Robin Sloan raised money online to fund his first novel

Here’s a guy who’s bypassed both vanity-presses and mainstream publishers by getting readers to pitch in and pay him directly for a book before he’s even written published it. Call it a reader-funded advance.

Robin Sloan is a blogger who previously published a short story, Mr. Penumbra’s Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store, on the Kindle (you can buy it here for 99 cents). I stumbled across him on Kickstarter, a website where people can post ideas for projects and ask others around the world to sponsor them.

Frequently, though not always, those who donate will receive something in return. That’s how Sloan set up his project; if enough people donated to meet a minimum threshold, he’d write the novel and distribute it to all participants. If they donated more than the minimum, they’d get extras like a printed and autographed copy or an acknowledgment in the final version.

So what’s the novel about? Here’s Sloan’s quick description:

Imagine a Sherlock Holmes for the 21st century. All the really good cases are on the internet. And Holmes is a woman, and Watson is an A.I., and San Francisco… oh, poor San Francisco…

Maybe Sloan set his sights too low, or maybe he’s just got really supportive fans (the average donation works out to around $25), but he’s blown way past his initial fundraising goal twice over now and is still collecting funds. In the meantime, he’s finished his book and has farmed it out to select readers for a little community-based editing, and today he reported that he’s finished editing it and will release it in less than 24 hours, on November 1st, 2009. Anyone who donates at least $1 before then will receive a PDF copy of the book.

I donated the buck. Since I don’t know Sloan’s writing style at all, and since I don’t know if crowdsourced editing is the best way to edit a manuscript, I figured I’d play it safe. But that’s partly what’s brilliant about his “pay what you want” plan, because it lets people like me pay the minimum to sample his work and support his writing with little risk, while his fans can pay much more than that to show that they support his work and that they want him to write more.

You can find out more about the project, and the book, on Sloan’s page on Kickstarter.

An earlier version of this post first appeared on Kindlerama.