Andrhia's Self-Publishing Diary

Andrhia · Jun 18, 2013

Amadan said:
I think not. Or if it is, then Kickstarter culture is being taken over by the same sort of opportunistic gamesters who ruined eBay and similar sites, which would not surprise me.

You could use your rationalization for any kind of "pay-the-bills/buy me something" project, exactly the sort of thing Kickstarter is explicitly not for.

Kickstarter projects are supposed to be for funding a project - i.e. making sure that project happens. I can see, in the case of staffing needs, including some expenses for paying them, but the theory is that people need to be funded while they are producing the thing you are funding.

What you did was "Solicit money for something I already produced so I could buy something I wanted."

And yet *exactly this* has been done on Kickstarter practically since it was founded -- Greg Stolze, in particular, has done a ton of story ransoming, the first when Kickstarter was just four months old. He's done 27 projects by now. It's up to Kickstarter to review whether a project meets their guidelines or not, and they review every single project before it can launch. It can take a few days, and it can require a couple of rounds of approvals.

The ban on fund-your-life projects is for raising money with no actual deliverable at the end. No project, if you will. I had a deliverable: I released the story online, recorded and sent out an audio version, wrote a number of bespoke short stories that I later released as an anthology, and finally made sure all the backers knew how to get the anthology for free.

This is absolutely an acceptable practice on Kickstarter, and has been all along. You may think Kickstarter should be something else, but only Kickstarter is the arbiter of what they actually are. You're free to start your own crowdfunding platform if you dislike how they manage theirs.

Old Hack · Jun 18, 2013

I agree with Amadan.

Kickstarter campaigns are intended to help fund creative work, not pay wages or buy you fun stuff. If you want an iPhone, save up for one out of the sales of your book.

These points have anything to do with your "big philosophic question". Of course it's acceptable for creative people to earn money from their creative endeavours. But that's not what you did with Kickstarter, and to pretend otherwise is disingenuous.

Andrhia · Jun 18, 2013

Old Hack said:
Kickstarter campaigns are intended to help fund creative work, not pay wages or buy you fun stuff.

Paying an artist for their labor IS funding creative work.

The point of Kickstarter isn't just to bring art into the world, created eternally by starving artists who have to find some other way to put food on the table. It's about finding a new way for creators to make a living. You can't say you're going to fund art while simultaneously refusing to fund the artist.

Kickstarter is about connecting a creator with an audience so the artist can get money for their work independently of a studio, a publisher, a gallery, or a distributor. It's just me and my audience, and it's entirely up to them to choose whether what I'm offering is worth their attention and money.

And please note: I didn't take the money and run without delivering anything. I didn't tell anyone that I'd be spending the money on editing services, feeding orphans, or otherwise make any representation that was inaccurate. This was not lying, cheating, and stealing. I used a tool in compliance with how others have used it and continue to use it.

I have good fortune in life such that I could use the money in this case to buy a phone. That doesn't mean it's wrong for me to do crowdfunding, it just means I'm lucky to command a pretty good day rate for my work-for-hire writing. (Well, once the invoices get paid, anyway.)

Old Hack said:
If you want an iPhone, save up for one out of the sales of your book.

See, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what I did. People bought into the story, they got it and I got some pocket money, the end.

And actually -- a backer reminded me that on social media I did in fact call it 'Project I Want a New Phone Wah-Wah-Wah.' So even on THAT level, backers knew what they were funding explicitly.

If you think that's not what Kickstarter should be used for, well, I disagree, and so do people like ex. Matt Forbeck, who's making a pretty OK living off of Kickstarter proceeds, as I understand it. And more to the point, Kickstarter disagrees, too.

Old Hack · Jun 18, 2013

Andrhia said:
The point of Kickstarter isn't just to bring art into the world, created eternally by starving artists who have to find some other way to put food on the table. It's about finding a new way for creators to make a living. You can't say you're going to fund art while simultaneously refusing to fund the artist.

I understand that: but as I understand it--and I might be wrong here, and if I am, I apologise--you had already written the story when you started your Kickstarter campaign; and you didn't make it clear in your Kickstarter campaign that you were doing it in order to get yourself an iPhone.

If that had been clear, then I'd have no problem with your actions.

And please note: I didn't take the money and run without delivering anything. I didn't tell anyone that I'd be spending the money on editing services, feeding orphans, or otherwise make any representation that was inaccurate.

