I've been eyeing the Kickstarter project Robin writes a book for a couple of weeks now, and with the deadline for funding closing this weekend, it's lovely to see that Robin Sloan has raised a significant amount of money and generated so much buzz that his project is second in popularity only to Designing Obama (a project created by the Obama 08 campaign's design director).
If this is the first time you've heard of Kickstarter, the name kind of gives it away. Content producers post their projects on the website and members of Kickstarter (it's free to join) can back the projects they want to support — with a financial pledge. Once the minimum funding level is reached within a set time frame, backers have to make good on their pledges.
Sloan had no problem reaching and then completely blowing apart his funding requirements early on, and he's already raised 364% of his target. On reading his earlier short fiction — Mr. Penumbra's Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store — you can see why people have been so enthusiastic* . He's one of those authors those in the industry like to describe as 'genre-busting'. In other words, his writing is so inventive and fun that the old taxonomies don't apply.
There are only three days left before Robin writes a book closes to new funding. This is a Kickstarter-only project, so if you'd like a copy of the book (in PDF or hard copy), you can back him — pledges start at a measly US$1. That, my friends, is a bargain.
* Do also read his latest story, The Wrong Plane .
