The category, which includes art books, literary spaces, zines, and more, is having its best-ever yearâand just hit a major milestone.
By Oriana Leckert and Margot Atwell
Kickstarter
October 26, 2020
Kickstarter has seen a number of category bests this year: Games are on track for their best year ever and Comics have already seen more money pledged than ever before, with help from the highest-earning project in the categoryâs history.
Now Publishing has also reached its best year yet, with a total of
$25.6 million pledged as of this writingâand a total of $200 million
pledged over the 11 years Kickstarter has been in business.
1,424 Publishing projects have successfully funded this year, and
anthologies, art books, letterpress, literary spaces, and zines enjoyed a
success rate of more than 50 percent.
Some of the most notable projects this year included Margins Virtual Conference, which forged new pathways to an inclusive literary future; Brick House, a new digital media collaborative bringing together writers from the Awl, Splinter, Gawker, Deadspin, and more; the Black Diplomats
podcast and video series, centering people of color in the
foreign-policy conversation; and Boing Boing co-owner and open-culture
activist Cory Doctorowâs self-produced audiobook for his new novel,
techno-thriller Attack Surface. Plus: Brandon Sandersonâs tenth-anniversary leatherbound edition of The Way of Kings became the most successful publishing project of all time, raising nearly $7 million from almost 30,000 readers. We recently published an in-depth interview with him and his team to learn more about what made it such a hit (spoiler: lots of extremely exciting planning and fulfillment considerations).
Of course, this categoryâs success has been a long time in the
making. Over the 11 years since Kickstarter launched, there have been so
many notable projects, from the constant output of Thornwillow Press, Beehive Books, Microcosm Publishing, and PM Press to the Bronx Book Festival and literacy program to The Rocky Mountain Land Libraryâs
âhome on the rangeâ to the community-based project that brought
Washington State Poet Laureate Claudia Castro Luna in contact with
migrant and Native communities and helped the School of Visual Concepts
create beautiful accordion-print books of the resulting poem to share with local librariesâyou can read about how they pulled it off here.
Claudia Castro Luna used Kickstarter to fund a beautifully printed poemâand distribute it to local libraries.
We invite you to be part of the next generation of Publishing
projects which are working to build an even more inventive, inclusive
literary world. Here are a few of our favorite projects you can back
now:
- Dracula: The Evidence:
Beehive Booksâ reimagining of the nightmarish classic in a gorgeous
interactive art book that turns readers into supernatural archaeologists - F(r)iction:
The latest issue of a highly designed, visually stunning literary
magazine filled with stories, poems, essays, comics, and custom art by
diverse creators from around the globe. - Liâl Queens Picture Books: The first in an inspiring new series about royal Black and Brown women throughout history, for children ages four to nine.
- My Name Is My Own: Two beautiful anthologies by iconic feminist poets June Jordan and Ruth Stone, from Copper Canyon Press.
- St. Nellâs Residency: A writing residency giving space to womxn humor writers to wrestle their projects into submission.
- Working Class History:
350+ pages covering a peopleâs history of protests, strikes, uprisings,
and revolutions around the worldâwith a foreword by Noam Chomsky. - ConstelaciĂłn Magazine:
A quarterly bilingual speculative fiction magazine, with stories
appearing in both English and Spanish and half the stories written by
authors from the Caribbean, Latin America, and their diaspora. - All of Nicola Teslaâs Patents: 500 fascinating pages of patents and technical illustrations.
If youâd like to bring your own story, festival, or other literary dream to life, you can peruse this list of past projects for inspiration or learn more about launching Kickstarter campaigns here.
Source: Pmpress.org
