Kickstarter Bans Jon Del Arroz

Why?

Jon Del Arroz reports on his substack, The Fandom Pulse, that he has not only successfully completed the Kickstarter for The Hidden Emperor and was set to start crowdfunding his next book in the Ayla Rin Universe, The Emerald Array.

The Good News here is that Fund My Comic has picked up The Emerald Array and it is now available and I recommend backing it. Many of the same stretch goals from The Hidden Emperor are there and you also have the ability to catch up with Overmind, The Hidden Emperor and other books and novels from Del Arroz, which I do recommend.

So why was he banned? Well, if you read Jon’s article, it does go into detail but Jon posted the receipt for it and it’s floating around on Twitter now but I’ll show it to you here:

Okay, Kickstarter, we need to have a talk. Purely from a customer standpoint, there is nothing objectionable in any of Jon’s work. Nothing. Granted, he has done some things on social media that I find questionable (Example below) in order to promote The Hidden Emperor and becoming needlessly confrontational, however, I don’t see this as grounds for the expulsion. In fact, without confirmation of which of these “community guidelines” he supposedly violated, then speculation shall now begin until such time as Kickstarter provides transparency in the matter.

This won’t be a long article but one that I will say that Kickstarter has officially lost all of my business and, as soon as all Kickstarters that I’m currently waiting on have been fulfilled, I will be shutting down the account completely and never returning. I’m going to assume that, since Jon is outspoken about his own political opinions and Jon has proven that there was a targeted cancellation campaign against him, complete with receipts, I think the assumption is safe.

While I theologically and politically in some ways, disagree with Jon, his comics are entertaining and fun. I have never seen Jon attempt to make a conversion of me or anyone else whether politically or religiously. I think I can honestly say that, when we say that we don’t want politics in our comics or our bits of mental vacations, I think Jon accomplishes that to a degree by not desperately shoehorning this type of material into his comics, a few minor exceptions aside which can be easily dismissed.

Again, it’s a safe assumption that you’re being told that you’ll either vote their way, in which case you’re safe, you’ll shut up, in which case you’re safe or you will not and you will be exiled.

As with any company that has bothered doing this, now is the time to snap the wallets closed to Kickstarter altogether. That’s what I’ll be doing. If your project is coming to Kickstarter, I’ll pick it up later when it comes to mass-market. This is going to be bad news for some of my favorite creators, however, now is a great time to research and look for other outlets such as Fund My Comic, though I don’t know if they do crowdfunding for Tabletop RPGs and another alternative is to use Eric D. July’s model of just doing pre-orders, especially if you’re already established. While I’m aware that that may not come with the extras and stretch goals, it’s still a better alternative to Kickstarter. They’ll only listen once their finances are suffering and so far, our indifference to things like The Acolyte and many other projects that are flopping in TV, Movies and even Video Gaming have been successful, however, others seem to have failed to learn from these lessons so must learn it the hard way.

I’m sorry to anyone who uses Kickstarter to crowd-fund their projects. I truly am. I know that it’s been successful and easy for you. I know, believe me. It’s hard giving up the most popular but this doesn’t mean You’ve lost a customer, Kickstarter has and I’ve backed quite a few of them as

The Basic Expert’s Substack

and others can attest. I have set personal differences with creators aside to back a project that looks like something that would appeal to me for whatever reason. The fact that Kickstarter has decided that they’ll decide something for me is a dealbreaker.

Kickstarter, you officially join BackerKit and Drive-Thru RPG as companies that will never see another dollar from me until you reverse course. It’s that simple.

Keep in mind, as far as you go, dear readers, you’ll make your own decisions here and I respect them but I want to give you a gentle reminder that, until we change tactics, nothing at all will change. We can ill-afford to allow companies like this to continue bad behavior unchecked.

Choose Wisely.