No one has suggested that you did. What I'm suggesting, however, is that you didn't make clear on your Kickstarter campaign how you intended to spend the money it raised for you.

And actually -- a backer reminded me that on social media I did in fact call it 'Project I Want a New Phone Wah-Wah-Wah.' So even on THAT level, backers knew what they were funding explicitly.

No, they didn't. Because unless you've edited it since it ran, you didn't make it clear on your Kickstarter campaign page what you were running the campaign for. As it stands, the page you linked to earlier contains no mention of an iPhone, and that seems deceptive to me.

Andrhia · Jun 18, 2013

Old Hack said:
I understand that: but as I understand it--and I might be wrong here, and if I am, I apologise--you had already written the story when you started your Kickstarter campaign; and you didn't make it clear in your Kickstarter campaign that you were doing it in order to get yourself an iPhone.

If that had been clear, then I'd have no problem with your actions.

FWIW, I've had a look at my reports; when I ran the KS, analytics hadn't existed yet, so this was the first time. Here's what I found: Zero of my backers were strangers. (And I mean there were only 25 of them.) Every one was someone I knew, mostly from Twitter. Given how I promoted it and where the traffic came from, I can guarantee everyone knew what I was spending the money on.

Not that it matters. It didn't say in the project, because I genuinely don't think it was relevant. But it should be clear even to a complete stranger wandering in by mistake that "I am going to take this already-written story and post it on my blog under a Creative Commons license" is not a costly endeavor.

slhuang · Jun 18, 2013

Old Hack said:
I understand that: but as I understand it--and I might be wrong here, and if I am, I apologise--you had already written the story when you started your Kickstarter campaign; and you didn't make it clear in your Kickstarter campaign that you were doing it in order to get yourself an iPhone.

If that had been clear, then I'd have no problem with your actions.

No one has suggested that you did. What I'm suggesting, however, is that you didn't make clear on your Kickstarter campaign how you intended to spend the money it raised for you.

No, they didn't. Because unless you've edited it since it ran, you didn't make it clear on your Kickstarter campaign page what you were running the campaign for. As it stands, the page you linked to earlier contains no mention of an iPhone, and that seems deceptive to me.

I know nothing about KS Terms of Service, I've never used the thing, and I've donated only once (to a project I believed in that some friends of mine were doing). So I can't comment on whether or not this sort of thing is okay by KS rule or by KS practice, though it sounds from the linked examples like it is at least accepted in practice.

That disclaimer out of the way -- as a random person reading Andrhia's page, I think she was very clear. I would not have felt deceived if I had donated to her campaign. She made it very clear that she had already written the story and that she was "ransoming" it, and I don't think there was any implication she needed more funds for anything related to the story. From the KS ad, I think it's very clear she was asking people to pay her, and if she got paid for it, she was releasing it, and if she wasn't, she wouldn't. After that, I think she's correct that whatever she wanted to do with the money is her business (by which I mean, that's how I would feel if I had backed her).

So, as a random stranger who never uses KS, I would not have felt duped had I donated to her campaign. I think she was clear. Others may vary, but there's another data point for y'all.

Amadan · Jun 18, 2013

Andrhia said:
Paying an artist for their labor IS funding creative work.

So, by your rationalization, what significance does Kickstarter's rule against "pay my bills" or "fund my toys" projects have, since there is nothing you could not spend money on that wouldn't "philosophically" fall under the category of "paying you for labor"?

I don't see what the difference between "Ransom a story I wrote" and "Use Kickstarter as a storefront" is, other than that in the latter case, everyone who pays gets the story, while in the former, you only get the story if everyone pays.

So if Kickstarter is cool with being a self-publishing storefront, fine, but I don't think that's the intent.

girlyswot · Jun 18, 2013

Amadan said:
So if Kickstarter is cool with being a self-publishing storefront, fine, but I don't think that's the intent.

I honestly think they are fine with that.

It's weird to me, because it's not how they present themselves. But by allowing funding way beyond the initial amount asked for, all projects have the potential to become storefronts. Once the costs are covered, backers are giving money in order to receive rewards. That's it. And, as Andrhia has repeatedly pointed out, her project was passed without any problems by their project checkers. They were fine with it.

heza · Jun 18, 2013

Amadan said:
So, by your rationalization, what significance does Kickstarter's rule against "pay my bills" or "fund my toys" projects have, since there is nothing you could not spend money on that wouldn't "philosophically" fall under the category of "paying you for labor"?

I don't see those prohibited activities as being the same in spirit as the project in question.

