#kickstarter

[monstermonger]

THREE DAYS LEFT FOLKS :O

A limited number of pins are now in production, as of last week c: if you want one for the least expensive price and with a few other goodies, check it out :D

[Leftover pins will be available in my kofi shop afterward, February or later, but a lil more expenso.]

The Divine Insanity | The Accursed Enlightenment

[Postcards from the Kickstarter]

[snowbugsfilm]

Original Ladybug design by Jenny

Concept art by Alex

Support us on Indiegogo!

[fairytalesandvampires]

The “Weird Animals” book is now live on Kickstarter and has been selected as “Project We Love” by their team! Check out the link and give support if you like it. Thanks!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/-vlad/weird-animals

[publishinggoblin]

The Misery Tarot is live now on Backerkit. This 100 card deck is made to be used with a tarot deck as overlay readings, further informing your readings about the pains, suffering, and healing journey through trauma behind the scenes.

It can also be used on its own for shadow work and harder readings about your pain and misery.

With amazing art by Enoch Duncan, inspired by Silent Hill, this deck will help you through this dark winter, a wicked hand to hold yours through the museum of your agonies.

[krazehkai]

12 hours left!

Thank you to everyone who has supported this far! We have reached our last stretch goal for reversible dust cover jackets~

The kickstarter for my three art books are live! Check out the limited reward tiers along with other information on the campaign page!

As of this post, we've already reached the initial goal! So the next step is to shoot for the stretch goal for a hard cover upgrade to all of the art books!

I've also just put up some limited hand drawn shikishi boards as a reward! Check it out below:

Lucina has been claimed, but the others should still be available!

I will be adding a few more hand drawn shikishi board rewards, so keep up with me at BluSky for when they're up!

Thank you to everyone who has supported and backed this project! Let's keep spreading the news to hit the stretch goal~!

[bg3tarotdeck]

✨🔮 THANK YOU 🔮✨

we are absolutely FLOORED BY YOUR SUPPORT! Our project has been funded in just 35 MINUTES!

Not to worry, we have LOADS in store for you still! Check out our amazing stretch goals and wonderful upgrades: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bg3tarotdeck/1303557897?ref=6urziy

[save-the-choppers]

IG @ w.crest

[plottwiststudios]

Women of Xal II Kickstarter Imminent

KICKSTARTER PRE-LAUNCH PAGE ~ LINK

(PLEASE hit that black "Notify" button in the link. Reasons why further below. Content Warning: Earnest and frank honesty.)

It feels like Déjà vu to announce that we're going to launch Women of Xal's Kickstarter soon. Complete with new art of the characters. It was 2016 and a flood of you all came in gushing with love and support. Now we're all older and a bit more rugged, eh? But you've grown and become something far more beautiful than before. So have I, ideally! But let's get down to business. For everyone who reads this whole thing, or even just reblogs and officially follows the Kickstarter page, thank you.

So as most of you heard, we were going to shelf Women of Xal II. The debt accrued, the unprofitable returns, and risks Women of Xal II presented in both costing more and making even less made it unviable an avenue to explore. We were going to revisit the series years later. I was just starting to make my peace with that. But of course, I live in a bizarre fictional story like the rest of you. An artist came in shortly after. Ssam_reptile understood the situation and was hellbent on helping specifically us all the same. Long negotiations short, he's the reason Women of Xal II is happening at all.

He'll be doing much of the art for the promotions, CGs, special illustrations, Kickstarter art, and so~ much~ more~ But uh, look at this:

He perfectly embodied the kind of evolution I want for the sequel. Putting so much attention and care into the lore's little details and honoring Cat's character designs with utmost pride and attention. But I'm a relatively honest man: I gave him the numbers. The sales, the probability of success if we don't get a fire lit under this series, and the amount of time he's risking for this Kickstarter. He's also a sensible man, and was quite honest in his fears and reservations -- just as I was even restarting this project. But he is willing to take the risk, and believe in this project. And as scared as I remain for a Kickstarter that needs at least $25,000 to not fall into the same pitfalls as the original game, I'll also give it my all. Because I do believe that the story and quality that we can give you far outstrips these worries.

