#kickstarter

[junkmixart]

4TH GOAL IS SLASHED AND WE GOT THE COLOR STRETCH GOAL LEFT! We have 7 DAYS to get 62K TO 75K! It's a lot to ask but I want to pay the art assistants fairly for the amount of effort it's gonna take to help color the comic.

LET'S GET THIS IN COLOR!

#slashers #slasher u #horror #comic #kickstarter

[niki-smith]

Goooood morning, the SUCCULENT Kickstarter is LIVE! 🌵🪷🌵

I had an absolute blast co-editing this anthology of twelve sexy, trans-inclusive sapphic comics. @discordcomics and Ollie Hicks and I spent the last year working with an outstanding lineup of writers and artists to put this 200 page book together-- these comics are hot, humid, dirty and FUN.

"Our theme is a Garden of Sapphic Delights. Femme flowers, sappy butches, genderqueer lesbians, trans femme wives, fleshy dykes and thorny switches"…......

........need I say more?

Comics are good.

(I've got a sexy comic of my own in the anthology too, of course… the pics in the middle are from my 13 page comic, Prickly Pair.)

Help us reach our sexy sapphic goal by backing the Kickstarter now until May 15!

#queer #sapphic #wlw #lesbian #comics #Succulent #anthology #kickstarter #my comic is “two complete idiots bashing heads against each other” #tyvm

[kayleerowena]

the HAUNTS: A HAUNTED HOUSE ARTBOOK kickstarter ends this friday (april 19 2024) at noon est!

🏚️ 60+ pages of haunted house art 🫀 a bonus essay about hauntings 🌟 a glow in the dark cover 👻 holographic sticker with every book 🗝️ tiers for postcards, riso prints, commissions, & more!

🏚️ haunt your house here before the campaign ends! 🏚️

#kaylee.txt #ghosts #illustration #haunted house #haunted houses #horror art #horror #artbook #horror artbook #kickstarter

[darksideof]

Support 365 Squares vol. 3 Artbook! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/moon-mxtr/365-squares-vol-3

#365squares3 #moon #artbook #kickstarter #crowdfundingcampaign

[dumbingofage]

DUMBING OF AGE BOOK 13 KICKSTARTER UPDATE

SURPRISE SAL MAGNET

It's that time again!  It's... $37,944 o'clock!  This Kickstarter campaign's sixth magnet is SAL!  Just regular ol' kick-ass SAL!  She's gonna be about 2"x4" and you can have her tucked inside your book (along with your free Lucy magnet) if you pledge for the SAL MAGNET tier!  

You can also decide to choose her amongst your curated selection of magnets if you go in for either the PICK THREE or PICK FIVE MAGNETs tiers, and of course she's included if you go all-in for COMPLETE MAGNET POWER!

Next up at $40K, we unlock LAUNDRY DOROTHY and LAUNDRY JOYCE!  And there's probably.... four other magnets past them, at some point.  WE'LL SEE.

pledge today or whatever

#dumbing of age #kickstarter #sal walkerton

[simon-roy]

a reminder - the kickstarter for REFUGIUM, the sequel to griz grobus, launches tomorrow - TAKE A LOOK HERE!

#specbio #speculative zoology #speculative biology #alien species #speculative fiction #sciencefiction #simon roy #comics #griz grobus #habitat #scifi #kickstarter #scifiart

[kurtzauer]

Cover by Art Voyager for Spectress & Sabanion, Issue #5.

Coming soon, Spectress & Sabanion Issue 5 is coming to Kickstarter!!! The entire series will be available with great deals, backer bonuses, and gorgeous original art.

It's the tale of an ancient Egyptian ghost and her demon associate pushing their way into the world of the living.

Aneksi is at the cusp of enacting the plan that was centuries in the making. Her single-minded ambition has brought her far. She has created a human identity. She has disguised and stashed her demon associate Sabanion in the Tricameron University Museum as an overnight watchman. But the escape from CONFAC-4 still takes its toll, the wounds inflicted still bleed. After centuries of unlife, death could be a blessing if she can immortalize her legacy and the legacy of her ward, Cleopatra.

But there are other supernatural beings that lurk and have their own plans, needs, and pleasures. The intersection of these spectral passions is a recipe for turmoil and catastrophe!

Interior art by Topper Helmers, colors by @weswongwithyou and written by yours truly.

#comics #comicbooks #indiecomics #comicart #comicbookart #kickstarter #comic books #coverart #indiecomic #coverartwork

[fedemexyart]

Fael having fun with that handsome beefy guy of Rossoman! 🤣❤️ Who is he??? Go and find out on the #rossomanproject kickstarter here: ➡️➡️⚠️ underdogz.it/kickstarter ⚠️ Rossoman is an all-Italian project: the Underdogz guys are working incessantly to make their way in a country that doesn't support its artistic community in the slightest. With this animation project, one of their main objective is to give new life to this industry here in Italy and give work to many Italian artists who are unable to have the opportunity they deserve to do the job they studied for and love much. Their kickstarter is still going on: I know it's a difficult time for everyone, but if you want to support Italian animation (definitely in crisis in this period) even with a small contribution to this project, you would really help a lot! 🙏❤️

#art #digital art #comic #rossoman #fan art #animation #funny #girl #woman #man #fantasy #elf #photoshop #kickstarter

[forsythiaproductions]

Act 3 is well underway, just in time for Hugo's 176th birthday next week... 🥳

In other news, this month's public Backer Bulletin has been delivered!