To me, "pay my bills" is simply that--a project where you ask people to give you charity to pay bills or to buy something specific, and you're offering nothing in return. I don't see how this project violates that rule.

I don't see what the difference between "Ransom a story I wrote" and "Use Kickstarter as a storefront" is, other than that in the latter case, everyone who pays gets the story, while in the former, you only get the story if everyone pays.

To me, it seemed more like everyone gets the story if a few people pay. I won't argue that it's not reminiscent of a storefront situation, but if it had been a true storefront, only the people who paid would have gotten to read--which is what you have when you self publish to KDP or wherever.

In my mind, the project was "make a finished short story available to the public, free of charge, under a creative commons license." The cost associated with that was for the author to recoup the cost of producing the material.

If writers deserve to make a living off their writing, then we'll assume that they're not obligated to give their work away for free. That means to see publication, the work had to be sold to the marketplace (i.e., bought by a magazine or anthology). It could also have been self published, but there's no guarantee that would manage to recoup investment in the production. The alternative was to start a kickstarter project where readers could become patrons, thereby funding to recoup the author's work, enabling the piece to be distributed online for free.

This idea actually gets brought up from time to time in the discussions that come around about length of copyright. .. about how it used to be that authors had patrons who funded their lifestyles so they could spend their time producing art. I think Kickstarter can be used in that way. I don't see that it's a bad thing... and I think the question of does the project have to be unfinished or can it be completed before the funding is requested might be an issue of semantics.

A lot of organizations online start as one thing and then evolve to serve multiple purposes. I don't think that's a bad thing, and Kickstarter--having vetted the project and approved it--doesn't seem to think so either. From time to time people talk about how it'd be great if there was a way for artists to be supported by patrons and be able to release their work for free. Maybe this is the start of returning to a model sort of like that....

Andrhia · Jun 18, 2013

girlyswot said:
I honestly think they are fine with that.

It's weird to me, because it's not how they present themselves. But by allowing funding way beyond the initial amount asked for, all projects have the potential to become storefronts. Once the costs are covered, backers are giving money in order to receive rewards. That's it. And, as Andrhia has repeatedly pointed out, her project was passed without any problems by their project checkers. They were fine with it.

See, to me, 'Kickstarter is not a storefront' is a message directed more to backers than to the people running the project. That's because of the element of risk involved in backing a Kickstarter project. There's a non-zero chance that a Kickstarter project will ship late, or never ship at all, so Kickstarter doesn't want funders coming into the deal with the same mindset as if they were browsing on Etsy. ...And then getting angry when they don't get their goodies in time for a birthday or Christmas or what have you.

And speaking of Etsy, Kickstarter also doesn't want you selling allegedly handmade one-of-a-kind wedding dresses that were really mass-produced in China as part of an alleged gown-a-hundred brides "art" project. (Though... man, that would be a fun art project, wouldn't it?) Selling manufactured goods as if they were handcrafted is a rampant problem on Etsy, and that's precisely the sort of thing that "no finished goods/we are not a storefront" is meant to prevent. To their vast credit, they've been wildly successful at keeping that kind of thing off the site. Probably because they DO vet every project by hand.

RLMcKeown · Jun 19, 2013

Kickstarter aside, I'm really interested in your Lucy project as I've been thinking of doing something similar on my blog. Lucy's story sounds really cool. I'll definitely be following your diary!

Andrhia · Jul 3, 2013

Numbers!

May
iBooks: n/a
Amazon: 15 sold
B&N: 1 sold
Gumroad: 3 sold

June
iBooks: 7 sold (five of those were probably free, Draft2Digital makes it hard to tell)
Amazon: 12 sold (Lucy); 5 sold and ~150 freebies (Shiva's Mother)
B&N: 3 sold
Gumroad: 3 sold (one of them free), including one subscription to the whole series for $10. Woohoo!

Some things to note: Episode 1 is free on Kobo, iBooks and Gumroad, but wasn't at the beginning of the month. I sold zero copies on Kobo.

Shiva's Mother and Other Stories did a free promotion in June and I was astonished to see it continue to sell after that. It hadn't sold a copy in months!

Episode 2 of Lucy Smokeheart was released on Amazon and B&N on June 9, but didn't make it through Draft2Digital until... hmm... the 23rd, I think. I set the price to free for Episode 1 a couple of days later, but you can't do it on Amazon without KDP Select, so I've reported a lower price to Amazon and I'm crossing my fingers about price-matching.

