This is topic New way for writers to earn? in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.


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Posted by Orson Scott Card (Member # 209) on :
 
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/5809748/a-year-of-snide-remarks

Columnist Eric Snider, who is both funny and smart, except when he disagrees with me, in which case he's funny and annoying, is using fundraising website KickStarter.com to raise $5,000 by the first of February to pay himself a hundred dollars a week to write his weekly column.

Of course, if he doesn't make it, he gets nada. But since my kids and I read him regularly and talk about his columns, it was a no-brainer for me to contribute.

I think the operative principle here is that he has already proven himself to be excellent and reliable. This isn't a pig-in-a-poke ("sponsor me to write my first novel"); it's signing on to support a continuing enterprise.

And a hundred a week isn't exactly huge. He's underpaying himself; but at least it's a way, potentially, to monetize his work on the web. I'll be interested to see if it works. He's more than halfway there already.

If you don't know his work, check out his website:
http://www.ericdsnider.com/
 

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Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
Interesting concept, thanks for the link. Also, it's nice to see you around on this side of the forums again!
 

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Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
 
I really love the idea of kickstarter. Another great site along those lines is Quirky, which is to products what kickstarter is to projects.
 

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Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
 
kickstarter has already come and died on the independent artist scene. A bunch of my musician friends used it to fund records and touring with varying degrees of success.

But I think that time has passed.

And I think there are much better way to monetize his website than this. But I wish him luck -- he's a talented and funny guy, no question.
 

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Posted by Nighthawk (Member # 4176) on :
 
I've had several people tell me I should use Kickstarter to fund the ARG I've been trying to develop for over two years now.

A friend used it to fund his alternate reality game "Socks, Inc.", but admittedly he's much more zany than I am (watch the video; it's quite entertaining).

My problem has always been coming up with a price for what I do. If I were to put a price on doing this sort of thing, I'm afraid the price would be too high and an unrealistic goal in these sorts of thing.

But you never know...
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
Generally, things start being truly useful just after the independent artists get tired of them.
 

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Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
 
Oh, the artists aren't tired of them. The fans are.
 

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Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by El JT de Spang:
kickstarter has already come and died on the independent artist scene. A bunch of my musician friends used it to fund records and touring with varying degrees of success.

But I think that time has passed.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Lisa:

quote:

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Originally posted by El JT de Spang:
kickstarter has already come and died on the independent artist scene. A bunch of my musician friends used it to fund records and touring with varying degrees of success.

But I think that time has passed.

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I don't know about that. Debra Romer, who was recently on America's Got Talent, did a Kickstarter thing for $3K to do an EP. She was inundated with funds from fans, getting over $13K in the first week.

I was actually thinking about doing this to force myself to work on a book project that I have a number of people out in cyberspace complaining that I haven't done.

OSC, I hope you're feeling better. We were worried.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Orincoro:
Psh... I'm on at least 5 years already.

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+1
 

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