From MizKit's email this morning
Oct. 10th, 2011 10:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyranoFor those of you who didn't see it, talking about Crowdfunding and why it's kind of awesome.
And it is all reminding me that again and again, the thing that really hits home for me about crowdfunding is that essentially random strangers are coming together to help get art made. That sounds terribly snotty, I don't really think of my stories as art (I think of them as books or stories), but storytelling /is/ an art, the oldest art, and so: coming together to help get art made.
Even more specifically, to help get art that would not otherwise exist made. It's enormously unlikely that I would have written "Hot Time" or "Year of Miracles" or any of the ORSSP if I had not been supported, quite literally, by the kindness of strangers. I *wanted* to tell those stories, but I can't, as a rule, afford to tell stories for free, and novellas/short stories are a much harder sell in the fiction market than a full-length novel. But as it turns out, it seems that while I can get publishers to pay me for books, I can get--just people to pay me for novellas and short stories, and that means they're *totally* making a space where I can do things I would never otherwise be able to. And that's *amazing*.
I *love* that we're living in a time where instead of an artist requiring a single, extremely wealthy patron, it's possible to do something like a Kickstarter campaign and have hundreds of ordinary-income individuals become patrons instead.
*Kermitflails* That's what art and patronage *should* be: complementary and broadly accessible. Art is not for the wealthy, it's for everyone. The joy of being able to help support it should not be reserved for the wealthy, either, nor should the rewards of patronage (projects dedicated to/named for/inclusive of you, etc) be solely for the rich. I've done a bunch of silly little things already to say thank you to individuals who have hit benchmarks within the "No Dominion" campaign, and that's part of what this is all about: all being in it together.
And it is all reminding me that again and again, the thing that really hits home for me about crowdfunding is that essentially random strangers are coming together to help get art made. That sounds terribly snotty, I don't really think of my stories as art (I think of them as books or stories), but storytelling /is/ an art, the oldest art, and so: coming together to help get art made.
Even more specifically, to help get art that would not otherwise exist made. It's enormously unlikely that I would have written "Hot Time" or "Year of Miracles" or any of the ORSSP if I had not been supported, quite literally, by the kindness of strangers. I *wanted* to tell those stories, but I can't, as a rule, afford to tell stories for free, and novellas/short stories are a much harder sell in the fiction market than a full-length novel. But as it turns out, it seems that while I can get publishers to pay me for books, I can get--just people to pay me for novellas and short stories, and that means they're *totally* making a space where I can do things I would never otherwise be able to. And that's *amazing*.
I *love* that we're living in a time where instead of an artist requiring a single, extremely wealthy patron, it's possible to do something like a Kickstarter campaign and have hundreds of ordinary-income individuals become patrons instead.
*Kermitflails* That's what art and patronage *should* be: complementary and broadly accessible. Art is not for the wealthy, it's for everyone. The joy of being able to help support it should not be reserved for the wealthy, either, nor should the rewards of patronage (projects dedicated to/named for/inclusive of you, etc) be solely for the rich. I've done a bunch of silly little things already to say thank you to individuals who have hit benchmarks within the "No Dominion" campaign, and that's part of what this is all about: all being in it together.