Writers, money and the web: further thoughts on crowdsourcing
There is a bit of buzz about crowdsourcing at the moment. But how might it be relevant to writers?
Kickstarter is an online portal for artists to get funding to get their projects off the ground. The idea is that something is offered in return though – a copy of the published book, for example, or access to a blog about the process of working on the project. In book writing, that something offered in return could be a copy of the book or a signed copy or whatever. There is scope to offer different things based on how much is donated – an ebook if you give a little, a signed copy if you give a lot, etc. Or you could get creative, and ask for a huge amount of money then name the lead character after the person who donated it – it’s really limited only by a writer’s imagination as to how they set up their project.
In journalism, that something offered in return would be the article, or essay, or book; people would pay for it because they wanted to read it. The possibilities seem enormous. I’m interested in whether, once a journalist has crowdsourced an article, if they would offer it totally for free on their website or whether they would charge a fee, but let the people who donated it read it for free. Which would you do? I’d offer it for free.
But Kickstarter is just a portal, and it’s possible to crowdsource without it. Literary Minded reports that emerging writer Liz Sinclair is currently supporting herself using donations while she writes her first book.
Personally, I think that although in these early days ballsy young unknowns might be able to successfully crowdsource, as the idea becomes more established it will be the writers with a fan base who will most lucratively be able to use the concept. Earlier today Rachel Hills hyposthesised that a writer might need something like ’500-1000 (preferably the upper end) highly engaged readers for something like this to work’. I think that’s a fair assumption, I’d be interested in hearing if anyone has any stats or ideas around this figure. (It certainly fits in with Kevin Kelly’s 1000 True Fans theory.)
Of course, crowdsourcing is not just about money. WordPress runs and is free because developers donate their time and skills to make it awesome, and there are many such examples of freeware available on the web. Also, journalists can crowdsource information or leads, for example, by putting a call out on twitter or other social networking sites. Marcus Westbury has even spoken about crowdsourcing a cultural policy.
*Photo by zoomar.
Benjamin Solah
1:50pm, 24 Nov 09
Liz Sinclair’s example is pretty inspiring and I’m so tempted to try it myself but doubt I would have as much success.
I guess I’m up to try anything though, anything to get out of this job and so something I love.
lisa
1:54pm, 24 Nov 09
It’s inspiring but I think crowdsourcing, especially for an emerging, presents its own challenges. How do you feel about sales and marketing, which would be a large part of your ‘job’ (convincing people to invest!)? Not to mention the performance pressure of having to deliver to your sponsors…
Rachel
2:33pm, 24 Nov 09
As I wrote on your last post, I’m keen to experiment with crowdsourcing – not as a paid thing, at least at first, but more as a “you ask, I write”/”super-request” type of thing. My only fear is that no one will suggest anything, which would be a bit humiliating.
Incorporating a suggestion box/request form into the page as a regular feature.
The only problem is that, as I’ve written before and as you said in your previous post, while I think blogging is a really valuable writing form, the reality is that I do it for free. For a feature, on the other hand, I’m looking at hundreds, possibly thousands (well, thousand) of dollars, which fund my investment into the project.
One funding possibility (although it’s pretty old school) is to turn these crowd-sourced articles into MSM feature stories or essays, assuming I don’t have enough passionate readers to fund any real research or in-depth analysis myself.
Fitzroyalty
2:42pm, 24 Nov 09
It has potential – like Sellaband did for music – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellaband
lisa
2:42pm, 24 Nov 09
Good point about the humiliation factor. I actually think that’s one thing that holds people back here – the industry feels so small, it feels like you are being judged, and no one wants to fail. I know I feel a sense of that. But I think that people who are bold enough to experiment with this kind of stuff early will reap the rewards.
With you super-request idea, one plug-in I’ve seen for websites is like a list thing, where you ask readers what to write about, and then they can vote for things on the list. So you get an idea of what readers want. I’m sure there is plenty of other stuff like that out there too.
Rachel
2:51pm, 24 Nov 09
Plug-in sounds very interesting. Can you link to a site where I might find it?
lisa
2:57pm, 24 Nov 09
It’s called Skribit.
