1. I don’t think that commercial viability is any way to judge real value.

2. Patronage rocks. And it is one of the best ways to have anything outside the “popular” come into being.

3. Network support comes in many forms – explicit and implicit. As someone who crowd-funded my own work, I am not only a fan of it, I am a living example. Walk the talk.

4. Naysayers be damned.

5. We are in a shifting zone both in what and who is published and how and where it is published. May the most entreprenurial…. teach the rest of us.

6. We don’t live in a pure world where only the truly best things really rise to the top on merit alone. We each have different ethics about how to navigate the murky phenomenon we call success in the 21st century. To judge another is to reveal your own boundaries. Cast not stones upon another for your own limits.

7. I am interested to see what the L3C does for the publishing and media industry. When social benefit can be on par with financial benefit, do we bring forth a better blend of what the world needs most?

Thank you for this lovely opportunity. I enjoyed reading the other comments too. Good ground covered.

Social funding of media isn’t new–as Deanna notes by invoking the NPR model–and it’s not easy. It requires someone like Deanna, who has built up a reputation and a body of work that makes people trust and depend on her.

Musicians (Amanda Palmer, etc.) are doing this as well.

It requires community. It requires a previous body of work, and thus it sucks to be a really unknown artist/writer, but the publishing industry and the music industry also want to see your previous work before throwing a big advance at you. This kind of publishing arrangement is one I know because I’m also a comics journalist–Image Comics doesn’t pay creators upfront, but gives them a bigger share of whatever they make. I’m not the biggest fan of it myself because it DOES require free work upfront and spreads the risk, but it’s not entirely unfair.

Andy, I totally agree with you on this: “But publishers need to recognize that writers are workers too and they can’t wait for 30 months before they get paid for their work.”

I’ve been writing a series for a couple of months over at Global Comment about work and this kind of tension.

The thing is, a lot of people go from “work deserves money” to “that requires us to shore up the same capitalist model we’ve had.” I really DON’T agree with that.

Deanna got paid for her work. She just got paid for her work by people who believe in her and love her. Patronage is as old as the hills, especially within the art world.

(Can you tell I’ve been thinking about this stuff much? <3's Deanna for giving us space to talk about it.)

But publishers need to recognize that writers are workers too and they can’t wait for 30 months before they get paid for their work.

“Information wants to be free” is a very common attitude on the Internet. Otherwise, what accounts for the breathtaking amount of piracy of intellectual property that goes on? I’m sure Chris Anderson has a nuanced argument. He should. He received a high 6 figure advance for his book. Then he posted it for “free” on Scribd to prove his point, which was that “information wants to be free”. But you see, his work wasn’t free. He was paid quite well for it. This just shows that information isn’t free, nor should it be.

Intellectual work is still work and needs to be compensated. There has been some talk by internet gurus (Chris Anderson, the most notable) that “information wants to be free”.

Andy, I wish that people would stop misquoting that line. The full line is: “Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive. … That tension will not go away.” Chris Anderson in particular is the last person you want to call a pure “information wants to be free” advocate. He charges between $0 and $20,000 for his ideas, depending on context, medium, and whatever else. He doesn’t hide this fact, it’s explicitly part of what he talks about in his book.

What I like about the crowdfunding approach and especially Deanna’s attitude toward it is that she recognizes that some ideas might be culturally important without necessarily being commercially viable. So you find other ways to fund the work. Independent wealth, academics, holding down another job, grants, loans, lottery winnings, savings, and now we add another tool to the box: crowdfunding.

This is a great option for new voices and particularly for first time book writers who have a network and community that will support them.

I agree with you that the model she used won’t work for everyone. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t other models, more like hers than like traditional publishing, that WILL work for all or most authors/books.

Deanna – Glad to see you keeping up the conversation. I’m very interested in models like yours (as I’m launching a website to help authors do things like what you did), and it’s great to see you having success with your book.

Which is to say that one person’s tacky is another person’s UFW.

Myself, I’ll take the UFW.

I have no problem at all with crowdfunding. And I’m glad it worked for you. And I’m sure that it is a good thing for book deals where there is no advance. I also think it was a smart move to go with Berrett-Kohler who will actively promote your book and keep selling it a lot longer than other publishers. I tell my authors that while more money sooner is better than later, more money later is better than less money sooner.

Your analogy to non-profits is pretty interesting. But publishers are not non-profits. They are in business to make money. And, when you think about it, even non-profits pay their workers for work within a week or so. An author writing a book is different from a start up company or a non-profit project being funded outside.

Intellectual work is still work and needs to be compensated. There has been some talk by internet gurus (Chris Anderson, the most notable) that “information wants to be free”. Roy Blount, who is president of the Author’s Guild, pointed out (slightly snarkily) but tellingly that the people advocating that information wants to be free tend to be college professors and creators of computer gadgets. Blount said, maybe they will agree that “college wants to be free’ or “internet gadgets want to be free.”

I realize that you are saying something entirely different. But I just want to point out that authors work just like anyone else and should be compensated for their work.

Obviously you agree with that and are simply making a pitch for a new compensation model. And that is great if it works. But there are a lot of genres written by authors that are not likely to draw that kind of support.

Typically a book gets published 18 months after a contract gets signed. Typically the first royalty statement comes 9 months after publication. Typically a publisher will withhold 30% or more of the first royalty as a reserve against returns. So we are talking as much as 3 years before a publisher will deliver a royalty. So advances seem fair to me.