Read this public update here!

Of Sense and Soul: A Queer Victorian Romance Game 💌 Play the Demo | Get our newsletter | Send us an ask

#visual novel #indie game #kickstarter #historical fiction #queer fiction #historical romance #indie dev #gay #update #backer bulletin

[bisonwares]

LAST CHANCE FOR SWEATER PRE-ORDERS!

Sweaters are restocked and up for pre-order in every size till March 20th at 8pm CST!

Some designs will not be returning!

If your size was sold out before it's available now!

XS-3XL!

Shop here!

#small artist #small business #art #merch design #knit #sweater #ugly sweater #kickstarter #bee #fossils #ufo #trans artist #trans business

[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.]

#pluralistic #trustbusting #big tech #gift guide #kickstarter #the internet con #books #audiobooks #enshitiffication #disenshittification #crowdfunders #seize the means of computation #audible #amazon #verso

[prinnay]

[ DREAMS. is happening on Kickstarter! 100+ artworks in 100+ pages. Ends May 2nd ]

#artbook #omfg it's finally happening ;o; #kickstarter #DREAMS.

[kinobeans]

Behold, the Everyday Coffin Itabag!! With extra space for all my ghoulfriends who need pockets and chains to hang charms! Now with HOLO straps and insert options :D The Kickstarter has ended, but pre-orders are open until the end of the year!

#coffin #halloween #spooky #itabag #artbykino #kickstarter #goth #goth aesthetic #vampire #twst

[prokopetz]

Something I love about The Far Roofs is how much of a swerve its premise is if you're coming to it uninitiated.

Okay, so there's these talking rats with a culture of swashbuckling heroism – basic Redwall/Reepicheep stuff.

Also, there's a magical realm called the Far Roofs which exists above every human community, and that's where the rats go adventuring; a little weird, but you can see the precedents in popular fiction. It's like wainscot fantasy taken to its logical-yet-absurd conclusion.

By default, the game wants you to play as a fictionalised version of your (presumably human!) self and go up onto the Far Roofs to have adventures with the rats. All right, now it's coming together: it's like isekai fantasy meets The Muppet Show, with you as the obligatory human character, right?

Then we get to the nature of those adventures: the rats have this whole culture built around questing against beings they call "the Mysteries" – beasties with names like Harpy and Goblin and Unicorn. So basically it's a bunch of muppety rats on the roofs fighting Dungeons & Dragons monsters, and you go up and help them do it. Great.

And then you get to what the Mysteries are actually like, and... well, I'm going to let the following excerpt carry the weight here. (This particular bit of text also appears in a previously published work by the same author, so I'm not giving anything away that's still under wraps.)

Unicorn, which is named Numinous, dwells three steps away and beyond the world, but most often in the Farthest Roofs, where the Steppes of the Sky come down to touch the Vast and Earthen Court. There it is stepping upwards from the world, as it has always been stepping upwards from the world, caught in a moment of transcendent glory that does not complete. It simply is. Melanthios heard the footsteps of Unicorn. Melanthios heard the ringing of Unicorn’s bells. So Melanthios chased Unicorn off to the Farthest Roofs, and Melanthios did not return. Anton and Karel, who were his sons, were wiser than their father. They heard the bells but they did not follow. Instead, they memorized the scent. They gathered swords, and ropes, and nets, and they went out. They brought food and water and all manner of gear. They clung to the roofs with all four feet wheresoever after Unicorn they went. It proved no good. Anton looked up, and Karel to his brother. The world came down— That’s what Karel said. He had time to look away. He had time to bury his head in his paws. He did not see the fullness of Unicorn’s presence. He only saw Anton his brother become unreal. In the light of the moment of the Unicorn, Anton became as a paper figure in the fire. His reality burned out. His shadow seared into the roofs behind him. Where he’d stood, for just a moment, the Steppes of the Sky came down to touch the Vast and Earthen Court; and Anton was gone away. So Karel ran and Karel ran and Karel ran from the Unicorn; and all his life, he envied but was more fortunate than his brother.

These are gods. You're going up there to kill God.

Like, it's still silly wainscot fantasy with funny talking rats, but there's that tension. It's like if Fraggle Rock occasionally took a hard turn to serious cosmic horror – Lord Dunsany by way of Jim Henson – and that tonal juxtaposition was treated as something unremarkable.

Basically what I'm saying is go back The Far Roofs.

#gaming #tabletop roleplaying #tabletop rpgs #the far roofs #dr. jenna moran #crowdfunding #kickstarter #violence mention #death mention

[kochab-comic]

the kickstarter for the complete edition is up now!! please take a look, I'm really proud of what we put together for this book! 🥰❄️ (Link!)

#comic #webcomic #kochab #kickstarter #crowdfunding

[sticksandsharks]

Stormhead

a print for the INHIBIT: BOOK 2 Kickstarter!! I got to draw Victor, the anxious sadboy protagonist 🌩️😢

INHIBIT is a comic about troubled teens with superpowers, written and drawn by my brilliant friend @evegwood. they are soooo close to their goal, let's nudge them over that finish line!!

#inhibit #comic #webcomic #kickstarter #gogogo back them I already did and I want my big chunky book about depressed kids