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Tag Archives: crowdfunding

Ye Olde Magick Shoppe is Live on Kickstarter!

04 Friday May 2018

Posted by Oren Litwin in Self-Actualization, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

call for submissions, crowdfunding, Fantasy, Kickstarter, magic, magic shop, short stories, short story anthology

You may have noticed that I’m accepting submissions for a new fantasy anthology, Ye Olde Magick Shoppe. Well, I’m pleased to announce that the associated Kickstarter project is now live!

The more backing we receive, the more short stories I can accept and the more that authors will be paid. So if you like reading fantasy stories about when magic is for sale, definitely check us out; and if you like writing such stories, do check out the submission rules and submit your work before the deadline.

Onward!

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We Shall Have Time…

31 Monday Jul 2017

Posted by Oren Litwin in Self-Actualization, Self-Promotion, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

crowdfunding, publishing, short stories, short story anthology

The many months since my last post have been an incredible trip. My Kickstarter project was funded, several tremendous short stories were submitted to the anthology, and they’ve only gotten stronger as we’ve gone through the editing process. Now I’m trying to figure out the best way to publish.

If there is one thing I have learned from this process, it’s that sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith. The thought of a total unknown like myself soliciting short stories with only a vague promise of payment, and then attracting enough crowdfunding sponsors to actually make the whole thing work, was terrifying. (My biggest fear was that only a handful of poor-quality stories would be submitted, and I’d be forced to publish them just because I had committed to.) I could very easily have decided not to go forward with the whole thing.

And yet, it all managed to work out in the end. The selected authors are great, our backers were incredibly generous, and once I get the logistical questions worked out, the world will have a book showcasing brand-new stories that might never have been seen otherwise. Which is a great feeling!

Audience-Driven Book Writing?

28 Wednesday Dec 2016

Posted by Oren Litwin in Writing

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

crowdfunding, Self-publishing, writing, writing contest

I’ve been fascinated for a while by the promise of crowdfunding campaigns to help democratize the world of writing and publishing. For example, many enterprising authors and editors have used Kickstarter to pre-sell their books, reducing the financial risk of self-publishing and possibly attracting a wider audience in the process. Thus, authors whose work might be too quirky for “traditional” publishers have the chance to make their own case to the global readership.

This might be a mere subspecies of the general category of self-publishing, except for one thing: the audience members are not just consumers of the final product, but in a real sense make that product possible in the first place. That changes the dynamic considerably, and it also suggests further possibilities.

If you are an author, you generally have three broad strategies to follow:

  1. Write your own unique masterpiece without regard to whether it will sell. Desperately try to attract the attention of publishers (or, if self-publishing, readers) after the fact.
  2. Formulaically copy whatever hot trend people are buying (sparkly vampires, werewolves, dystopian-cute young-adult, et cetera) and pitch it to a niche publisher (or if self-publishing, niche audience) after the fact.
  3. Weave together existing popular tropes, possibly across genres, to make something familiar yet new. Pitch it to an appreciative niche audience (or if you are lucky, a publisher), after the fact.

(Why do I say “after the fact”? Funny you should ask…)

On the other hand, if you are a reader, you generally have one basic strategy, with two variants:

  • Find an author who has already written something you like, and buy it.
  • Find an author who has already written something you like, and pre-order the next thing.

(Why do I say “already”? Funny you should ask…)

Readers are basically helpless to the whim of the authors; they can only buy what has already been written. Yet many authors are desperate to write things that readers will buy, without necessarily knowing what those will be or how to find out.

On a related point, for authors to be successful in the self-publishing business, they have to be sufficiently competent writers, and be exceptional marketers. If you hate marketing, your only alternative is to try and get a book deal with traditional publishers; and even then, much of the onus of marketing your book is on you. (Admittedly, you do avoid the technical work of laying out and printing the book, or paying someone else to do it.)

I think there is another possibility that crowdfunding has afforded us. Consider the following scenario:

Alice likes the idea of, say, werewolf romance novels in space, but can’t find any to read and does not want to write them herself. She does, however, want to bring “Werewolves in Space” into existence. So she launches a Kickstarter project to fund, not the publication of an already written book, but a Request for Proposal (or a writing contest, if you prefer) for a third-party author to write such a book to her specifications.

One can already pay writers directly to write books to order, on sites like Guru.com or Freelancer; but since in that case a single individual is paying the whole cost, such books are typically written cheaply and are of poor quality. Here, with a Kickstarter, Alice can find other werewolf-in-space fans who like her idea, and are willing to contribute their own money until the total prize is worthwhile for good authors to consider. If Alice manages to raise, say, $10,000, that might catch the attention of skilled author Bob Bodiceripper, who could then submit a proposal. If accepted, he would then write the exact book that Alice and her fellow werewolf fans wanted, but could never find.

Everybody wins. Fans can order the books they want to read, authors can write to known specifications, more books are written and paid for, and more authors get read. And this would not displace the existing channels for writing and selling books either; it would represent a true broadening of the market.

Yes, many fans might pay for embarrassing dreck. But they do that anyway, and letting readers directly influence the types of books that get written may well open the door to new and exciting possibilities that no one can imagine today.

My First Kindle E-Book is Submitted

26 Friday Apr 2013

Posted by Oren Litwin in Writing

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

congress, crowdfunding, government, gun control, gun rights, Guns, NaNoWriMo, national novel writing month, politics, prison reform, Self-publishing, writing

Minutes ago, I just pushed the magic button.

Yes, it’s not that impressive. Anyone can publish anything on Kindle, no matter how bad the prose is or the plot is, and most self-published books die in obscurity.

But still.

I am now selling my writing to the entire world. That’s a strange feeling. An awesome feeling. I am so grateful for the modern world we live in and all that it allows us to do.

From here, everything depends on marketing (however you wish to define that). The writing was only the first step. To actually succeed at selling my work, I need to let people know it exists. And there will be plenty of time for that in the next few weeks.

And if you want to know when The Best Congress Money Can Buy is available for purchase, please subscribe to this blog and you’ll find out soon!

But for now, while Amazon is chugging away at its internal review and my listing is not yet propagated to the website, I can sit back and savor it.

This is really happening. I wrote something that will soon go live on Amazon.com.

It’s an incredible thing.

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