One of my major concerns about Kickstarter projects in a general sense is that I often wonder how many of the projects actually end up in the black for their creators. This is particularly the case when it comes to writers, artists and musicians, who are famously complete shit at working through their finances anyway, but who are also, through Kickstarter tiers and through encountering production costs that were previously handled by other people, wading into financial waters they often know next to nothing about. I wonder if people understand that Kickstarter isn’t a magical ATM but a storefront, and that they are committing to running this store — production and fulfillment both — for the duration. I expect a lot of Kickstarters ultimately end up in the red because the people running them haven’t built out a business plan, and have no idea what they’re getting into.
That’s John Scalzi, talking about Amanda Palmer and Kickstarter, something that caught my eye because of something that Katie Lane and George Rohac said at last weekend’s Stumptown: That the first thing someone should do before setting up a Kickstarter is talk to an accountant. And that the first thing someone should do after reaching their Kickstarter goal is… talk to an accountant. Their point was, essentially, “You’re not getting all the money that you think you’re going to get,” because of taxes and whatnot, and me being bad with money, I’d never considered that before.
I had, during the time when I didn’t have much work coming my way – Something that seems to be changing lately, thankfully, although my posting here has been seriously affected as a result, so sorry for that – considered doing some kind of Kickstarter thing to, basically, not feel as if I was becoming a financial black hole in the household. Jeff and I talked, half-heartedly, about doing one for Wait, What, but it never really amounted to anything (That may change; we keep on wondering whether we can monetize that, given the time that we both, and Jeff especially, spends on it each week), and I came this close to Kickstartering a book I was kicking around in my head at one point. But I kept remembering talking to Erika Moen about Kickstarter earlier this year, and remembering her numerous points about why it’s not, as Scalzi put it, “a magical ATM but a storefront,” and what that actually means in terms of additional man hours and costs to fulfill all the “rewards” you’ve promised backers as part of the whole process (I remember thinking, Man, she’s really thought this through so much more than I have. She’s good at this freelance shit).
There’s a lot of… romance, perhaps? Misconceptions and preconceptions, definitely, but also a weirdly “Kickstarter pushes out the middle man and lets the fans give their money to their favorite creators, yeah” vibe to the idea of Kickstarter and related patronage-based services that is very alluring, the idea of it being somehow… purer, perhaps, or somehow better than just trying the old-fashioned way of getting a publisher/label/agent and “selling out” (man). The more I look into it, though, the more it seems like the kind of thing that you have to do properly or you’ll end up crushed, and so wrapped up in debt/obligations/nofunstuff that the creative impulse decides to take a permanent vacation.
