Next Noble Pen Meeting

October 4th, 2012 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

The University of Arizona has initiated a program of bringing together scientists and SF writers.  Some of them bemoan a lack of optimistic visions for the future, and hope that these meetings may encourage optimism.

Victories

Dylan’s submission to an anthology was accepted.  He tracks his career writing total and has now exceeded two million words.

Ciuin got an A on her first class paper of the semester.

Education

At the last meeting a discussion mentioned Kickstarter (site)(Details)(Wikipedia), a mechanism for “crowd funding” or collecting money from a wide audience to fund a creative project.  It is one of a number of similar operations (comparison).

The total overhead cost is 8 to 10%.   Project creators choose a deadline and a goal minimum of funds to raise. If the chosen goal is not gathered by the deadline, no funds are collected.

To encourage donations, the creator can offer rewards at various levels of donation, and might be a copy of the work produced (e.g., ebook at one level, print book at another, cover art poster, meeting the project creator, or a professional service like editing).  It can be thought of as a promise by the contributor to buy the end product, but there is no guarantee that the project will be completed, or completed to any standard of quality.

A large number of projects have been funded and some have won awards.  Top projects have had tens of thousands of donors and raised millions of dollars.

A book project with interviews of SF writers about how they work is an example of a project successfully funded, and illustrates various levels of reward.

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Upcoming Schedule

Oct  4th

Nick
Mark
Ciuin

Oct  11th

Tyree
Dylan
Mark

Oct  18th

Dylan
Shannon
Open slot

Oct  25th

Open slots

Keep Writing,

Bill