Crowdfunding Success: How to Fund Comic Books and Graphic Novels

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You might choose to go the other way. Each journal entry will contain:. After working on the Patreon Page for about a month, on pushed the launch button on a Friday afternoon. My page had everything I wanted for launch, except a video, but I decided not to delay the launch to create a good video.

I launched it early so that I could test the page and make sure things were working prior to promoting it.

ComixLaunch

Patreon Which is Right for You? Rather, I spent Saturday composing a few emails to my email list, and scheduling those in ConvertKit, which is the email marketing service provider I use and recommend. Not surprised that there were no new Patrons today, as I did 0 external promotion. The ComixLaunch podcast goes live on Sundays. I decided to make Club ComixLaunch on Patreon the sponsor of this episode of the podcast, with a call to action for creators to check out the Club. Of course, as this Tweet by Michael Perlman reminded me, most of my listeners listen to the podcast on their schedules, not mine.

Still, I was excited to finally be getting a little more active about promoting it Monday.

Okay, Monday… this is the usual day I start promoting crowdfunding campaigns when running Kickstarters, so it felt good to be promoting the Patreon for real. The goal for today was simply to let the ComixLaunch subscribers know Club ComixLaunch was open for business. If you are [podcasting, blogging, YouTubing, webcomicing, arting, writing, etc. He became a Patron right after we ended our Skype call. Anthony has a great Patreon page himself. Today was spent primarily working on the podcast, specifically Patreon Launch 2. Boston Comic Con being around the corner and me being woefully unprepared for that Con has sucked up a ton of time that would otherwise be going toward the Patreon Launch.

I simply committed to doing at least one thing very day to keep it moving, and I have been able to stick to it. I was hoping the bonus invite episode would be short and tight… minutes, but it ended up running over I like doing bonus episodes of the podcast for special occassions and to make direct pitches to the audience, but keeping those separate from the value packed regular Sunday episodes. I decided to keep it in draft form until I had a solid 7 days of Actions and results to share.

It will be difficult to promote the Patreon at Boston Comic Con, but I expect to promote the podcast and hopefully talk to some listeners, which may help. First day with no new Patrons after starting to promote. With a convention the next three days, expecting to hit a bit of a wall. Going to focus on. Just time to post a quick update to Facebook and send a schedule a quick email letting people on my Patreon interest list know about this article series, as they might find it helpful. Day 2 of Boston Comic Con. Did get to talk to a number of ComixLaunch listeners in person, which is very cool.

Day one was murder. Day 2 a little cooler, but by mid-afternoon, the AC was not doing its job. Final day of Boston Comic Con. No movement at all on the Patreon side of things in terms of Patrons. Too exhausted from the con to fret much about that today, though. Patreon taking a bit of a back seat.

Knock on wood, ComixLaunch will be here a year from now and five years from now.

Do that and the rest will sort itself out. But you know what? Truth is, for the past several of days, Patreon growth has not been top priority… con prep pre, during, and post has been. So, I decided to post my first public post on Patreon, containing some raw thoughts and takeaways related to my recent Boston Comic Con experience. Joe Mulvey who I tabled with at the show, I did not get a case of con flu this year. I sat down to update this very journal first thing in the morning after completing a morning workout and brewing a fresh cup of french press coffee only to find the ComixLaunch website completely down!

Though I have very little coding expertise, I was able to change a single line of code in an obscure file on my site, hit refresh and pray… and what do you know, it worked! Site back up and running, me feeling like Mr. Decided to review the Patreon Survey results for more topics and insights. Also realized that it would be worthwhile to let all the creators who asked about the difference between Patreon and Kickstarter know that the Patreon Launch 1 Session of ComixLaunch tackled that question.

Bought a car today. Hey, in super cool news, Searnold, a comic book writer, has decided to take me up on the 30 Day Patreon Launch journal challenge and has started sharing his progress publicly here. He also because a Patron of Club ComixLaunch. Thrilled to have another creator joining me in the 30 Day Challenge. You never know when you throw a challenge out there if anyone will accept… but happy to have Searnold joining me in the experiment. Do at least one thing. And do it every day.

