Crowdfunding helps authors get published

Fromright: Ke Bing, Yang Qian and Sheng Jia at a promotional event for their book in Beijing.

Li Yang, a college student in Wuhan, Hubei province, has loved writing poetry since childhood, and he always wanted to publish his works.

However, Li is not famous enough to attract publishers, and he can't afford to pay for the publishing by himself.

Last month, Li turned to a crowdfunding website to raise funds to publish his works.

He's not alone.

Although there are no official statistics on how many bids for publishing are on such websites around the country, or exactly how many millions of yuan have been pledged to those programs, there are more than 120 book-publishing programs on Zhongchou.com, among the country's popular crowdfunding platforms, with goals from 500 yuan ($81) to 1 million yuan.

"Crowdfunding for books is a relatively new concept in China, but it's gaining a lot of popularity in a very short time," says Li Yaohui, senior executive at Zhongchou.com.

The idea is simple: Potential readers can finance a book directly, in exchange for various value-added services at various pledge levels, such as signed books, meeting or even dining with the author, and getting access to important events related to the book, Li says.

Chen Liang, a young mother in Beijing, has spent months rewriting Flowers in the Mirror, a 300,000-word ancient-Chinese-language myth novel, into plain modern Mandarin for her own child. She recently decided to publish the book so that more children will be able to enjoy the inspiring ancient tale.

She promoted her idea on a crowdfunding website on July 25, and in two days, she got more than 200 backers and received pre-orders worth 4,100 yuan at Zhongchou.com.

Yi Lang, a post-80s Suzhou resident in Jiangsu province, launched a crowdfunding program to raise funds to publish a book, Traveling Is an Earnest Thing.

Yi also runs an online group of 180,000 participants on the social network website Douban.com, and the book is a collection of the group members' articles on their travel experiences.

His goal was 22,000 yuan, but he ended up with more than 24,500 yuan at Dreamore.com, another crowd-funding website.

The list is endless, as authors are now flocking online to raise funds and generate buzz for their new books.