We'll probably be seeing much more of this kind of thing in the next few months: Tiny indy publisher Atomic Book Company wants to do a second printing of Julia Wertz's very funny autobiographical comics collection The Fart Party. Second printings cost a lot of money, though, and so they've put up a Kickstarter page, trying to raise $5,200 by August 30th to finance the print run. Depending on your level of sponsorship, you get signed books by Wertz, or even personalized sketches. They've almost made it to the goal at the time of this writing.

I don't think this is a bad idea, honestly; as long as the backers get something out of it, there's no harm in asking for money (a straight-up charity model would be a very bad idea for publishing, I think), and there's a community feeling that's beneficial for both the publisher and the reader. I'm surprised more publishers haven't tried to adopt an NPR membership model—it would be annoying to get a ton of pledge drive e-mails in your inbox from a bunch of different publishers, but the primary hardcore reading audience has already proven that they respond to that kind of appeal.

(Full disclosure: I'm already a backer of this project for $40. I like Wertz's stuff a lot, and I'd like to own autographed books by her as part of my permanent collection.)