Though it's been eight months since I actually launched the crowdfunding for my book (and then wrote about how it was going), it seems to have kicked up a new firestorm of discussion over the past weekend. Much of it began on Twitter; then a few people wrote up blog posts covering it. I only discovered the discussion after it was well underway (evidently I'm difficult to track down online, and not much of a conversationalist anyways, heh), so the last few days have been spent correcting factual errors and offering catch-up insight as to why I believe so deeply in this model. I'm hoping now to sum up a few of the arguments I've made elsewhere, but moreso I'd like to pull back and look at some big picture issues.

For background, here are the series of posts that sum up the first discussions on Twitter, and subsequent responses:

• An argument about crowdfunding, Quiet Babylonian
• Crowdfunding & Micropatronage Part 2, Quiet Babylonian
• Crowdfunding books, PD Smith at Kafka's mouse
• Is 'crowdfunding' really the way ahead for author advances?, Michelle Pauli at The Guardian UK's Books blog

There seem to be two sets of argument made against crowdfunding in much of the discussion I've seen: one, it reveals the funding seeker as a shameless self-promoter and snake-oil salesperson; two, it destroys the ethos of publishing either by allowing publishers to never have to produce advances again, or by allowing just any ol' work to be produced without blood/sweat/tears.â„¢

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As it turns out, my chutzpah in asking my colleagues and friends to help support me while writing my book this summer was a pretty good thing: to date, I've raised about $6500 through small and large donors, and even gotten $100/month in pizza from the fabulous Two Boots Pizza here in NYC. This led to Publisher's Weekly doing an article about the crowdfunding part of the project today (thanks, Wendy Werris!), and has inspired me to jot down a few thoughts about how it's been fundraising for my own book.

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