SHOCKER!!! Cheapskate Supports Indie Author on Kickstarter!

July 31, 2022

I’m supporting a book called An Atlas of Bad Roads by Misha Burnett on Kickstarter, but I’m not going to talk about the book all that much. That’s how you know I’m not getting paid to advertise. Here I am, writing a blog post about somebody else’s book, and instead I’m going to talk about how much of a cheapskate I am. If I were an author paying a blogger to advertise my book, I’d be kind of ticked off.

Like I said, I’m a cheapskate. I admit It. I’ve mentioned it before on this blog, so I won’t get into the details again, except that I buy most of my books used and I have real issues with spending more than $10 on a paperback book. Having said that, over the last couple months I’ve decided to throw down $20 or more more on several books written by independent authors on Kickstarter.

Supporting a book project on Kickstarter is a bit risky. The indie books might suck, and if that’s the case, I’ll be annoyed that I spent more than $20 on a crappy book. I don’t mind crappy $2 books from used book stores. But $20 or more? Plus, the book might never get finished. A creator on Kickstarter has no legal obligation to finish a project. I could spend $20+ on a book and end up with nothing. Cheapskates like me hate that!

I have a good reason for being a cheapskate (it’s not just for the sake of being a cheapskate); I don’t like being in debt. I won’t get into a long rant about how debt negatively affects your life, but I’ve intentionally lowered my standard of living a little bit to climb out of debt. As far as reading material goes, I sold off most of my comic book collection a few years ago and have been borrowing books from the public library and buying books from used book stores.

Since I’m a cheapskate supporting stuff on Kickstarter, I can’t support stuff just for the sake of supporting stuff. I only buy something from an independent author if I actually want to read it, and I think I want to read the book posted above, An Atlas of Bad Roads. It has a cool title and a cool cover. We’re not supposed to judge books by their covers, but I think judging titles is acceptable. Plus, I think this is a pretty good idea for a collection of short stories.

Now that I’m supporting the occasional indie author, I have to be careful that I don’t start accumulating too much stuff again. Most of the books that I have now are either books that I intend to read, books that I’ll reread, or cool books that are out of print. Now I’m adding books that are specifically written by independent authors. I just have to be careful not to get carried away and end up with too much debt again. I don’t think the point of Kickstarter is to just add another way to put normal people in debt.

I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised, I guess, but I don’t think that’s it.

I’m pretty sure the occasional $20 for an indie author won’t put me in debt. An Atlas of Bad Roads looks like it could be a cool book too. And the world needs more cool books.