Why I Don't Do Kickstarters

It's funny. When I tease a product one or two people usually ask when I'm launching the Kickstarter for this. The answer is always "I'm not." I don't crowdfund. That's not to say I never will in the future, but I can't imagine a circumstance that would warrant me doing so. Turning to Kickstater makes me feel uncomfortable, it makes me nervous. It's a great way to get your product out there and get support, but I don't think it's for me.

I did one crowdfunding, several years ago. I did an Indiegogo for Class Compendium, my largest project up to that time. But I didn't do it specifically to fund the Class Compendium. I did it because my computer was becoming unreliable and without a computer I couldn't publish at all. So, I did an Indiegogo with half the money going to art for the Compendium and the other half to a new laptop. Nothing fancy, just to keep myself writing. I made all this very clear in my pitch video.

I thought Class Compendium would be easy. It was almost done before I even launched. It was so close. But, to be safe, I gave myself an extra six months as padding for my deadline. That was a helluva lot of wiggle room, right? Wrong.

You see, one of my stretch goals was to add a spell index in the back. A complete spell index. That way any class in the Compendium would have instant access to spell details right in the same book. No flipping between books. Easy, right? Well, not so much. See, at the time I worked solo. I hadn't found awesome layout guys like +Jason Paul McCartan, +Michael Herrmann, or +Thomas Novosel. From cradle to grave, it was a one-man show. Everything was done manually. Everything.

It took me all my padding time to get that damn index in place. I even went over deadline, though only by two weeks.

For me, that was unacceptable for several reasons.

First and foremost, I hate missing deadlines. It feels unprofessional. If you give a deadline, meet it. People even said "Two weeks isn't bad at all for a crowd-funding project." Didn't matter. Late is late for my releases.

Secondly, I'm very mercurial in my interests. As it stands at the time of this blog, I've got two large projects in the works (White Star: Galaxy Edition and Saga of the White Box), a large project I won't name, as well as four small projects, one personal project, a project I'm secretly working on, and am coming up on a freelance gig. It's like someone gave Attention Deficit Disorder a pen and a set of dice. This means that focusing on a single project for an extended period is very difficult for me. I get an idea and I want to grab it and run - then bounce between the many hollows of my mind.

That makes for a potentially disasterous crowd funding project. And that's not fair.

It's not fair to those who put their money in my hands. It's not fair to the way I operate. It's just asking for a train wreck and permanent damage to the good will the OSR has been so kind to grant me. So, I won't be doing Kickstarers or crowd-funding projects any time soon. I'll be patient, leaping from passion to passion, hoping folks are kind enough to accept the time it takes for me to get a project to the table. So far, the community has been quite kind in that regard - and I am appreciative of that grace.