Fancy a 90-minute walk around London with Will Self, “writer and psychogeographer”, or dinner with the Booker-longlisted writer Ned Beauman in London’s “best Indian restaurant”? Either would set you back £500, but would also support the quarterly arts journal The White Review, the latest in a line of high-end literary endeavours which are going direct to their readers for funding, rather than struggling for space in a crowded market.
And readers are lining up to support them. “My own hunch is that people are sick of passively consuming – that they don’t want to be told what to buy,” says Dan Kieran, chief executive of crowdfunding publisher Unbound, which is preparing to release its 50th title, a memoir from Rose Bretécher called Pure. “Sites like Kickstarter and Unbound are not about saying here is this thing someone has selected for you to buy, but rather, if you want in, you need to step forward and say so, contribute money, tell your network about it. And it becomes a movement. That’s how this community feels.”
Established in 2011, the London-based The White Review has published fiction by major writers including China Miéville, Nicola Barker and Lydia Davis, as well as interviews, poetry, long-form essays and art. Last week it launched its first Kickstarter, looking for £15,000 to help print the next three issues and set up more free events around the UK (it puts on around 20 a year). The Self and Beauman offerings are incentives for backers; “pretty much all the people we’ve asked so far have agreed to donate something”, says founder Jacques Testard.
“We’re not in financial trouble – it’s about expansion and carrying on what we’re doing,” he adds. “We’ve seen the success McSweeney’s, BOMB Magazine and Guernica have had with these crowdfunders, and we thought we could try this and see what comes of it.”
Late last year, arts and culture publication BOMB raised $18,151, well over its $15,000 goal, to help pay its online contributors. This summer, the Dave Eggers-founded McSweeney’s smashed the $150,000 it was looking to raise, making $257,080 through Kickstarter by offering readers inducements ranging from a week of emails with Nick Hornby ($750) to having Geoff Dyer “record your outgoing voicemail message, or meet you for a drink in London” ($500). The money was, variously, to help McSweeney’s complete production on new issues of The Believer and literary journal Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, keep its humour site and podcast going, and bolster publication of new titles including a new picture book from Eggers and Tucker Nichols, This Bridge Will Not Be Gray.
“Things like literary journals and poetry generally aren’t going to be big commercial successes, and the reality is that independent publishing can be a tough business and the costs are high, so many small presses like ours look to other sources of support to keep things going,” says Shannon David, McSweeney’s development director. “I think crowdfunding works because you can directly reach large groups of like-minded people and invite them to be part of bringing something exciting and different into the world.”
She says it “definitely felt like a leap of faith and we weren’t quite sure how it would go, so we were beyond thrilled with the outpouring of support we saw from our existing readers and fans, and some new folks too”.
At Unbound, Kieran believes “it’s very much about being actively involved in something”. Those who back an Unbound project have their name printed in the back of the books, “and that’s an enormous part of it”, he says. “As soon as people get the books, they’re tweeting pictures of their names in the back, saying ‘without me, this wouldn’t exist’ – and they’re right.”
Today, The White Review is already more than a third of the way to its goal, with 19 days to go, while American non-profit literary magazine Guernica, which has been running for 11 years, publishing features, fiction, poetry, interviews, and art for free online, is even closer. Guernica’s current Kickstarter has five days to go, with $15,391 (£10,000) pledged of its $18,000 (£12,000) goal, an amount which would enable it to publish the second volume of the Guernica Annual, and to raise fees for contributors ranging from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to Claudia Rankine.
Lisa Lucas, Guernica’s publisher, has an app which alerts her every time she gets a new backer: she’s confident Guernica will make its goal, but has a nail-biting few days ahead. Guernica’s first Kickstarter, in 2013, enabled it to start paying its contributors and to invest in an office. Its second let it launch its first print edition.
“This is our third Kickstarter. And we were 60% funded five days in. We were 15% funded five days in the last time and the first time,” she says. “There’s been a real outpouring of support ... and for a primarily all-volunteer editorial staff, it feels really good to see lots of writers and readers we love and respect shouting about it. We’re a non-profit – none of us are in it to get rich, and part of it is just feeling we have built something of real value.”
Guernica has over 2m visits to its site a year; it sold around 400 copies of its printed edition through the Kickstarter last year, and around another 400 out of its office, by hand. “If we could get those two million to give a dollar, it would blow the crowd funding goal out of the water,” says Lucas. “Even if just 10% contributed ... We’re hoping to overfund.”
Like Kieran, Lucas feels that “people do really like to support things via Kickstarter, especially those who already support the work of the organisation”.
“It feels like an event, rather than an individual purchase,” she says. “There’s the consumer/donor angle, but also this sense of racing towards a finish line and being a part of making something possible. For us, we really wouldn’t be able to do this publication without the crowdfunding component. Our budget is too lean, and I think that Kickstarter allows us to communicate that, rally the troops, make people feel good about the money they are spending, and give them cool benefits in return. It feels pretty win-win.”
Kieran points to Unbound’s publication of The Wake, Paul Kingsnorth’s historical novel told in an invented form of Old English. Rejected by publishers across the board, it ended up at Unbound, where 400 people who agreed with the publisher that “it is a work of genius” backed it. It was released to acclaim, prizes, a Booker longlisting – and strong sales.
“It is so hard for authors to get market visibility. Publishers don’t sell books to readers, they sell them to bookshops – they don’t have that direct engagement,” Kieran says. But platforms such as Kickstarter and Unbound allow writers “to have that direct conversation with readers”.
At Unbound, which curates the titles it puts forward, launching 10-15 a month from around 20 daily submissions, supporters are asked to vote for their favourite jackets, and can interact with authors, if they choose.
“They’re getting a much broader experience than just buying a book and reading it,” says Kieran. “They are seeing under the bonnet of publishing. We’re giving readers access to authors in a different way, and they love that – and authors do too.”
The White Review’s latest print run was 1,800 copies, up from 1,500 following a new distribution deal in the US, and Testard says it had just under 200,000 unique visits to its site last year.
“We’ve reached readers all over the world just through having an online presence and through social media, particularly Twitter, and our events programme has been equally important in connecting with readers, especially in London,” said Testard. “This crowdfunding campaign allows us to connect with our readers in a different way, as it gives them the opportunity to demonstrate their support and enthusiasm in a tangible manner. We both benefit, because our supporters get interesting rewards, and if successful, we’ll have funds with which to grow the magazine. And it’s not been just our readers, we’ve also seen a tremendous amount of goodwill from our contributors, both writers and artists, and from many publishers and galleries that we’ve built up ties with over the years.”
For David it’s “absolutely true that there’s a great audience out there for literary magazines, and at McSweeney’s we’ve certainly seen that many people are excited to support something they love or hope will succeed”.
“We’re just lucky to have them behind us,” she added.
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