I guess that's thing about the internet, there's always an audience for a work, no matter how good, bad, or weird it is, you just need to find them. I think it's mainly webcomic stuff being done which tends to already have a fanbase who will donate rather than trying to gather support soley from the kickstarter page.
Kickstarter is not a publisher. Kickstarter is a fundraising website.
However, it does serve as an alternative for independent creators. Any new publication is a gamble that the book sales will be enough to recoup the printing costs. With a traditional publishing deal, the publishers take the risk by paying for the printing costs themselves—but they also keep the majority of the money from book sales. Creators who don't want (or can't get) this sort of deal would have had to take the risk themselves—and since they usually don't have the deep pockets that large publishers have, they either have to start with a smaller print run (which generally costs more per book) or go into debt to pay printing costs.
Kickstarter provides another option: Gain fans before you start publishing, and talk them into paying the printing costs. (And offer them escalating levels of swag in return for escalating levels of financial support.) The author still needs to hire the actual printer themselves, but this way he doesn't need to go into debt doing so.
edited 9th Mar '12 12:39:14 PM by MetaFour

Learned of this through warrenellis.com; http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/book-news/comics/article/47545-is-kickstarter-the-3-u-s-indie-graphic-novel-publisher-.html
Which looks pretty cool. I'm happy for stuff like this to be happening. I don't think that this style of publishing is ever going to be real big, but on the other hand, I expect as time goes by you might not ever need to go to a publishing company to get a personal or indie book out. Of course, this method generally only does small runs, but I see it as a stepping stone. A new writer or artist can get themselves a foothold and develop a name from which they can get bigger publishing deals. And if you don't get those, well you and those who want a book get one anyway, no waiting for the wheel of fortune to turn your way.
(Of course to be true, Kickstarter isn't actually publishing the books, but it is the mechanism by which a bunch of books are getting money for publishing that they'd otherwise not get.)
edited 7th Jun '11 4:56:22 PM by Gvzbgul