LWE's kickstarter continues...

[seawasp]

For the few on my F-list who don't already know, Lawrence Watt-Evans is hosting a kickstarter to publish the novel Vika's Avenger, a story he first started thinking about decades ago. It looks very exciting and the kind of thing that's right up my alley, certainly.

He's already funded to the basic level, so you can be confident of seeing the book in print, but there's plenty of additional bells and whistles to be had (such as a top-notch artist for the cover, as one example), and the more funding he gets the more encouraging it is for him, and others, to pursue this method of publication.

This is of more than purely academic interest to me, as I have at least one novel that virtually everyone who's read it has said is great, but so far no publishers have decided to give a chance: Polychrome: A Romantic Fantasy. If my agent can't place it (and she's been trying for more than a year), I will be strongly considering taking this route to get it published. I know I'm nowhere near as well known as LWE, but if he can pull this off in good style it will give me at least some hope that it might be feasible for me to try.

Comments

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

hoping the best for the novel!

[leecetheartist.livejournal.com]

I'd fund Polychrome.

[hms42]

Thank you for the heads up. It turns out I missed one of his fund the chapters of an Ethshar book, postings, too. (Kickstarted this book.)

[remus-shepherd.livejournal.com]

It depresses me greatly that known and famous authors like LWE and Rudy Rucker have decided Kickstarter is the only way they can get published today.

[seawasp]

Eh? He still gets published traditionally. The fact that he has a project that he wants to publish but the publishers won't isn't at all surprising. As I mentioned, I have at least one in that category myself, and I'm certainly not currently having problems being published in a general sense.

[remus-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Well, Rucker says he can no longer get published. And the fact that some well-known authors see Kickstarter as a preferred option indicates that the publishing industry is not functioning correctly. It just makes me sad.

[seawasp]

I don't see it that way at all; I see Kickstarter as providing a potential way to bridge the gap between current self-publication, with its "Cry PUBLISH! And let slip the floodgates of slush", and traditional publishing with its strict limits on how many they will publish, what they will publish, and how quickly they can publish.

The Kickstarter allows the author to make the bet that the traditional publisher makes... but know in advance whether it'll work, and cost no one anything in doing so except the time and effort he or she puts into making the Kickstarter entry.

You can tailor the Kickstarter to, in effect, pay your advance and the costs of editing, proofing, typesetting, layout, and getting a real cover made, and encourage your fans to support you by offering rewards at different levels.

This allows professionally produced books to be made on the author's time, under the author's control; best of both worlds.

I don't know enough about Rucker to judge; my vague impression of his name puts him in the same "Well-known has-been" category as Harlan, and "getting published" is a matter of "have your books been selling well enough to justify it" -- with, in Harlan's case at least, an additional side of "and will there be any pain in the butt associated with publishing you?"

LWE's still getting pro contracts and still making money on it, so he wouldn't be in the same category as Rucker, if Rucker really-truly *can't* get published now -- as opposed to "I could, but I don't like the industry or the terms they offer", which would be the position of some other people I know of.