Kickstarter: A Fishy Story

Kickstarter is a funding platform for creative projects. Ideally, the crowd-sourcing site could encourage arty diversity by supplying money for risky, non-commercial endeavors. But is that actually happening? I'm not so sure.

A "sci-fi fantasy" novel called The Drowning World is one of the projects begging for backers.

In this first-person story, a mermaid from Aquantis heads to the coast on a spy mission. She'll ultimately fall in love with a human man, and have to make difficult choices. This particular little mermaid speaks in modern teenage colloqialisms such as "This would be a test unlike any other I'd ever aced," and has a talking dolphin sidekick.

The kick-startee Brenda Peterson is asking for $5,000 from backers. She's reached that goal--and more. She needs the money to pay the best professional editors, designers, and proofreaders to polish her self-pubbed book.

You, too, can help her! Back her for $15 or more, you'll get a copy of the mermaid book. If you pledge $500 or more, Peterson will read 50 pages of your manuscript and give you a writing consultation! Yes. She'll edit. That's pretty nervy. Peterson isn't good enough to edit her own self-pubbed book, but she'll charge you $500 bucks. 

In any case, 19 pages of the novel are now available on amazon for 2.99. That's right. 2.99 for a snippet. I wonder how much the entire Kickstarter-backed novel is going to cost.