Greg Stolze: Forums

I'm hoping with all the fans that support for Word Slave is better than what appears on the ransom page. (I pledged, did you?)

I'd love to see the next chapter.

Sorry man. You were one of two. I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from that.

-G.

apprently I was the other one, then.
i really liked the first chapter and i was definitely eager to see what followed.
is fundable automatically set up with the pledge system i saw? one thing that made me hesitant to pledge at first was the rather high minimum pledge. it seemed a high amount to be asked to be able to read one chapter.

i don't know... not all experiments can be successes, though right? i have no idea what conclusions to draw either. but maybe it was just a bad time? as long as you already have the second chapter anyway, maybe it would be worth giving it another shot at some later date?

Maybe that people are not trusting of their fellow man and short-sighted (neither of which I mean in an overly condemnatory way). I told a friend that I was pledging $10 and he felt it was a lot for a chapter. I explained to him that I would get a novel out of the project if the population of others willing to trust that others would also pledge were large enough. At 80 people per chapter and 15 chapters you'd need 1200 people for a book.

Of course another impediment could be the number of people who knew about the project, especially the number of people who knew about it with funds to pledge. Were Tom Clancy to announce something similar. . . .

Oh well, I'll just have to wait for more fiction from the usual avenues.

Edit: Yeesh, math mistake.

Yeah, perception is huge with the Ransom Method. I think that if the minimum had been $10 instead of $5 with the last couple games, there would have been less participation... even though the median donation was $15. If they can give five, they figure it's an okay deal and they give more. If they can only give ten, people get jumpy. It's odd. It's like the dollar store phenomenon, perhaps. People happily buy anything that's priced a dollar. $1.12? Not the same magic. But by the same token, something that costs eighty-five cents observably moves slower than the SAME ITEM priced at that magic buck.

Plus, promotion wasn't all it could be. If I had an aggressive schedule of doing readings at area bookstores, I'm sure I could scare up a lot more interest, but... well, I'm devoted to dirty diapers and childrens' museums, so that's that.

I might well try later if I think circumstances are different. Thanks to y'all, anyhow.

-G.

Not discouraged.

To add my thoughts, since I didn't pledge and now I feel guilty; the amount was a factor, true. But more, there was another risk perception - if the book came in at 15 chapters, I'd be paying $150 for the whole thing, if I paid minimum each time a chapter was ransomed. That's an expensive book!

If I'm not going to donate for each chapter, then donating for this one is possibly a bad investment. $10 for two chapters (the first of which was a freebie) is also expensive; what if you don't make the ransom on the third chapter?

So there's an incentive to wait and see if it's working before putting in money - and obviously, if a lot of people do that, it DOESN'T work, and none of us get anything. Which is a shame, because I really liked the first chapter. Sigh.

I hope that there's a way round the problems, because the idea is awesome!