If you’ve been on Twitter or publishing blogs in the past day or so, you’ve likely heard the name Stacey Jay being kicked around. Stacey is the penname for the YA work of an author who also publishes romance.
For years, Stacey has been working as a full-time author in the traditional publishing world. Fairly recently, her YA novel PRINCESS OF THORNS was released, and didn’t sell well. So, her publisher dropped her rather than invest in a sequel that didn’t sell.
You see, in the traditional book world, books have to sell ten thousand or more copies to be considered even a modest success.
That is a lot of books.
Many, many books don’t sell “well” in the traditional market for a variety of reasons—and often, it has nothing to do with the quality of the book. It might be because the marketing plan wasn’t thought out, or the publisher didn’t advertise it. It could be because it was mislabeled so it couldn’t reach its ideal audience, or the cover was bad. Who knows. The bottom line is that Stacey had a story to tell, and she couldn’t continue it in the traditional world.
So she decided to self-publish the sequel, because she felt she owed it to her fans, her characters, and herself.
Since Stacey’s only income comes from writing, and she was no longer getting a paycheck from a traditional house—and because indie publishing costs money out-of-pocket, she decided to crowdfund her book.
For those of you who have read this blog for a while, you know that we are a big proponent of crowdfunding. It generates interest in your book, and you get what essentially functions as a really awesome presale. Hooray!
But when Stacey went to Kickstarter (which is a crowdfunding platform for everything, and not just books like PubSlush is), she encountered a vicious and swift backlash.
Why?
Because out of her $10,500 goal, 7,000 of that was going to go to her living expenses during the three months it took to write and publish her book.
Let’s break this down for a second.
Stacey estimates that her book will be about 400 pages, which is about 100,000 words, probably more.
That’s less than 10.5 cents a word.
Most journalists earn between 50 and 80 cents per word.
Stacey is a career writer. That means she gets paid to write. Unlike most writers, she doesn’t have any job to fall back on. To continue writing at the pace she does, she needs to write full time, and to live, she needs to get paid for it, at least enough to live.
Stacey wasn’t asking for charity. If you look at her rewards, they are more than fair. Stacey gets money to pay her mortgage and eat, and her contributors get a book and their name in a song. Sounds pretty okay to me.
The unwarranted vitriol, enough to get her to cancel her kickstarter was simply because people were OUTRAGED that an artist is asking for support to live while she works to provide a product that her readers love.
The outrage should really be centered at the people who think that a written work is only worth cost of production.
What about the time spent? What about the hard work?
Surely she’s entitled to ask for a living stipend of just over $2000 a month, which is hardly anything for a parent with children.
Many of the people against the concept of this kickstarter most likely aren’t familiar with artist grants, residencies, and fellowships. Government and privately-sponsored programs that—you guessed it—pay artists to live as they create a project.
The only difference between that and this kickstarter is that Stacey is essentially asking for a grant from her fanbase.
Want to read the book? Cool! Pledge $10 and you’ve bought the book!
Don’t agree with what she’s doing, or aren’t interested in reading it? No problem. Just don’t pledge.
We have no doubt that Stacey would use those discretionary living expenses in the best, most financially sensible way. After all, she’s an author. She’s used to living frugally.
We don’t begrudge her the fact that she needs to feed and clothe her children, and that she’s chosen a hard, mean profession where even successful full-time authors make below $50,000 a year.
Because we love books, and we have the utmost respect for someone who writes one, let alone a dozen. For us, they’re more than pages and ink and a way to pass the time. They’re someone’s baby. They’ve changed our lives, and the way we see the world.
Put the kickstarter back up, Stacey. We’d love to help you out.
