Crowd-Requesting... a New Gatekeeping Model

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

In my continuing quest to refine new publishing models, I got stuck on how you "gatekeep" a hard-copy novel. You can't crowdfund it in advance because that's either not fair or it describes an existing model (pre-ordering). What I wanted is a way for people to gauge how much interest other people have in a project without monetary markers.

So I'm experimenting with something I call "crowd-requesting," where an author/artist/what-have-you asks for people to show a sign of interest in a project, and when enough people say "Go for it," you hit the button that makes it available.

I came up with this because if I saw that a crowd of people had requested the publication of a self-published project and that group was sufficiently large that I decided it wasn't just the author and his/her friends, I think I'd be more inclined to pick it up than if there was no such marker. So for me, crowd-requesting would be a valid gate-keeping system, something I might use along with other markers to decide whether the book was worth my time.

For my project, The Worth of a Shell, I've asked for 100 people to request the novel: have a look here. If I get that number, I'll add a line to the copyright page and marketing descriptions that "this novel was crowd-requested."

Feel free to use this model, refine it or discuss it! And if you want to sign the petition, hop on over there. :)

Comments

[zeeth_kyrah]

Jonathan Coulton uses this model to determine where he goes on tour.