I have an unpublished novel, Vika’s Avenger, sitting around unsold. It’s a science-fantasy story with detective elements and a revenge motive. Two different editors have been interested in buying it, but were overruled by higher-ups who couldn’t figure out how to market it; a third editor turned it down but had some useful comments about it. While it may have other failings, the largest problem seems to be that it doesn’t fit any current known market niches.
I thought about self-publishing it, but my track record there is less than stellar. I thought about sending it to a smaller publisher, such as Wildside. I thought about serializing it online, as I’ve done with recent Ethshar novels. I haven’t ruled any of these out, but none of these options has me wildly enthused.
And I’ve also thought about trying to launch it on Kickstarter.
If I do that, I’ll have some interesting options. For one thing, if it makes the basic amount I set (which would probably be $10,000), I could then set stretch goals that would include such things as commissioning a David Mattingly cover painting. I’d probably rewrite it — some of the creative choices I made when writing it were based on my perception of the market at the time, and obviously didn’t help sell it, and that third editor’s comments, along with some other events, have me thinking of ways it could be improved.
But if it doesn’t make the nut, that could be embarrassing. Not to mention that running the Kickstarter and then publishing the book would be a significant amount of work. And that $10,000 would need to cover producing and distributing the various incentives, so my net proceeds wouldn’t be all that much.
So I’m waffling. Do I try to Kickstart it, or not?
I’m generally not a fan of Kickstarter. I think it’s overrated and some of the high-profile failures have given it a feeling of vaporware recently.
For you, I think it would be a highly-public referendum on your popularity. As you say, a failure could stick in a bad way. Even a marginal success at $10K wouldn’t be a big trophy, in terms of publicity.
That said, I’d pay whether it was a serial or a kickstarter or whatever, and it would be better than the novel sitting around unpublished.
I think it perhaps depends on the tone of the novel. I’ll go out on a limb and say that most people who know you as an author are Ethshar fans. A couple Ethshar books are a little grim in places (Black Dagger mostly), but most are light hearted.
If you want to appeal to the KS crowd in general, it probably needs to be either Cthulhu, Vampire, or Zombie related.
I had an idea for a web site where you could post outlines of proposed future works and your readers could vote for which one they wanted next… but while it would provide *you* with useful information, I don’t know if an acquisitions editor would be persuaded. Or it might be just the thing to catch their eye, since they’re not impressed with a proven track record going back to, what, thirty years?
I think it would be fun, regardless of what any editors thought.