No movement in Patrons, but I set up a couple of great guests for upcoming ComixLaunch interviews. I think it works out great that way. A big principle behind this launch journal is that if you want to capture value get more Patrons you need to create more value. This was an effort to have a bit of the best of both worlds… not put my content behind the Patreon paywall, but require some buy in attending the live stream in order to access it.

Excited to be talking about productivity and putting it together into a valuable live workshop format. This was workshop idea to filling up the workshop and executing it in record time. It should create a great Club ComixLaunch resource. The technology platform I was using, Webinar Ninja, absolutely crapped the bed. Instead of my normal speaking voice coming through, every heard me talking like Alvin from the Chipmunks! Despite testing it out and having it work fine a few days earler I was completely bummed that a tech issue spoiled what was going to be a rocking presentation on that platform….

You can watch the workshop there. Because of connectivity issues there, there is a Part 1 and a Part 2. I say it a lot on the podcast… that you need to stand up tall, plant your feet, but always keep your knees bent so you can pivot when needed. Calling the audible to move to Facebook Live definitely helped me salvage a trainwreck of a technology issue. Hitting the road for a long vacation today! It just barely covers a single podcast episode each month. And if Patreon was the only source of revenue for ComixLaunch , the business model would need some serious work.

Second day of vacation. Got to hangout poolside with my dad, who is loving retirement. Another spotty internet and light promotion day. At the same time, sometimes I feel like this guy:. Here we are, 30 days from launch, and I hit the modest launch goal established for the Patreon Launch. That said, actually staying focused on that new thing will result in some surprising discoveries and ideas along the way.

Likely that would not have happened had I not been focused on how to deliver value for present and future Patrons during this launch month. TheDerikJohnson September 1, Not surprising, but email really is the best way to get people to back you on Patreon. That spike of 10 Patrons on Day 4 was triggered by sending an email invitation to the small ComixLaunch list. Click Here to Find out more about ListLaunch and sign-up! This one, is decidedly not that. Then I would love to include a link to your Journal on this article and highlight your progress on an upcoming episode of the ComixLaunch podcast.

You first came to Kickstarter with your Antler Boy project. How did your decision to first use Kickstarter come about? My agent went out with a proposal for the book to various publishers, and everyone passed on it. So after diving right in, first with Antler Boy and then with the Drawings sketchbook that you kickstarted a year after, did you make any mistakes that helped you with the SkyHeart Kickstarter?

What was the learning curve like? The biggest mistake I made on the Antler Boy kickstarter was undercharging for shipping. I also learned to pack the books in solid and safe packaging. While most of my antler boy books made it safely to their destination, there were too many that got damaged in transit and I had to replace them. I also learned that everything I offer through the Kickstarter needs to fit in one box, to avoid the cost of shipping things in separate packages. I fixed all of these mistakes in the second kickstarter and things went much more smoothly. I also had much lower overhead in the second Kickstarter even though the Kickstarter made less than the first one.

That seems like it would complicate things a lot, especially for an independent title. What was behind that decision? To put it simply: For essentially the same content I can charge double for just changing the material o. Kickstarter is about raising money for your project, in return you offer some sort of value. The hard cover option allows me to offer something a little nicer at a premium that gets me closer to achieving my goal without costing me the one asset I have a firm limitation on: My packing team just puts a hardcover in the box instead of a softcover.

That is pretty simple. For a lot of creators, fulfillment can be very intimidating. Can you explain a bit about your packing team and how you tend to employ that help? In the past my wife has called in favors and she and her friends or family would pack books. Recently a handful of art students from the university in town volunteered to help out. For 3 hours we packed up books from my recent pre-order event. You save a lot of time. They get pizza, or some advice on their projects depending. You also did something some creators might find controversial — which is including the cost of production within the goal of your Kickstarter.

Why was that important to do and did you have any qualms about budgeting for this? So why when you go to crowd funding is it taboo to ask for the funding needed to pay for the production? Outside of the work needed to make a proof of concept or a pitch the actually production of the book needs some kind of funding.

