I love Kickstarter, the crowd sourcing site where you can help others realize their dreams. It would seem that authors use it quite a bit, as Tobias Buckell pointed out to me. Buckell’s got a book looking for funding up there himself, and you should check it out.

I’m considering trying Kickstarter myself. I’ve managed to crowd source an ebook (on WordPress) in Sweden without using an external service, but I definitely see the benefits from using something like Kickstarter.

Is this the future of writing, when all the publishing houses die and we all self-publish? I don’t think that will happen, but there is something in this method of getting the funds to publish, something old. Remember the time when courts appointed musicians, and rich people paid authors to write just because they wanted to make sure the author kept reading? Yeah me neither, but in a way we’re there again. Only difference is, this time around we can all chip in.