"The Creator Revolution" January Update
Crowdfunding, Creating, Contemplating
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✍️ Welcome to Creative Contemplation! I’m Catherine, and this is my monthly newsletter documenting my reflections on life, technology, culture, and creativity.
In today’s piece, I’m sharing an update on my book The Creator Revolution and some recent thoughts on the creator space.
A month ago, I held a public crowdfunding campaign for my upcoming nonfiction book The Creator Revolution. It was one of the most nerve-wracking and stressful projects I have embarked on; on top of shattering my introvert cave to push out continuous marketing and self-promotion online, I would frantically refresh my Indiegogo page every day to see if we were even a smidge closer to the campaign goal.
I’m excited to announce that ultimately our community helped raise $7510 (reaching the $6500 goal) and pre-order 180+ copies. I am still blown away and cannot express how thankful I am.
Under typical models, a book that sells 100 copies would earn ~$225 under a traditional publisher and ~$420 when self-published (Elle Griffin has an excellent Substack piece detailing more about this), a far cry from the amount fundraised (even when publishing costs are deducted). It has been an interesting experience, and an endless string of lessons, being a part of New Degree Press’s community-driven publishing process. Just like how I believe in supporting and investing in community-driven products, I’m excited to extend that thesis and conviction to writing. For me, writing has always very much a community-powered effort, and I’m so excited and grateful to have you be a part of this journey with me.
Here in my personal newsletter, I plan to periodically publish updates about my book writing journey. Currently, I'm deep in the manuscript revisions process. Editing hasn't been the most fun part, but it has been a blast doing additional research and interviews with an incredible variety of creators, founders, and investors, particularly ones who can speak to the recent Web3-creator movement that has advanced a lot since I started writing this book 9 months ago. The book is still on track to be released in late May.
Here are my predictions for the creator space in 2022:
Some questions I have been thinking a lot about lately, both in writing my book and outside, are:
The future of creators as brands and businesses
What makes a creator ‘notable’
The content creation and engagement cycle
Creator economy development in the West vs. East
The audience-creator relationship
How we can grow Web3 without neglecting Web2 creator support
I’m curious to hear your thoughts about the creator space, any questions that are keeping you up at night, or anything that you’re interested in learning/hearing more about — feel free to directly reply this email, or comment below this post on Substack.
That’s all from me for now, excited for you to continue to join my book writing journey! Find me on Twitter @catherinehyeo for more.
My (fictional) book is coming out this year and I never even thought of crowdfunding. Such a good idea. Will look into it for my next novel!
Thank you so much for sharing my work, and I’m so excited to learn more from you this year!