Staying upfront with you, I'm asking to indulge in a little bit of my selfishness here: Please follow the game's Kickstarter page. It'll notify you when the campaign officially launches. Show the team that we can look forward not to trepidation, but excitement when we launch that Kickstarter. Let the numbers help give us confidence that what we're doing will be seen. Reblog the excitement and show that we're just going to keep clapping back louder until we're heard. Talk to us on Discord or in my DMs and express your joys as well as anxieties about the sequel -- we want to hear everything and address you just as earnest as I always.

Tell us features you want, stories you want explored, Kickstarter rewards, anything. See what I've learned and what I haven't! You can even demand that Cat remains an artist in the game -- and you'll be happy to know that she is! She's returning as character designer, I'm still the offbeat writer, and we've got a lot more to say and show. So let's go on this journey once more, yeah? I can't wait to show you all what I've learned as both a person and a creative. Thank you for reading, and...

Welcome back to Xal.

[rpgsandbox]

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the DC Heroes RPG, pretty much everything released for the first edition (1985) and the second edition (1989) is being reprinted by Cryptozoic Entertainment.

It's being funded via kickstarter, and the campaign runs until 18 December.

DC Heroes RPG 1st edition, Mayfair Games, 1985, with box cover art by George Pérez, Dick Giordano, and Arne Starr -- They placed their names on the sign at the bottom center

[embervoices]

Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series is (hopefully!) getting an illustrated omnibus for the first 3 books via Kickstarter. Go back it!

(I don't know why Tumblr is choking on the link display, but it is, so here we go.)

[theimaginauts]

THE VIGILANT: ANATHEMA

Art by SHIKARII

[bisonwares]

5 DAYS LEFT ON KICKSTARTER

Don't miss your chance to back The Scaredy Cat Sweater Collection by Cicada Cafe on Kickstarter!

These designs will be 100% knitted into the fabric, they will not be printed on.

If you liked the sweaters from my Kickstarter you are gonna LOVE these!

Support the project today! Only on Kickstarter!

[fedoraspooky]

The kickstarter for a documentary about my dad's life and artwork is now live! His name was Kent Melton and he was a sculptor for Disney, Dreamworks, Laika, Hanna-Barbera, and many other studios over the years. It's being put together by a friend of his, Maria, who worked with him at Laika!

[bloggingboutburgers]

My Kickstarter campaign to do a printed version of my aroace comics just ended a couple hours ago, and it is now officially June 1st, so... Yayyyy

I'm ganna be able to print so many of these babies thanks to y'all

I'm ganna be able to save some money to hopefully move to my QPP's country and marry them someday with some of them profits

What a W I'm excited

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

My next book is The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation: it’s a Big Tech disassembly manual that explains how to disenshittify the web and bring back the old good internet. The hardcover comes from Verso on Sept 5, but the audiobook comes from me — because Amazon refuses to sell my audio:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-internet-con-how-to-seize-the-means-of-computation

Amazon owns Audible, the monopoly audiobook platform that controls >90% of the audio market. They require mandatory DRM for every book sold, locking those books forever to Amazon’s monopoly platform. If you break up with Amazon, you have to throw away your entire audiobook library.

That’s a hell of a lot of leverage to hand to any company, let alone a rapacious monopoly that ran a program targeting small publishers called “Project Gazelle,” where execs were ordered to attack indie publishers “the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle”:

https://www.businessinsider.com/sadistic-amazon-treated-book-sellers-the-way-a-cheetah-would-pursue-a-sickly-gazelle-2013-10

[Image ID: Journalist and novelist Doctorow (Red Team Blues) details a plan for how to break up Big Tech in this impassioned and perceptive manifesto….Doctorow’s sense of urgency is contagious -Publishers Weekly]

I won’t sell my work with DRM, because DRM is key to the enshittification of the internet. Enshittification is why the old, good internet died and became “five giant websites filled with screenshots of the other four” (h/t Tom Eastman). When a tech company can lock in its users and suppliers, it can drain value from both sides, using DRM and other lock-in gimmicks to keep their business even as they grow ever more miserable on the platform.

