Kickstarter Publishing Head Margot Atwell talks crowdfunding books and money in book publishing.

Artsy folks aiming to get people excited about activism: Signs of Change Campaign is active through August 31, 2020. Check it out!

Margot Atwell, Head of Publishing at Kickstarter, talks with us about how a pre-order campaign on the crowdfunding platform can connect authors with hungry readers—thereby making their publishers very happy—and how to work on solving the industry’s biggest challenges: diversity, money, technology, and community. We also chatted about the many benefits of decentralizing the publishing industry, not the least of which is increased representation of those who don’t live in NYC, and how people who are willing to pay a little more for vegetables from a farmers’ market and coffee from a local cafe could be persuaded to pay a little more for their books if they understood just how much Amazon’s stranglehold hurts the entire industry.

Guest Bio

Margot Atwell is the Head of Publishing at Kickstarter, where she helps authors and publishers build community and find support for their creative projects. Previously, Margot was Publisher at Beaufort Books, an independent publisher of fiction and non-fiction books. Her first book, The Insider’s Guide to Book Publishing Success, was published in February 2013. In 2014, she raised almost $10,000 on Kickstarter to launch Gutpunch Press and fund her second book, Derby Life: Stories, Advice & Wisdom from the Roller Derby World (2015). She sends out the On the Books Substack newsletter about money and publishing, and is currently writing Don’t Steal This Book: Why Paying for Words is Radical and Necessary. You can find her on Twitter @margotatwell.