crowdfunding

I heard about something new (to me) recently... Would you like to sell your creative work before you create it? If so, crowdfunding might be for you. USA Today has a very interesting article on it: New grads, 'crowdfund' your career, according to which "Crowdfunding" means pooling resources from a network of people for a project.

A leader in the field is www.kickstarter.com, supposedly the largest funding platform for creative projects in the world. Kickstarter is powered by a unique all-or-nothing funding method where projects must be fully-funded or no money changes hands. Creative folks basically share their project idea with the kickstarter staff and if it meets their guidelines, they're good to go within a few days. However, there's a twist: a project must include rewards for backers. What are rewards? For a writing project, it might range from a pdf of the completed work, to thanks on the acknowledgements page, to a character named after the backer, to a hard cover copy of the work with original cover art. I'm intrigued...

Has anyone tried this? What do you think?