Crowdfunding for history book

[js at cimmeri.com]

On 2/11/2015 12:35 AM, Evan Koblentz wrote:
> Hello cctalk'ers,
>
> Hopefully this message won't offend 
> anyone --- I recognize that I might, 
> and I apologize in advance if it does.
>
> As many of you know, I've been in the 
> vintage computing hobby for about a 
> decade. The first person I met was 
> Sellam Ismail. He helped guide me as a 
> newb collector of handheld/pocket 
> computers.
>
> Somehow that led to me co-founding 
> MARCH, publishing a 1,000-subscriber 
> newsletter for a few years, rescuing a 
> mainframe here and there, making the 
> VCF East into a premier event, and 
> becoming a "talking head" everywhere 
> from BBC Radio to the Wall Street 
> Journal. (My personal site is 
> www.snarc.net if you really want to 
> know more ... bring popcorn.)
>
> Now I'm asking for some personal help 
> from the community.
>
> I'm trying something radical: crowd 
> funding, so that I can finally finish 
> the decade-long project of writing my 
> book about the history of mobile 
> computing.
>
> You can imagine how frustrated I feel 
> when telling my family "I'm in the The 
> Wall Street Journal!" but that I'm 
> also dangerously under-employed 
> (having been spit out of the technical 
> journalism field after 16 years). It 
> does not compute.


Sure it computes.  Vintage computing -- 
currently -- is just hobby-worthy, and 
your little Man-On-Street quotes 
appearing here and there are hardly 
income worthy.   Your experience 
compared to the Real Guys on this list 
(of which I don't qualify to rank as 
either) barely qualifies you as 
anything, much less a "talking head" for 
vintage computing.  You're a talking 
head for MARCH.  That's it.

Why should people PAY you to write a 
book?   Only established authors with 
some kind of track record get an advance 
from their publishers.

Annoyed,
- J.