Discover » Comics / Graphic Novels — Kickstarter

This is the same for any kind of tech product, video game, or film, why not comics? So for me it was important to educate people on where all the money goes. Kickstarter numbers can be deceiving, both in the amounts asked ,and the amount the project funds at. Why do you think SkyHeart reached the six-figure level of success it did? And I think it came off looking like something legit. Do you have any advice for people looking to replicate that kind of success for themselves? Specifically, turning Kickstarter into a renewable resource for yourself.

Do you have any additional advice for creators looking to build Kickstarter into a sustainable platform, specifically, and build an enduring relationship with their audience? In the beginning Kickstarter was new and shiny and the possibilities were endless. People surfed Kickstarter regularly looking for projects to back, and a lot of projects benefitted from that. But nowadays the comics community has seen some projects take years to deliver, the hype surrounding projects has died down a little, and I think of that is starting to reflect in overall backing numbers on projects.

I think it would be naive to say that Kickstarter is invulnerable. Build your brand and then drive them to whatever sales platform you can use to make money from. I sold books in a month for Drawings 2 and matched that in 2 weeks for Drawings 3. Well, we should definitely have you back to talk about that experiment in the future. Thank you for taking the time to chat, Jake. If people want to see more of my work they can follow me on instagram: If people like hearing me talk about stuff like this, they can subscribe to my youtube channel: And of course the hub for everything I do is http: I think the qualities Jake exemplifies — both in patience and not shying away from the hard, often tedious, work of building an audience are to be admired and for us to strive to replicate.

You can find them here:. You first came to Kickstarter with a comic called Artifice. How did the decision to use the Kickstarter platform come about? So with Artifice , basically what happened was that it had been going for about a year and it was sort of an experiment on my part to find out whether I liked working with webcomics — and part of the thing I did was make sure that it was short enough that I knew I could finish, because a lot of webcomics fail.

A lot of webcomics stall and fail. I particularly appreciated her video. With my background as a video editor, I could see she did a really good job. I tried releasing some of my comics using print on demand and was really disillusioned by that for lots of reasons, so I figured after seeing her success I was inspired and I figured you know I bet with my video knowledge of this I could come with a free good video and I think I can do pretty okay with it. So knowing that you could handle that part must have been reassuring. You know, I think it is intimidating to a lot of people, I mean frankly it was intimidating to me, in some ways because I knew exactly what to do so I had these high standards, and it did make it feel a little more daunting to me than it had to be.

You want your video to be entertaining, you want it to move along, you want to have some humor. It just makes so much sense. Well, one of the mistakes that I made with the Artifice campaign, I mean one of the things they talk about is they talk about shipping being the silent killer of Kickstarter and crowdfunding, and I grossly underestimated how much it would cost to pay for international shipping. So, there was that. There was also not allowing accounting for the fact that because I was going to be shipping after January, the post office also nearly doubled all the shipping costs.

So I got screwed by the shipping. I noticed that with the Young Protectors campaign you had separate tiers for your Canadian backers, did you do that specifically because of that same shipping reason, or why was that exactly?

LESSON #1: FORGET VIRAL. YOU NEED A GROUND GAME.

Was it related to what you learned during your Trial by Fire with Artifice. It had been, but mostly it was a desperation device. Kickstarter had been making improvements to their interface, but at a glacial pace and so when I had done the Young Protector Kickstarter they were smart enough to allow you to have different shipping rates between international and domestic backers.

So my workaround was to create this separate Canadian tier. Look at what other people are doing successfully and shamelessly steal from that. And do you have a way to be in touch with them on a consistent basis? And that should, ideally, be in the thousands. And the other factor is having updates — some way that you can contact people. An email list is the most effective way to reach out to your backers and to convert, but that seems to be a surprise for people. Especially when you have a webcomic that updates twice a week, which is basically a treat for people, and they get to see the new page and they look underneath it and the get to hear about this campaign.

Have you read — I think his name is Robert Cialdini — his book called Influence? You know I think his work is really ,really useful. A web comic is almost the ideal thing to Kickstart because people get to enjoy the whole thing for free to decide if they like it or not and then to become fans and to become into it but if they want something special, they want to get the artifact, if they want to get the book which actually has a premium value.

