[psi75]

Crowdfunding only works if you have a preexisting platform. Otherwise, it's just going to embarrass you. It's not zero-risk either, because if you start a Kickstarter and it fails, you can never remove the evidence (and the social anti-proof involved in a failed campaign). For authors--reputation ends up being a big deal because it takes 10+ hours of human effort to tell if a book is any good--this sort of thing can be fatal.

Also, it's much harder to build a platform organically than it used to be. I was semifamous in the 2010s and was literally almost killed for it. (Some people who were high in Y Combinator were on the wrong side of history there, but I digress.) So, I know how these systems actually work and how to exploit them (if one wants to go black hat). The game of getting attention is more competitive these days because there are so many more spammers, bad actors, and general-issue crapflooders. You can buy 10,000 fake Twitter followers for less than a hundred bucks and you probably won't get caught or face any negative consequences; on the other hand, getting from zero to 1000 legitimate followers is really difficult (much harder than it was in 2010).