Every so often we come across a crowdfunding project that catches our eye, for one reason or another. We will try to share them here on a semi-regular basis so you can learn about them too.
First up, a brand-spanking-new YA press based in Atlantic Canada has launched an IndieGogo campaign to raise funds for its first release. The Night Has Teeth by Halifax/Toronto writer Kat Kruger already has a pedigree behind it – the teen werewolf novel, set in Paris, won the 34th Atlantic Writing Competition last year. Fierce Ink Press has assembled a pre-order campaign with an impressive array of perks, including T-shirts, signed postcards and bookmarks, mugs, super cute handmade stuffed werewolves and, if you donate $500 and up, you get the chance to name a secondary character in the book’s upcoming sequel. The press has a fairly unique mandate as one of the only Canadian publishing houses specializing in genre-based young adult writing – and from the Maritimes, no less – and its innovative approach to publishing deserves a second look. There’s eight days left in the campaign, and you can check it out here.
NEXT. The Wisconsin Public Radio programme To The Best of Our Knowledge is raising funds via Kickstarter to launch a comic book to accompany its six-hour series on the science of consciousness. The book, titled Meet Your Mind: A User’s Guide to the Science of Consciousness will be written by Jim Ottaviani (author of the comic Two-Fisted Science: Stories About Scientists) and drawn by Portland-based artist Natalie Nourigat. It’s intended as a separate “imaginative story” that will explore and explain questions that will be addressed in the series – are animals conscious? What about computers? How does consciousness relate to identity? This is pretty rad stuff and the perks are really wonderful. I particularly the $1,000 pledge, which promises to donate 200 copies of Meet Your Mind to the school of your choice. These types of perks show the best side of crowdfunding – it puts the onus on the creators to develop interesting and unique solutions to spread the message of your project and help people learn through your work, as well as engage your donors in a broader sense of connectivity and purpose. There are eight days left in this campaign, and you can learn more about it here.