Ashkenazi Jews have been doing crowdfunding for books for hundreds of years. It's called Prenumeranten (פרענומעראנטען) and the standard backer's reward is the

Ashkenazi Jews have been doing crowdfunding for books for hundreds of years. It's called Prenumeranten (פרענומעראנטען) and the standard backer's reward is the backers' names published as a thank you in the book, sometimes mentioning their hometowns too. This link is temporarily offline, but has a ton more information once it's back up: http://www.jewishgen.org/Rabbinic/infofiles/prenumeranten.htm http://www.jewishgen.org/Rabbinic/infofiles/prenumeranten.ht... Prenumeranten are a very useful resource for genealogists.