|
Where stories begin.
Gilded Bard is coming to Kickstarter — July 2026 · Follow the campaign
Every other storytelling medium gets a world.
Writers get Goodreads?
Screw that.
Gilded Bard is already live. This campaign funds the writer-facing system that lets authors claim, build, and manage their own story pages.
Writers currently cobble together five or six tools just to exist online: Squarespace for the site, Mailchimp for the list, Linktree as a stopgap, Patreon for reader support, Shopify for merch, and Discord for community.
None of those tools were built for writers. They were built for influencers, gamers, and journalists. Borrowed by authors who had nothing else.
We didn’t become writers because we aspired to be influencers. We became writers because we had a story that just had to be told.
But you’re expected to do everything except write.
Most book infrastructure is built around everyone except the story itself. Author-centric: build your following, grow your list, become a personality. Retailer-centric: optimize metadata, reviews, keywords, conversion. Reader-community-centric: Goodreads, BookTok, reviews, reactions. Publisher-centric: catalog pages, campaigns, rights, sales channels.
But story-centric? Almost nobody is treating the individual book as the primary digital object with its own living architecture. That’s the category. The story is the home.
/ already live
Not concept art. Not mockups. Not a pitch deck.
Characters. Soundtrack. Trailers. Media. An excerpt you choose. Reviews you curate. Merch. Books. Discussions. Followers. Patrons. Everything in one place.
/ already live
Imagine a reader getting lost in your world and finding their way back to your book. That’s what this is.
Your book gets a home centered entirely around your story. Connect to a Bridge — your story’s world, built and owned entirely by you — and link to the worlds other writers are building.
What you do behind closed doors is your business.
You’re in control. Not Amazon choosing your excerpts. Not reader-based sites controlling your reviews.
You invite readers in on your terms.
/ the connection
Gilded Bard is the story home. Asugoh.com is the reading path.
Writers can use Gilded Bard by itself, or connect their book to Asugoh so readers can begin reading section by section, directly in the browser, no app or signup required.
Asugoh is an immediate distribution option — not a condition. Your rights remain yours. Sell your book however and wherever you want. But with Gilded Bard and Asugoh working together, your book meets the world the moment you’re ready.
/ proof
Gilded Bard is live at gildedbard.com. A reader can visit Dread right now and start reading immediately. The connection to Asugoh is functional. The pages exist.
The missing piece is access — letting writers claim their own pages, load their own work, and use Gilded Bard without having to build everything from scratch. That’s what this campaign unlocks.
/ the founder
I was traditionally published. A middle-grade novel I self-published was picked up by Bantam and expanded into a five-book series. Nearly half a million copies sold under a pen name.
Then I stepped away.
When I came back with adult fiction, the landscape had changed completely. You were no longer just a writer. You were expected to be a brand, a content engine, a marketer, a video creator, a trend-chaser, a newsletter operator, a launch strategist, and somehow still the person writing the damn book.
The advice was everywhere. I tried it.
Two launches. Two times doing everything except the thing that mattered most. Writing.
So I stopped asking why no one had built something better and started building it myself.
First Asugoh — a frictionless reading system where readers can discover stories one section at a time. Then Gilded Bard — a home for the story itself. Not a profile. Not a retailer page. A place that belongs to the book and the writer behind it.
Everything you see here came from that frustration. A writer left publishing, came back years later, looked around, and said:
Nope.
/ the community
Gilded Bard isn’t being built for writers. It’s being built with them.
Gilded Bard starts with the story page. The next question is how writers actually want to use that home: updates, support, reader connection, book-following, author-following, community, merch, distribution. That’s where founding backers like you become crucial.
The people who back this campaign become the founding community — the first voices in the room when decisions get made. Not as investors. Not as users. As writers who know what writers need.
/ the build
What exists now: the public Gilded Bard prototype, live book pages, story tabs, media pages, excerpts, shop links, and the connection to Asugoh.
What this campaign funds: the writer dashboard — the tool that lets any author claim a page, load their book, manage their story home, and connect to readers without hand-building anything.
The $30,000 funds three things. The writer dashboard: account creation, book claiming, onboarding, and the tools that put every writer in control of their own page. The Asugoh pipeline: the connection that makes optional distribution immediate the moment a writer is ready. The backer access layer: the account and delivery tools that make the dashboard stable, secure, and ready for backers on day one.
This isn’t just a backend build. It’s the tool that opens Gilded Bard to every writer who needs it.
Most Kickstarter campaigns promise a theoretical project. This one funds a specific tool — the writer dashboard — for an existing system.
Stage 1 deliverables
The house is built. This Kickstarter funds the doors, plumbing, and electricity.
/ support levels
You think writers deserve better. You’re helping fund the writer dashboard that opens Gilded Bard to writers everywhere.
You were here first. That matters. Your name lives permanently on the Gilded Bard founding members page — a record of the people who believed before anyone else did. You’ll receive our monthly progress newsletter and be first in line when the dashboard opens. This is for the people who just know.
Before the dashboard opens to the public, you claim your place in it. Your @handle. Your book URL. Yours — before anyone else gets near them. And when the writer dashboard ships, you’re first through the door. You’re not just backing this. You’re in it.
You want a head start, and you want to help shape what comes next. Beta access to every dashboard feature as it’s built — before it goes public. The first 100 backers at this tier receive a numbered Founding Architect seal permanently displayed on their Gilded Bard page.
You want a seat closer to the conversation. Join the Gilded Bard Designer Hub — a private group that meets quarterly with the founder to discuss progress, review upcoming features, and directly shape the dashboard. Your feedback goes to the founder before features are finalized. GB won’t be built by a committee, but writers’ suggestions will be taken seriously.
/ transparency
The biggest risk is simple. I’m a solo founder. Everything you’ve seen was built by one person. That means progress can be slower than a larger team.
The front end is live. The backend is not. This campaign funds that work.
Some features described on this page already exist. Others are planned and will be built after funding. I’ll be transparent about which is which.
Every backer receives regular progress updates. You’ll know what’s been completed, what’s in progress, and what’s changed.
I won’t promise impossible deadlines. I’d rather underpromise and overdeliver than the reverse.
What I can tell you is this: I’ve already built more than most people thought possible with less than most campaigns start with. That’s not a pitch. That’s just what happened.
Gilded Bard centralizes your story’s world, puts you in control of how it’s presented, and lets you invite readers in — on your terms.
Books have been forced to live on retailer pages, social feeds, and scattered author websites. Gilded Bard gives each story a real home, then connects that home to reading, discovery, media, bridges, and commerce. The prototype exists. This campaign funds the writer dashboard that lets authors claim pages, load books, and use Gilded Bard themselves.
Gilded Bard is where stories begin.
Principium.