I received a Facebook message from writer Greg Stolze today extolling his latest project. Stolze, probably best known for his work on role-playing games including Unknown Armies and NEMESIS, has taken to writing reader-funded fiction using the Kickstarter fund-raising website.
Prior to short stories, Stolze also wrote some role-playing games using this method of funding, which he terms “the Ransom Model.”
At the fund-raising site of his latest effort, “Two Things She Does With Her Body,” Stolze has posted a video of himself explaining the idea, as well as links to the PDFs of the two previous stories that Stolze successfully funded this way, “These People Mean Nothing to Each Other” and “Regret, With Math,” which are now freely readable by all. (Another story funding attempt was unsuccessful.)
Stolze’s goal is to raise $300 for his 3,000-word short story by April 25th. He asks individual would-be readers to pledge at least $1, “the cost of a pack of gum. (Well, okay, the cost of a pack of high end gum, the kind with all natural ingredients.)” Donors will also receive a podcast of Stolze reading the story. At the time of this writing, $39 has been pledged.
The “Ransom Model” is a very similar technique to the “Storyteller’s Bowl” method I’ve mentioned here before, which Sharon Lee and Steve Miller used for their Fledgling and Saltation novels and Dave Freer used for Save the Dragons.
I hadn’t heard of it being used for short stories before, but it might very well work even better for those than for novels, since there is less chance of the writer getting preoccupied and not finishing the work (Diane Duane’s readers are still waiting for her to finish her Storyteller’s Bowl-funded novel, The Big Meow).
As a reader, I hate this. If I want to read something, I want it now. I also think a buck for a 3000 word short story is a bit high. A typical novel weighs in at 100K words. At a similar per-word pricing, that would be $33 for a novel–definitely on the high side.
Good luck to Greg and kudos on trying new ways of bringing in readership but I really don’t see the model of buying an already written book or story for a fixed price as broken.
Rob Preece
Publisher
But didn’t you know? Words, like everything else, are cheaper when you buy them in bulk. 🙂
Yeah, it’s worth a try, but I always wondered why writers don’t just write the story anyway–most of us are compelled to write whether we get paid or not, and at least you have the journey…but anything that puts a nickel in a writer’s pocket, that’s cool, though his expected pay scale is up there with the huge names.
Scott Nicholson
I don’t know, he may have written it anyway, and the fundraising is just to release it.
Rob:
I don’t think anyone said the traditional way is broken. This is just another way to do it. And this way will probably work better for people who have a core following who are willing to pay more. If you were a fan of Stolze, a buck might seem cheap.
We are in a time now where authors and publishers can experiment with alternate techniques. And what works for some may not work for others. One technique may work great for one group of readers and not another.
@Rob Preece, I can understand how a book publisher would find this outrageous. But $0.30 per word is common for a journal article. Journals that print short stories pay about the same.
Besides, the people who care will pay, and the people who do not care would not have paid anyway.