Amanda Palmer says she ‘pretty much broke even’ after raising $1m in Kickstarter campaign

Dresden Dolls singer hits out at 'clueless people' who 'ask what I did with my million dollars'

Amanda Palmer has claimed to have “pretty much broke even” on her past crowdfunding attempts.

The Dresden Dolls singer used fan-funding site Kickstarter to raise $1.2m (£800,000) for her 2012 album ‘Theatre Is Evil’. Now, in an interview with Forbes, Palmer has described the first Kickstarter campaign as a “loss leader”.

“The dirty secret of my Kickstarter is that it was actually a loss leader leading to Patreon,” she said, in reference to the rival fundraising website she is now using. “I pretty much broke even on that Kickstarter. I did it almost deliberately because I wanted my fans to trust the shit out of me and they do.”

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Palmer added: “It adds insult to injury when I still get clueless people who understand nothing about business coming to me and asking what I did with my million dollars… they’re so easy to ignore because they have so little to do with the conversation and the bottom line of how my business is run.

“Honestly, the huge revelation, it’s almost painful to truly realise just in [recently] launching the Patreon, is how very little the mass media is relevant or helpful to my cause. Even with my Kickstarter I hired a publicist. I did a press release. I did a gazillion interviews. It may have gotten a few interested people on board with Kickstarter who perhaps would have ignored it, but with the Patreon it is such a committed relationship. You have to already know and trust the shit out of me to get this far into bed with me. As happy as I am to chat with FORBES magazine, it’s pretty unlikely that some guy on an airplane reading his copy is going to read this and rush off to sign up to my Patreon.”

Palmer’s Patreon page allows fans to pledge money for every “thing” she creates. She writes of the project: “I’ve been struggling since I got off my label in 2008 to find the right platform for ongoing support, through which I can release constant material (and get paid). I think this is it. Last year was eaten writing and putting out [book] ‘The Art Of Asking’, and this year i want to get back to making art.”

Amanda Palmer recent penned an open letter to Morrissey offering to help him crowdsource his next album. Morrissey subsequently announced that Amanda Palmer will support him on his summer US tour, along with Blondie.

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