Has there ever been an instance of an officially crowd-funded translation of a novel? There's some novels like "From the New World" which are excellent novels and award winner, but never make it over here. They still fall into the "otaku" subculture but appeal to broader audiences, too.

As consumers, has some sort of crowd-funding or the like ever been attempted to get these materials translated? How can consumers express their desire to bring this material overseas?
As of now, yes! Some Visual Novels (these count as novels in my book) have been successfully crowd funded out here.  A few examples of that are mostly done by the Sekai Project.

For example, World End Economica was already funded and has been translated and released. The original KickStarter can be found here. Sekai Project is working on a few others, too. These include:


Clannad (already funded)
Grisaia
WAS
fault Milestone One


So, the answer is a resounding YES now! With Clannad on the horizon, we might see even more of these reach out into the English tongue.