The New Yorker‘s Book Bench directed me to this interview with poet and novelist Tao Lin. The teaser link highlighted the author’s assessment of his target audience:

My target demographics include hipsters, depressed teenagers, depressed vegans, happy but sensitive teenagers, people of any age who are severely detached from reality, Europeans, all college students, and I think sarcastic vegans.

While that quote made me click through, I found the comments the author made immediately before that statement equally intriguing:

I try to express crippling loneliness, severe depression, the arbitrary nature of the universe, the function of morality within an existential view, confusion, existential despair, and that consciousness means we must choose in a tone that I feel will affect people (including myself) to not want to kill themselves, not want to do self-destructive things, and not want to be inconsiderate to people.

But what I found most interesting of all is that the author has apparently sold off his future royalties, as if he’s issued shares of stock in himself:

I sold 60% of the royalties to my next novel in 10% shares to six different people for $2,000 per share. People gave me $2,000 to receive 10% of my U.S. royalties for my next novel for the rest of their life, every six months, as I get royalty checks from my publisher.

This is the first time I’ve ever heard of a writer doing this. Anyone out there know of any other examples?