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

[Image ID: A brilliant barn burner of a book. Cory is one of the sharpest tech critics, and he shows with fierce clarity how our computational future could be otherwise -Kate Crawford, author of The Atlas of AI”]

The Internet Con isn’t just an analysis of where enshittification comes from: it’s a detailed, shovel-ready policy prescription for halting enshittification, throwing it into reverse and bringing back the old, good internet.

How do we do that? With interoperability: the ability to plug new technology into those crapulent, decaying platform. Interop lets you choose which parts of the service you want and block the parts you don’t (think of how an adblocker lets you take the take-it-or-leave “offer” from a website and reply with “How about nah?”):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

But interop isn’t just about making platforms less terrible — it’s an explosive charge that demolishes walled gardens. With interop, you can leave a social media service, but keep talking to the people who stay. With interop, you can leave your mobile platform, but bring your apps and media with you to a rival’s service. With interop, you can break up with Amazon, and still keep your audiobooks.

So, if interop is so great, why isn’t it everywhere?

Well, it used to be. Interop is how Microsoft became the dominant operating system:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

[Image ID: Nobody gets the internet-both the nuts and bolts that make it hum and the laws that shaped it into the mess it is-quite like Cory, and no one’s better qualified to deliver us a user manual for fixing it. That’s The Internet Con: a rousing, imaginative, and accessible treatise for correcting our curdled online world. If you care about the internet, get ready to dedicate yourself to making interoperability a reality. -Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine]

It’s how Apple saved itself from Microsoft’s vicious campaign to destroy it:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

Every tech giant used interop to grow, and then every tech giant promptly turned around and attacked interoperators. Every pirate wants to be an admiral. When Big Tech did it, that was progress; when you do it back to Big Tech, that’s piracy. The tech giants used their monopoly power to make interop without permission illegal, creating a kind of “felony contempt of business model” (h/t Jay Freeman).

The Internet Con describes how this came to pass, but, more importantly, it tells us how to fix it. It lays out how we can combine different kinds of interop requirements (like the EU’s Digital Markets Act and Massachusetts’s Right to Repair law) with protections for reverse-engineering and other guerrilla tactics to create a system that is strong without being brittle, hard to cheat on and easy to enforce.

What’s more, this book explains how to get these policies: what existing legislative, regulatory and judicial powers can be invoked to make them a reality. Because we are living through the Great Enshittification, and crises erupt every ten seconds, and when those crises occur, the “good ideas lying around” can move from the fringes to the center in an eyeblink:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/12/only-a-crisis/#lets-gooooo

[Image ID: Thoughtfully written and patiently presented, The Internet Con explains how the promise of a free and open internet was lost to predatory business practices and the rush to commodify every aspect of our lives. An essential read for anyone that wants to understand how we lost control of our digital spaces and infrastructure to Silicon Valley’s tech giants, and how we can start fighting to get it back. -Tim Maughan, author of INFINITE DETAIL]

After all, we’ve known Big Tech was rotten for years, but we had no idea what to do about it. Every time a Big Tech colossus did something ghastly to millions or billions of people, we tried to fix the tech company. There’s no fixing the tech companies. They need to burn. The way to make users safe from Big Tech predators isn’t to make those predators behave better — it’s to evacuate those users:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/18/urban-wildlife-interface/#combustible-walled-gardens

I’ve been campaigning for human rights in the digital world for more than 20 years; I’ve been EFF’s European Director, representing the public interest at the EU, the UN, Westminster, Ottawa and DC. This is the subject I’ve devoted my life to, and I live my principles. I won’t let my books be sold with DRM, which means that Audible won’t carry my audiobooks. My agent tells me that this decision has cost me enough money to pay off my mortgage and put my kid through college. That’s a price I’m willing to pay if it means that my books aren’t enshittification bait.

