So I had an idea today.
I’ve been thinking about my zombie story(trans woman in a zombie apocalypse, you can find some early sections on my fiction tumblr). It’s the longest single piece of fiction I’ve written(I have a series of stories that’s longer combined). It’s not novel length. At around thirty thousand words, it’s in the novella range. This is the first part of the story that I’ve written, there’s a second part that I have outlined but not written. While the first part is not completely stand alone, it ends at a good transitional section. The first part is about 90% written. I’m going to make a push to finish this first part soon(I’ve said this a few times before but I really mean it now). So soon I will have a finished draft, which I will have to spend lots of time editing before I begin putting up parts on my website.
Or do I? What if I ran Kickstarter to turn this draft into a polished ebook? Hired an editor, hired a typesetter(or whatever you call someone who can turn a text document into an ebook(yes I could learn to do it myself that’s not the point), hire a graphical designer for the cover, maybe hire an artist to illustrate a few scenes(this would probably be a stretch goal).
And what if I hired only trans women? I can think of a few off the top of my head that might be great for this. At the end of everything I would have a shiny ebook that I can sell, I’d have briefly employed 3-4 trans women, and backers would have gotten a copy of the book and some rewards.
I’m mostly thinking out loud at the moment but it’s an idea. I’ll have to actually finish the story and then figure out what it would cost for editing, typesetting, cover design, and illustrations. And I would need an actual audience to buy into the Kickstarter.
Is this idea workable?