Between the high fee and rude operator, it's not clear to me why people use this service.
See here.
The reason I'm looking into this is that I'm thinking of doing crowdfunding for a literary project, and rather than appealing to straight philanthropy
As others have pointed out, you certainly don't have any business on MPEx.
A lot of that expansion has, unfortunately, been crap.
The last time this happened it didn't end so well.