Hackpacker
4:41pm, 24 Nov 09
Amazing idea, but agree on the humiliation factor. Also does read input always create interesting work? At what stage is it best to get feedback on writing? Blogging suggests every phase.
lisa
5:00pm, 24 Nov 09
I was just thinking about the humiliation factor. I guess there’s no reason why you’d have to publicise how much money you raised – after all people don’t really talk about incomes much. That said, the idea behind Kickstarter is that you figure out how much you’ll need, then not start the project until you reach that goal. I think that’s a good way of operating, because everyone knows the deal up front, and in that case the whole process would open itself up to transparency in general. So if you didn’t reach your goal, then, yeah, it would be public.
But then, who cares? People ‘fail’, and they live to write another day. May I refer you to Benjamin Law’s fantastic article in The Reader, ‘So, you have failed…’
Hackpacker, at what stage is best to get feedback? Every stage? I guess one of the things about getting your audience to fund your articles is that they would shape what you write – which might leave you with little room to do stuff that’s unique or out of the ordinary for you. As a writer you might be typecast! And maybe your audience would get bored because you weren’t entertaining them with your originality as much anymore… hmmmm.
To use your blog as an example Hackpacker, I was so excited when I read your article on Lemuria and your idea about impossible travel, I definitely would have whipped out my credit card to make a payment for you to go and pursue that idea. It ticks all the boxes – I like your writing, I trust you can deliver, and I love the idea.
D
10:05pm, 24 Nov 09
Crowd Sourcing:
Didn’t Stephen King try to crowd source one of his last projects and failed miserably. It was something like as long as you keep paying for each chapter I’ll keep writing the next one.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/comment/4466090/Stephen-King-scares-off-readers-at-a-price.html
1000 true fans:
This is never ever going to work for the majority of artists in any field. Because as “doable” as it seems, to maintain it is crushingly hard work and then where do you get the time to do the creative bit they all want. There’s an excellent break down of the reality of someone doing it here:
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/04/the_reality_of.php
However one of the main problems with 1000 true fans is the attrition rate. In most sales and marketing you’d expect to lose 10% per year so you’ve always got to be on top of recruiting more true fans. The other main problem is ‘lock-in’; the fans you’ve got are here because they like what you last did and want/expect more. Going off in radically new directions will alienate more than that 10% you’d expect to leave as a matter of course. At some level that will be stiffling to artists.
lisa
7:59am, 25 Nov 09
The Stephen King thing was years ago if memory serves – like a good five or six years ago, at least. So I don’t think it’s one you can hold up as an example as why crowdsourcing won’t work – the web has changed dramatically since then. I think it was a very brave and forward-looking experiment even though it ultimately failed.
Interesting link about the True Fans. I hadn’t followed up on that. I wouldn’t get too hung up on the idea that communicating with your fans will crush all the time you have for creativity – unless you are wildly successful and can hire people to manage things for you, most writers or creatives have to spend time organising a lot of crushingly dull drudge work for themselves, be it organising gigs, communicating with fans, marketing, or whatever. Until you make it, it’s part and parcel of working in the industry, whether you are striving towards a True Fan utopia or not. I think more important is the point about playing to fans might stunt your creativity – as I mention above, crowdsourcing for writers might lead them to become formulaic or even typecast in their style. That might work for some writers, but most I know value the freedom of being able to try new things and experiment with their style and content.
1000 True Fans is not really an ideal that I would pursue in a tangible way, and I think it would be harder for a writer to do because they don’t have a lot of face-to-face contact with their audience (no concerts, for example). But I do think that 100 fans is a good general guiding point for writers to be aiming for when building their careers – a turning point, I guess, that moment where you might be able to say, ok I have a fan base, I can do this thing.
Annabel Candy, Get In the Hot Spot
8:44am, 25 Nov 09
Thanks for writing this series. It’s good to connect with you. We have similar backgrounds in writing and new media:)
I’m experimenting with a blog at the moment and setting myself the challenge of getting 1000 subscribers in a year. I believe this is the point at which you can start “monetizing” your blog.
I’ve got over 400 subscribers now, learnt lots but wondering, even if I do make money in the end if it’s worth it financially. That’s a lot of unpaid work upfront!
I started it for fun and as a challenge and love doing it. Really hoping it might pay one day then I’ll be earning money from my hobby:)
Jarra
5:17am, 20 Jan 10
Words are fascinating!
Trying to obtain Money, I doubt one should use the term Crowd(Out)sourcing
http://startups.com/questions/15565/is-crowd-sourcing-about-outsourcing-or-is-it-about-sourcing-funding , where the funded may be Money or Tasks perfomed ?