You want to set audiences is in place and once you have a way to directly contact them and be in communication with them throughout the campaign, then I did a few different things. The biggest thing that I did that I think was most useful was coming up with a multiple stretch goals that were all within easy reach. For Artifice you know I asked for 7, I got 36,, how much did I wind up spending? Probably about 38 or 39, but none of that Kickstarter money wound up in my pocket right, but what did end up in my pocket I was able to do the economy of scale which is what Kickstarter really allows you to do.

How important do you think it is for a creator of a book to have this kind of niche appeal regardless of what niche it is?

I think a lot of people would look at that and say probably not. That makes a lot of sense to me. Contextualizing that — given your own background growing up gay without seeing yourself represented in the heroes from your favorite genre stories, you had something real behind that aspect of your story. Well, you know, I think authenticity is certainly important because crowdfunding is based on trust.

I never miss an update, delivered twice a week on time every time and interacted a lot in the comments. Likability is another factor that you know likability and then similarity. These are the factors that Cialdini talks about in his book. All that said, you know there advantages to appealing to a niche in addition to doing good work. And being an independent creator you have very limited amount of those things so I can understand the appeal of appealing to a niche. Bringing the conversation back to a positive place rather than exploring the cynical angle that I wanted to discuss….

I mean to answer your question from before about how did things get explosive.

The second part of that is I made it interactive, so I had a survey monkey account and people got to vote on which character would appear in that trading card. What it did is it set up a situation where people got used to hitting a stretch goal every single day. Part of my goal in this campaign or even with Artifice versus a lot of other campaigns is that a lot of campaigns stagnate in the middle, and I was able to avoid that in Artifice with my stretch goals. And I really wanted to avoid that completely in the Young Protectors, so I was able to create this very linear line between the first three days and the last three days.

There were other things I had in there. And I was listening to my readers. For example, somebody said they wanted sticker sheets. Listening to the readers is important and then also, like I said, making it interactive so people can get excited about it and eep coming back to the Kickstarter campaign.

So basically everyday there was a new vote. But for this particular Kickstarter campaign I said okay, if we hit this higher level of stretch goals I will create some full Monty art. And I had that sense of humor about it too. So those are all the things that kind of then snow balled into you know going from 14, to , But over the past four five months, people have gotten pretty impatient. Here are links to the past installments of the Six-Figure Kickstarter interview series if you want to check them out.

If you want to check out his campaign — you can find it here: You started your webcomic in , making it one of the most long-lasting online. To get us started, I was wondering if you could comment on what the webcomic landscape was like back then? I had just started college, and was taking some basic courses, but was really looking to round out my art portfolio.

The more votes you got, the higher up the list you went, and that was both how I found a lot of other comics at the time, and received a lot of exposure for mine. Still, the idea of doing it for a living back then was still very new and sort of mythological, even. I can count on one hand the number of comics that I believe were doing it full-time back then. With so many years behind you, why come to Kickstarter only in and not before?

It was only in that I had come up with a project with a funding goal so massive that I needed to turn to crowdfunding. If not, we all get to simply walk away. Ultimately it was about making use of the infrastructure that Kickstarter already had in place for managing something this big. Firstly, the product itself. Can you explain about how you came to the idea of book box-set you eventually turned to Kickstarter to fund? Well, previously I had been releasing smaller books, collecting roughly comics each. To put that in perspective, it would take another 8 of those smaller volumes just to reach the end of my primary storyline in So I started thinking about the logistics of just publishing the first decade into one gigantic set, similar to the Calvin and Hobbes and Far Side collections that I own.

That ties you for second-largest successfully-funded comic Kickstarter goal with the Fantagraphics Kickstarter. The books were designed and ready to go to print the instant I had the funds to pay for them. But problems can and will happen, so with a campaign so large, and so many thousands of dollars at stake, there was definitely a lot of stress involved.

Did I do my math correctly? Is there something I missed?

Comics Crowdfunding: Making the Case for Indiegogo

What happens if the printer takes my money and sends me garbage? In some ways, I was putting my livelihood on the line with this Kickstarter campaign, because if it failed, if I mishandled it somehow, I would lose the trust of so many of my readers. So I definitely had some very natural concerns, but I also felt fairly confident that nothing I was attempting was beyond my ability to manage.

