Neil Gaiman, Amanda Palmer & More: A TED Talk on the Importance of Crowdfunding to the Arts

David Rogers

Kickstarter, Indiegogo and other crowdfunding platforms continue to gain popularity and become more and more familiar to internet users around the world. Of course, this is inherently great for the sites since they rely on those very users to fund the myriad of projects being created every day.

Because of the growing popularity, it’s great when creators – particularly those with successful crowdfunding experiences – speak in-depth about the platforms. And that’s exactly what happens in this video, a collaboration between Skype and the consistently great TED.

Author Neil Gaiman, musician Amanda Palmer and Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler sat down with TED Ideas Editor Helen Walters to discuss creative crowdfunding at an intricate level. Other panelists including Ivan Askwith (“Veronica Mars”) and Tim Schafer (Double Fine Productions) joined the conversation via Skype.

As Walters put it, the conversation is primarily about “what is working and what’s not working” in crowdfunding – but the panelists dive deep into the questions rather than keep tops at the generic level. Musician Frank Bell is the only panelist that hasn’t previously had big success on Kickstarter, and uses the opportunity to ask many of the questions many creatives new to crowdfunding have. It’s nice to see answers coming from those that have already done it.

Definitely worth a watch if you’re thinking of using Kickstarter or any of the other crowdfunding sites to fund your self-published book. You also can check out our own article on how the different platforms work for writers.

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