A Reverse-Kickstarter Content Platform

Today, Andrew Sullivan announced that he’s going to create his own, ad-free, reader-supported publication. Readers will get a metered amount of free content, but for all-you-can-eat access, it’ll cost you $19.99 per year. This sparked a lot of conversations and thoughts, and a few of them seem to be in the same vein: much like we paid for great content in when it was in magazines and newspapers, we’d do so digitally. I generally think that’s correct, and there’s plenty of examples to that point. I subscribe to Joe Sheehan’s baseball newsletter, for example, at the cost of $24.95/year. That’s just one case and it’s on the edges at that.

But for the content creator, the risk to take this step is enormous. Why give up the (ad-driven) revenue, the audience, and the (low barrier to entry-driven) growth of the free offering?

There are a few ways to hedge this risk. The most obvious one is a Kickstarter — ask the audience to fund it to $x amount, and, if it hits that, flip the switch. But that requires the content creator to take the initiative, and, even then, Kickstarter suffers from being a one-size-fits-all platform.

So what if we reversed it and made it specialized? Specifically:

1) Make it so readers initiated the fundraising.

I’m going to focus here on writing, but it obviously applies to a bunch of other things — anything where fans can come together and create a market opportunity for the product. (Like, say, TV shows.) But in part because of specialization point, and because Andrew Sullivan’s move to go indy sparked this, I’m focusing on the written word.

There are plenty of writers who I’d love to read more of. Malcolm Gladwell springs to mind. I’ve read all four of his books, watched his TED Talk on spaghetti sauce a few times, read many of his New Yorker columns, etc. But he hasn’t written much lately. His last book came out in late 2009. His gladwell.com blog hasn’t been updated in two years. He contributed only four pieces to the New Yorker last year.

The list price of his most recent book was $16.99 and had roughly 24 articles. They’re magazine-length ones, and I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect one of those every two to three weeks. But I’d be happy with shorter articles that came regularly and were, perhaps, more contemporary with what’s going on in the world. Say $20 for a 24 articles — one every two weeks with a couple of breaks here or there, over the course of the year.

Obviously, he’s not going to write that for me — not for $20. But what if a group of Gladwell fans got together and pooled their money? At some point (obvious joke omitted) he’d give in.

But there’s no good platform to do this.

2) The platform needs to be the entire product experience.

I’ve been playing with Medium on and off — here’s one piece I wrote about the Mets — and it’s a clean page with a great WYSIWYG. As a writer, it was a pleasure to use, and as a reader, it’s a great reading experience. I have high hopes for what they’re building because of that.

So what if Medium created the reverse-Kickstarter aspect?

We want writers to focus on writing, not the business operations and technical stuff. (Click on Gladwell’s blog in Chrome — which in his defense didn’t exist when he last wrote there — and you’ll see it’s a mess.) By and large, to have that happen, it means there’s a publisher, and the publisher (typically) monetizes via ads — but in any event, looks to maximize profits over aesthetics and, as Mr. Gartenberg alludes to, quality. Gladwell shouldn’t be expected to write things which necessarily are designed to attract clicks or ad dollars. He should be expected to write things which, like his books, are things people will gladly pay to read.

So the “publisher” here has to be a platform which profits off this model and is agnostic to the rest. Medium seems like a good starting point because it emphasizes the aesthetic and the quality of the content (see, e.g., the hiring of Kate Lee). Imagine if Medium allowed for fans of writers to do this reverse-Kickstarter thing as described in point 1, and, if the writer met some quantitative and perhaps qualitative benchmarks, released the money (minus 5%) to the author along the way.

I’d love to see this combo happen.

Originally published on January 2, 2013
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