And of course all of this isn't including the 251 existing subscribers on the email list to get the whole serial as it goes up.

I'll probably have Episode 3 up in the next handful of days, which will almost certainly result in a short-term sales boost as I promote it. I figure when I get Episode 4 out, I'll also introduce an Omnibus bundle of 1-4 for $2.99. I also figure I'll start looking into pulling in favors re: podcasts and blog appearances at some point, but I can't decide if I'm better off waiting for 4 episodes released before I really start to push.

Andrhia · Jul 9, 2013

Lucy episode 3 is out to subscribers now! Delayed because my illustrator's poor computer is on its way out, but hopefully I can make up a few days this month and get back to publishing in the 1st.

Waiting for the Amazon link to go live. Why does it have to be so slowwwwwwww? Actually -- I'd be really curious what kinds of turnaround everyone sees between clicking 'submit' and having a live product on Amazon. They say 12 hours but I feel like I've seen it go much, much faster than that.

Andrhia · Jul 9, 2013

...for future reference, my answer today was: click to available, about five hours.

Andrhia · Jul 12, 2013

I'm not having much traction now that Episode 3 is out. It's been a couple of days... but I've only sold one each of Episodes 1 and 2, none of 3, and not even moving free copies on iBooks. I've pulled everyone but Amazon to go into KDP Select and do a free promotion. We'll see how that goes.

AnneGlynn · Jul 14, 2013

Thanks for the update. Sales remain such a mystery to me. Keep us updated!

Andrhia · Jul 17, 2013

Running my free-on-Amazon promotion for Lucy Smokeheart Episode #1 today. I am strangely nervous about it! O_O What if I can't even GIVE it away?! Sob!

merrihiatt · Jul 17, 2013

From the stats I just saw on Amazon, you have no need to worry. And, it's only 7am in my part of the world!

Andrhia · Jul 17, 2013

merrihiatt said:
From the stats I just saw on Amazon, you have no need to worry. And, it's only 7am in my part of the world!

No, it's doing better now! And I'm trying to relax and get through some revisions due today. Whew.

Though I just swapped one of the categories -- I took a look at the other free puzzles/games and it's all how-to guides and walkthroughs. #8 out of 8 free isn't THAT great. :roll:

annetpfeffer · Jul 17, 2013

Just a note that I've been following your efforts with interest and wish you all the best -- good luck to you!

Andrhia · Aug 23, 2013

Haven't followed up in a while -- I need to post some new numbers. I will say that I'm regretting signing episode 1 up for KDP Select. The free promotions don't seem to move the needle on buying other episodes so much.

Some of that might be the time-of-year slump... and numbers are picking up quite a bit now I've released episode 4. Still, I don't think the benefit KDP Select gives me has been worth the loss of other sales channels.

merrihiatt · Aug 23, 2013

Sorry to hear that, Andrhia. It varies so much with Select.

RLMcKeown · Aug 23, 2013

Sorry to hear Select isn't working well for you. I've heard similar stories lately, which is too bad since it seemed to work so well for most people not too long ago. Wishing you all the best!

Andrhia · Jan 29, 2014

Right -- long time no update! Three more episodes out, sales have been growing slowly but steadily. I'm giving KDP Select another shot because of some number-crunching -- sales at Amazon fell off quite a bit after I left KDP Select.

I've also had some luck with giving away episode #3 and having it drive sales of episodes #1 and 2, FWIW.

Mainly, though, I'm posting here because I did a blog post filled with pretty charts and graphs about my sales numbers. [link removed by moderator] I hope you find it informative.

Old Hack · Jan 29, 2014

Andrhia, you're welcome to discuss your stats here, but please don't direct traffic to your blog like that: it's borderline spammy, and not encouraged.

I've edited out your link.

Andrhia's Self-Publishing Diary

Andrhia

Old Hack

Such a nasty woman

Andrhia

Old Hack

Such a nasty woman

Andrhia

slhuang

Inappropriately math-oriented.

Amadan

girlyswot

heza

Andrhia

RLMcKeown

The rambling bard

Andrhia

Andrhia

Andrhia

Andrhia

AnneGlynn

If you don't try, you can't fail

Andrhia

merrihiatt

Writing! Writing! Writing!

Andrhia

annetpfeffer

practical experience, FTW

Andrhia

merrihiatt

Writing! Writing! Writing!

RLMcKeown

The rambling bard

Andrhia

Old Hack

Such a nasty woman