Why would an author use this and not the better known site Kickstarter?
A talented author can build a fan base anywhere, but it's easier where there are already potential fans. This site looks like there are six (6) story pitches total, and probably as many users.
I'm not knocking the idea, I'm asking what you intend to do to compete with the incumbents. "Different features, more focus" is not sufficient.
We think it's pretty hard for authors to make their work stand out among so much noise, including the increase in self-published work on sites like Lulu. Our site is meant to allow great writing to be found and showcased as evident by the funding it receives.
Yes, our site is pretty bare right now as we just went live a few hours ago. However, in our short existence we've had very positive interest from authors, readers, and others.
I think you should go vertical and integrate with something like OpenCalais for subject-matter tagging which you can use as the basis of a recommendation engine, and some sort of document-based CDN.
OpenCalais looks interesting. Something that advanced would be much farther down the road for us, though. Right now we just want to find and enable great written stories.