Stacey Jay responds.

If you're behind on the whole situation.

From Stacey Jay's blog: 

Taking four months off from that could have delivered a SIGNIFICANT hit to my bottom line and indie career. It didn't make business sense--even with the Kickstarter--but it was what my heart wanted. I didn't want to stop writing YA. I love writing romance, but YA is my passion. I just feel so much for kids at that point in their lives and I treasure every email I get from a kid who says my books touch them in a way no one else's do. Because their emails touch me, too. I can feel so much hurt in so many of these readers. They are are hurting and my books help because they can sense that someone gets it.

Other thoughts on Stacey Jay and her Kickstarter:

At Marni Bates:

The Veronica Mars Movie.

It’s a remarkably similar situation, actually. You have a writer (Rob Thomas) who desperately wanted to share his story. Thousands of fans were dying to see it. But the fact that nobody in Hollywood thought it would be monetarily worthwhile made it necessary to take the project to the people. A good chunk of the money that was raised went to equipment and sound and lighting and all those other cool movie things that I don’t completely understand, but have to be there in order to have a quality finished project.

At reddit:

So, that money goes to people. People who will then use that money for… you guessed it: living expenses. So what, exactly, is the difference between paying an editor to edit and paying a writer to write? When an indie game developer Kickstarts their game, do people think that money isn't going to pay people to live while production takes place? If a corporation (say a publisher, maybe?) pays a writer for copy, that is called a production cost. So why should it be any different for an independent writer?

From Reading with a Vengeance:

Topping the list of hurtful comments were the “plenty of people write books without an advance; why can’t she?” and “if she really wanted to tell the story, she’d write for the love of writing” style comments.  I honestly cannot believe that bloggers, who should have a better knowledge of how the industry works than regular readers, would make such comments.  They come off as extremely classist and privileged, even if that was not the intention.  Not everyone can afford to write “just because they love it,” and a mother of two children who (near as I can tell) writes as her primary job cannot afford it even more.  Oh, yes, people brought up her status as a stay-at-home mom in this debate, and yes, that came with the implications of “she’s got enough money to afford to not work and stay at home.”

From Wise Ink:

Let’s break this down for a second.

Stacey estimates that her book will be about 400 pages, which is about 100,000 words, probably more.

That’s less than 10.5 cents a word.