Cultural productions of all kinds have a rather brutal financial model: there’s a lot of investment of time, money, and energy up front (what economists call ‘sunk’ costs, because they can’t be recovered once expensed), and a huge risk of not paying back those costs in either earned or contributed revenue once the production is ready for the world. All along the way, there are moments to make complex calculations, to decide whether to go forward or throw in the towel. This is true for theater works, operas, musical performances, visual art works, films, novels, architecture, and many other forms (and true for many other industries, as well).
Author Lawrence Watt-Evans is attempting an end-run around that financial model with his new work in progress, The Spriggan Mirror. Watt-Evans has posted the first few chapters of this new novel on the web, and promises to publish a new chapter each week, as long as he has collected $100 in on-line contributions.
Essentially writing on an installment plan, this author wants cash as he goes — in part to compensate him for his efforts as he makes them, but also in part to determine if enough people care to continue.
Of course, the novel on installment is nothing particularly new. Charles Dickens wrote many of his long and orphan-filled works this way. A century-and-a-half later, Stephen King attempted the same thing with his novel-in-progress The Plant (which eventually withered). Watt-Evans drew specific inspiration from The Street Performer Protocol proposed by John Kelsey and Bruce Schneier. As with all such ideas, each new attempt brings new opportunities to learn and adjust.
When nonprofit pundits talk about new business models, they generally mean large and complex reconceptions of the 501(c)3 corporate form, or hybrid nonprofit/for-profit entities. But there’s also huge potential in tinkering at the edges with smaller and more specific problems — the cash flow and sunk cost problem, for example — to see if there’s a way to hack the system.
