@Perplexed said in Could J-Novel run Kickstarters for series over 5 years old?:
The advantage with something like a Kickstarter is they can make sure they don't lose money, as long as they budget for the cost of translating with the license cost as part of the goal. Then if it reaches it's goal they will have already covered the cost of doing it (with presumably some profit margin that would also included in the goal) and any books it sells after the Kickstarter will just be profit as because J-Novel club does digital first there will be no additional cost of printing more books (that said they could do a stretch goal for a physical edition but then they could just make that for the kickstarter backers only if they didn't want to print more after).
yea - as Geezer pointed out it won't work (you need permission/ the license to launch a campaign on kisckatarter or whatever--but it might work in reverse. If an author wanted to have one of their older works translated - they could use kickstarter to raise the funds and HIRE JNC (or some other group) to translate and then subsequently market the end product ...(the author still risks losing face if the funds aren't raised to hire a pro like Warnis )
Guerilla marketing (assuming the author OWNS the license) he/she could just 'look the other way' if a prominent fan translation site just so happens to post a chapter by chapter translation of a work ...see what interest there is, then go from there (that would be the cover story anyway. In reality, the author and translator would be collaborating. when (IF) enough hype gets generated - the author makes a statement that although they are flattered that so many fans are interested, licensing must go through proper outlets, "please support the kickstarter instead"
or
an author could enter a writing contest incognito, pen a work in English (or translated to English) in a setting that is famous from a series that is old (or a side story or something - close enough that the lampshade hanging is obvious) to gauge interest and if it's a 'hit' approach JNC to translate/market something from the back catalog