The Weird Accordion to Al Book Kickstarter Campaign is Back—With a Vengeance!

I’ve been able to continue to make a living writing about things I love and feel passionately about for a devoted, loyal audience that understands and appreciates me largely through the miracle of crowd-funding. You need to evolve or die in this industry. I evolved by finding a lane and a business paradigm that suited me far better than the page-views and advertising revenue-obsessed realm of professional pop culture media: crowd-funding and self-publishing. 

When I worked at The Dissolve I saw us as artisans. We were like a little shop lovingly hand-crafting pop culture journalism. It turns out you can’t stay in business at that level and remain an artisan. You have to compromise to meet the demands of a seemingly impossible industry but even when you compromise there’s still a very good chance that you won’t last.

Crowd-funding afforded me an opportunity to be an artisan again. I re-opened for business in April of 2017 here at Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place and instead of doing what everybody else does, out of fear and conformity, I’m doing me, and you’ve done more than tolerate me: you’ve embraced me in all of my messiness and tragicomic humanity. 

I make my living largely through Patreon but I’ve been fortunate to be able to supplement that income with crowd-funding campaigns for various book projects, including the week-long trip to Ohio to cover The 2016 Republican National Convention that led to 7 Days in Ohio, Al’s 2018 tour and most recently the book version of The Weird Accordion to Al. 

The Weird Accordion to Al Kickstarter campaign was far and away the biggest and most successful campaign I’ve ever had. We had a wonderful burst of success and support at the start, were highlighted by Kickstarter as a featured campaign and at the end of the campaign had raised a little over sixteen thousand dollars. 

It was incredibly validating and exciting. The only downside to Kickstarter is that campaigns can only run for between 30 to 60 days. 

After the campaign is over, it’s over, or at least that would be the case if there wasn’t a service called Backerkit that allows you to extend campaigns indefinitely. I would love for everybody who did not get a chance to be a part of the first campaign to have an opportunity to hop onboard and be a part of this loving tribute to a great American even before it hits bookstores. 

To that end I have re-upped with Backerkit. At first I could only offer an autographed, first edition copy of the book (the autographed first edition will be limited to 500, with most of those copies already taken) but now I can offer other fun rewards as well, including a “Twofer” where you can get copies of both Weird Al: The Book and The Weird Accordion to Al book autographed by me for a mere 50 dollars, an offer that sold out very quickly last time around, a digital copy of the book for 13 dollars, an awesome book/exclusive tee-shirt combo based on illustrator Felipe Sobreiro’s awesome book cover and even a digital portrait of yourself with Al created by Felipe. 

It’s an exciting opportunity to keep the magic going and help pay for the considerable expenses that come with publishing a book of this size and ambition. 

So won’t you please, please, please consider contributing to the current Weird Accordion to Al book campaign? Having spent much of the last two months working feverishly on it I can vouch that it’s really good, much better than I had anticipated or expected. It turns out I was onto something after all! My faith in myself and the project turned out to be justified and not some manner of crazed, myopic delusion.

Something tells me Jar Jar’s favorite “Weird Al” Yankovic song is “The Saga Begins”

It’s a special thing, doing a labor of love like this. It’s even more beautiful and exciting when other weirdoes spark to your vision and support it with their words and enthusiasm as well as their money. 

Get onboard! It’s gonna be great. I feel like the book is already a success but in this industry and this economy every last bit helps. 

https://make-the-weird-accordion-to-al-book-a-ridiculous-r.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders