Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform.
This means it’s a place where creative people seek funding from the online crowd for their ideas and products to avoid seeking venture capital, investors or loans. Creatives present their concepts online and offer rewards – like my book – for pledges of support. If the crowd is receptive they can each invest a little or a lot. Kickstarter has an all-or-nothing funding model so if the creative gets 99% or less of their goal in pledges, the project fails and the supporters are not charged, no book. But if the creator gets 100% or more support for their project, the supporters’ pledges are charged to their credit cards at the end of the fund drive – late October for Don’t Shoot – and the creative completes their project and sends out rewards to their supporters.