­ing new busi­ness mod­els as he pub­lish­es his books. As he sees it, inno­va­tion comes much more eas­i­ly to an author act­ing alone, than to a large pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny or big cor­po­ra­tion. He aims for the new mod­els as he sees them devel­op­ing, know­ing he’s got to go out and find read­ers him­self. As Coel­ho declares, “The ivory tow­er does not exist any­more.”

This post was con­tributed by Shaw­na Yang Ryan. Her nov­el Water Ghosts was a final­ist for the 2010 Asian Amer­i­can Lit­er­ary Award. In 2012, she will be the Dis­tin­guished Writer in Res­i­dence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hawai’i at Manoa.