Since launching in 2009, Kickstarter has seen $70m pledged to projects in the site's publishing category.
The term became a standard publishing category in the 1980s, distinct from the long-standing genres of mystery and crime literature.
It is both a trophy and a lifestyle, not to mention the engine behind a thriving publishing category: the renovation memoir.
The publishing category generated some $1.3 billion in retail sales last year, a tiny portion compared with huge categories like the $17.9 billion business of corporate branding, or the $15.9 billion in licensed retail sales from the entertainment industry, according to The Licensing Letter.
Esquire, the dominant magazine journalism title of the 1960s, had began to ail in the 1970s, in part because the men's publishing category had become so over-crowded.
Today in 2012, the publishing category is once again, all of a sudden, crazy competitive.
The acquisition allows Purch to move into a new publishing category, and also provides the foundation for a broader customer loyalty program.
That's when the popular "chick lit" publishing category took off with the success of Penguin Putnam's Bridget Jones's Diary, a bestseller about a single gal and her dating woes.