But not selling on Audible has another cost, one that’s more important to me: a lot of readers prefer audiobooks and 9 out of 10 of those readers start and end their searches on Audible. When they don’t find an author there, they assume no audiobook exists, period. It got so bad I put up an audiobook on Amazon — me, reading an essay, explaining how Audible rips off writers and readers. It’s called “Why None of My Audiobooks Are For Sale on Audible”:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/25/can-you-hear-me-now/#acx-ripoff

[Image ID: Doctorow has been thinking longer and smarter than anyone else I know about how we create and exchange value in a digital age. -Douglas Rushkoff, author of Present Shock]

To get my audiobooks into readers’ ears, I pre-sell them on Kickstarter. This has been wildly successful, both financially and as a means of getting other prominent authors to break up with Amazon and use crowdfunding to fill the gap. Writers like Brandon Sanderson are doing heroic work, smashing Amazon’s monopoly:

https://www.brandonsanderson.com/guest-editorial-cory-doctorow-is-a-bestselling-author-but-audible-wont-carry-his-audiobooks/

And to be frank, I love audiobooks, too. I swim every day as physio for a chronic pain condition, and I listen to 2–3 books/month on my underwater MP3 player, disappearing into an imaginary world as I scull back and forth in my public pool. I’m able to get those audiobooks on my MP3 player thanks to Libro.fm, a DRM-free store that supports indie booksellers all over the world:

https://blog.libro.fm/a-qa-with-mark-pearson-libro-fm-ceo-and-co-founder/

Producing my own audiobooks has been a dream. Working with Skyboat Media, I’ve gotten narrators like @wilwheaton​, Amber Benson, @neil-gaiman​ and Stefan Rudnicki for my work:

https://craphound.com/shop/

[Image ID: “This book is the instruction manual Big Tech doesn’t want you to read. It deconstructs their crummy products, undemocratic business models, rigged legal regimes, and lies. Crack this book and help build something better. -Astra Taylor, author of Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When Its Gone”]

But for this title, I decided that I would read it myself. After all, I’ve been podcasting since 2006, reading my own work aloud every week or so, even as I traveled the world and gave thousands of speeches about the subject of this book. I was excited (and a little trepedatious) at the prospect, but how could I pass up a chance to work with director Gabrielle de Cuir, who has directed everyone from Anne Hathaway to LeVar Burton to Eric Idle?

Reader, I fucking nailed it. I went back to those daily recordings fully prepared to hate them, but they were good — even great (especially after my engineer John Taylor Williams mastered them). Listen for yourself!

https://archive.org/details/cory_doctorow_internet_con_chapter_01

I hope you’ll consider backing this Kickstarter. If you’ve ever read my free, open access, CC-licensed blog posts and novels, or listened to my podcasts, or come to one of my talks and wished there was a way to say thank you, this is it. These crowdfunders make my DRM-free publishing program viable, even as audiobooks grow more central to a writer’s income and even as a single company takes over nearly the entire audiobook market.

Backers can choose from the DRM-free audiobook, DRM-free ebook (EPUB and MOBI) and a hardcover — including a signed, personalized option, fulfilled through the great LA indie bookstore Book Soup:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-internet-con-how-to-seize-the-means-of-computation

What’s more, these ebooks and audiobooks are unlike any you’ll get anywhere else because they are sold without any terms of service or license agreements. As has been the case since time immemorial, when you buy these books, they’re yours, and you are allowed to do anything with them that copyright law permits — give them away, lend them to friends, or simply read them with any technology you choose.

As with my previous Kickstarters, backers can get their audiobooks delivered with an app (from libro.fm) or as a folder of MP3s. That helps people who struggle with “sideloading,” a process that Apple and Google have made progressively harder, even as they force audiobook and ebook sellers to hand over a 30% app tax on every dollar they make:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell/posts/3788112

Enshittification is rotting every layer of the tech stack: mobile, payments, hosting, social, delivery, playback. Every tech company is pulling the rug out from under us, using the chokepoints they built between audiences and speakers, artists and fans, to pick all of our pockets.

The Internet Con isn’t just a lament for the internet we lost — it’s a plan to get it back. I hope you’ll get a copy and share it with the people you love, even as the tech platforms choke off your communities to pad their quarterly numbers.

Next weekend (Aug 4-6), I'll be in Austin for Armadillocon, a science fiction convention, where I'm the Guest of Honor:

https://armadillocon.org/d45/

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/31/seize-the-means-of-computation/#the-internet-con

[Image ID: My forthcoming book 'The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation' in various editions: Verso hardcover, audiobook displayed on a phone, and ebook displayed on an e-ink reader.]