Things are proceeding at a good pace here at the Common Bonds Headquarters (a very real place, I promise). We have completed a first round of editorial notes for everyone, and I've familiarized myself with the backend of BackerKit to proceed with surveys and digital goodies distribution.
Digital Rewards Because these are new tools, we'll proceed with a little bit of care and not hit the shiny distribute button on everything at once. I will first send two things, the Behind the Scenes Zine and Kaeralgan the Vicious and the Sky Mobulas, and if that goes well, the rest will follow.
Please note that the three following digital rewards will only be ready this fall, and will be sent along as they become ready:
Common Bonds 3 (obviously)
Undying Loyalty (Nerezia 9)
The Fox Now Wears His Skin
Surveys Similarly to Digital Rewards, the surveys will first go out as a smoke test, to about 5% of you, and we'll resolve any issues there before sending them out en masse. These surveys will ask you to reconfirm any add ons you had, give you a last change to add more, and ask for your addresses. You will still be able to change your address down the line, if needed. We'll give you a heads up before that locks.
That's about it from us for now. Keep an eye on those inboxes (and spam folders) this coming week so you can be sure not to miss anything.
This is not the first post-campaign update we wanted to make, but here we are.
It has come to our attention that an author we have contracted to publish has been suspected of using generative AI in their work. As is clear in our submission and publication guidelines, we do not allow for stories that have deployed generative AI in any part of their development.
This is never an easy challenge to face, but we are committed to ensuring that our backers’ money is going only to human-made work but also that we are not disqualifying human-made work without doing our own due diligence.
We firmly believe that an author-first approach requires publishers to make their own evaluation, case-by-case, based in human interactions and human judgement. Only then can we ourselves ensure that cultural differences, language barriers, and other elements that disproportionately affect marginalized writers are properly accounted for. Our goal with Common Bonds is to elevate aro stories and voices, and we simply can’t do that if we aren’t first considering how to best protect those who entrust their work to us. It would be a failure to our commitment to marginalized authors to not specifically acknowledge and account for the way fear around ai can incite witch hunts that disproportionally affect Black, neurodivergent, and Global South-based writers, especially.
We are already figuring out next steps and how to proceed, and we ask that our community gives us time to approach this with the care that is needed to ensure the least harm. Thanks so much for all your support, and we’ll return to you with a clear and transparent decision in the future.
Common Bonds Team
There will be news (more fun news) regarding the distribution of digital rewards soon, but we hope you understand that this as well as editing work for the anthology has taken priority. See you soon.
It's been a few hours since the clocked ticked down to zero (after several loops of 10-minute-overtime!) and I am still absorbing what happened the last 24-36 hours.
When this week started, BackerTracker, which estimates where your campaign will end, thought we'd be lucky to hit $14,000. Yet here we are, sitting pretty at $15,032 from 372 backers.
We received about 1000 in pledges in that last 12-13 hours alone. You all really showed up for us, pushing the campaign just over the first stretch goal of $15,000, allowing us to raise our contributors pay to 0.08 USD/words and $60 per poems. This is what every Common Bonds contributor has received, so we're thrilled to get there again!
Thank you all so much for this. You are split about 50-50 between people who have repeatedly supported our work and people who are new taking a chance on us, and in both cases, I am so grateful for the trust and excitement.
What comes next? Well, the team will give itself a little treat, first of all. Then we'll look at completing the editing on these beautiful stories and getting all the digital rewards sent to you. The latter is likely happening towards the end of July.
If you know someone who wanted a copy of any Common Bonds but didn't back in time, we have a small preorder shop open through BackerKit. If you get print copies of CB1 or CB2 here rather than through your local indie, it will be shipped alongside the third at the end of the year.
We intend to close this shop and charge for shipping when the anthology is ready to be printed and shipped. By then we will have its exact size and weight, and will be able to charge as accurate an amount as possible. Until then, we'll keep updating everyone on our progress!
We have funded a third anthology of aromantic stories! 300 of you have now raised C$12,078, whew!
You would think by now I would be getting used to this, that everybody's support would be a little less stunning, leave me less floored and better able to express my gratitude. But it really doesn't. If anything, the way everyone keeps showing up for more, keeps coming back to support these anthologies, is just all the more touching.
Common Bonds is a labour of love, my rallying cry to give aromantic stories -- and especially aromantic stories of platonic love -- the space to shine, to realize their fullness, to let their myriad possibilities and undeniable queerness come to life.
It is nothing short of miraculous, to build a queer anthology so devoid of romance and to gather C$12,000 for it, to pay our authors and cover artists what they deserve. I am often told that people want these stories, but the struggle is always the same: to find these readers when our stories are so de-emphasized and devalues. But we did it. We, because I couldn't have done this alone, even though this is a niche I know well. Your support over the last few weeks, whether through pledges or reposts, has given us the reach we needed. So thank you. Thank you for proving over and over that aromantic stories matter, that you love friendships and queerplatonic partners and mentors and family, found or forged or born into. Thank you for making sure we can pay everyone involved when existing as queer creatives is harder and harder.
And that last point? That's what comes next.
Because here's the deal: we still have 9 days. And here is our first stretch goal:
This is always the way we've built these campaigns: ensure a minimum of $0.06 USD/word, then shoot for our true heart's desire: $0.08 USD (and the corresponding poetry pay boost, of course).
And while it's always important to me that we reach this, I'm going to be level with everyone: when our authors submitted to the Common Bonds 2 call, we had achieved the $0.08 stretch goal. So I especially want to get it now, so we can pay Common Bonds 3 authors the same as both other anthologies.
Is it shooting for the moon? Maybe a little. Has that ever stopped me? As if.
We're already 80% of the way. Let's get this ball rolling and get the remaining 20, shall we?
We did it! We hit $10,000 in funds raised for Common Bonds 3. That puts us at ~83% funded. We are SO SO close to the actually funded mark!
And that, really, would be the entire update, but since I'm here, I thought I'd highlight the two bundles we have of books from other aromantic authors. These two babies:
Partly, I made little images that share what I loved about all of those 8 books! Since these lovely authors accepted to be a part of the campaign, I want to make sure you all get to see their amazing work <3 After all, it's never a bad time to celebrate queer books, but in the middle of Pride Month is the best of times.
From the first bundle, of authors that were in previous Common Bonds:
From our second bundle, of other aro indie authors:
All I can promise is that we made sure you'd get your money's worth with these bundles. These are great books, all very different from each other, and I hope you'll enjoy them if you grab the add on!
But regardless, thank you all for the support and hype. Now let's get to $12,000!
