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Comment by exolymph | Hacker News Reader

My friend Travis Corcoran recently ran a very successful Kickstarter — $95k+ raised — for a book called Escape the City which is a practical guide to the non-fantasy version of this dream.

> Seven years ago I moved from the city to a farm where I taught myself to garden, raise animals & cook "farm to table". I show you how.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tjic/escape-the-city-a-...

If you're interested there's a button on the Kickstarter page to buy copies via BackerKit. IIRC you get immediate access to a GitHub repo with most of the book already in it, although don't quote me on that.

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I saw his interview on justin murphy's podcast - he seems like a super interesting guy! Glad to hear the book is doing well

thanks! I've placed an order

Why would someone need 90K to write a book while already having a profession?

Interviewing three people is also apparently worth 5K.

And the book's photos are black & white ...

For the same reason as raising a billion dollars of series A funding: it's not about what you need it's about what people will give you.

Despite all the defensive language, kickstarters are really pre-sales. 90k sales for a book is very respectable but not overwhelming. It means he's found a great market for this book.

To determine whether there is a market for the book, not via soft commits like "interest" but with hard commits like pre-sales

Author of "Escape the City" here.

I didn't "need" $90k to write the book.

I chose to sell copies of a book, at typical book prices. Thousands of people chose to buy the book. That's where the $90k number comes from.

> And the book's photos are black & white ...

"The food is terrible...and the portions are so small".

The wonderful thing about the free market is that those who want to buy a thing can, and those who don't, need not.

Cheers!

> I chose to sell copies of a book, at typical book prices.

If we want to be technical you weren't selling copies of a book, you were selling the promise of finished copies of a book.

> "The food is terrible...and the portions are so small".

It's great to see how you take valid criticism.

> The wonderful thing about the free market is that those who want to buy a thing can, and those who don't, need not.

Absolutely correct. However, that doesn't prevent me from expressing valid criticism.

But good on you for writing this book. I think it's a very interesting topic and will probably buy a copy.

I just wish people were a bit more honest about their goals sometimes.

Comments like this are why I love HN. Will order.

Always good to look at "How To" books with a healthy dose of skepticism. Probably more relevant to the "get rich quick" type books, because if they got rich quick, why would they be selling a book to give away their secrets?

Although I find things like farming and agriculture and outdoors to have a less capitalistic shade and more of a genuine "i want to help people achieve their goals and not die" shade.

This is an excellent point @bluntfang.

I'll be very upfront: homesteading is a money losing proposition. It's a consumption good - it costs more than any (monetary) profit it brings.

And my writing about it is ALSO money losing. I'm a coder. When I write and sell novels, the opportunity cost is huge - at an hourly rate, I lose about 90% of what I could otherwise be making coding.

Writing about homesteading is much better - I only lose about 50% of what I could otherwise be making.

I write because (a) I am more driven to create and share my ideas with people than I am to make a marginal dollar, (b) I am ideologically in favor of people moving to the countryside and living a different lifestyle, so writing is an ideological / political choice.

The kickstarter was for 2K, which seems like a reasonable "minimum sales" target to start a printing run. The fact that 90K was raised seems to prove there is demand for that kind of book.

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