So I just triple checked everything, did my research, and dove in. Can you explain how that helped you handle a project of this size? Well, as I mentioned before, the fact that pledges were handled transparently and that nobody was tangled up in an actual transaction until the funding goal was officially reached was a big help. But beyond that, having a built-in platform to reach all of the backers via posts and emails was key.

Had I simply taken pre-orders via PayPal, my only option would have been to make posts on my website about progress, and then hope that everyone read them… which quite frankly is a pipe dream. Do you have any tips on how creators — at all levels of Kickstarter — can make better use of the resources available to them?

Well, one of my first tips would be to avail yourself of the fantastic write-ups over at Stonemaier Games http: And there was a lot of valuable resources there that taught me a lot, like different methods to handle fulfillment, etc. They produce boardgames, but a lot of what they have to say about running a Kickstarter can be applied to most projects.

That might be a partnership with a fulfillment house such as Ideaspatcher, or a system like Backerkit to manage it yourself, or a mixture of both. But most of those systems let you sign up for a free trial to play around with the tools they have available, or they have customer service available to answer questions and walk you through how things would work. But either way, do the research beforehand.

Recognize that closing out a successful Kickstarter campaign is only the beginning of the job, and Kickstarter alone may not be able to see you all the way through to the finish line. Be aware of the options you have, and the associated fees with those options, before you launch your campaign. Was there any specific reason you think your project was so successful?

Of course, some of it owes to the Kickstarter exclusive bonuses I offered, and some to the limited nature of the product. This big box set was not really something I set out to print with the goal of just having tons of boxes sitting around so it could be in stock for years to come. Do you have any advice for creators looking to achieve the same six-figure level of success you have?

Ahh, the million dollar question. That readership was my target demographic for this project, and they were built-in already. But coming in, out of the blue with something brand new that nobody is emotionally invested in yet, and trying to encourage them to put money behind it? I know for a fact that backers will prefer to hear bad news about a delay or setback than hearing no news at all.

There are more on the way, to keep lending you insight from these top Kickstarter creators. In talking with Tim, I really like his commentary on just putting in the work. Years of hard work and consistent publishing really paid off for him. If you want to check out their campaign you can find it here — https: How did Steve Lichman — and the decision to bring him to Kickstarter — come about?

Steve was basically just a joke that we started when we were both doing a lot of tabletop fantasy freelance. Yea, we started the comic based around this job Dan was doing where he had to paint this Lich, and we just went off on a tangent about how Liches must lead the most boring horrible lives.

They basically are waiting there to be killed. So, we started out doing a tumblr comic and it took off. After that we followed it up with a few more issues and decided to post it up to imgur. We ended up getting around k views on the first 9 issues and everyone said they wanted a full book. So, we dove into fleshing it all out and decided that Kickstarter would be great for a little preorder platform. Yeah, basically we never intended for Steve to be a thing, we just did one and people liked it so we did another then another. The internet response kinda made it what it is and led to us doing the book.

People have been really awesome and supportive about the whole thing since it started. Well, the whole point of the Kickstarter was to give fans of Steve who helped make the project what it is, something special directly from us. The recommended price based on Kickstarter books that are hardcover and of a similar length was 35 dollars up to 60 dollars.

So we decided to make less money on the book and get the number down to 20 so that as many people who were fans of it could get it without paying a ton. I think it comes down to 3 main things.

The first is a hugely supportive network of fans, like you mentioned, that have been following, sharing, and helping us promote Steve for over a year now. Second is the fact that we decided to put out 60 pages of the book for free for anyone to read- including all the issues that were already on the internet plus a handful more.

The reason we did this is sort of what leads into reason 3. Most Kickstarters follow the traditional Kickstarter model of creators having an idea, but no capital to make it, so then backers assume the financial risk and hope the creator delivers on their idea with their money. We wanted to flip that and assume all the risk ourselves — meaning that we would complete the book, on our own — at at our own expense — first, then launch a Kickstarter for the printing of a product that was already made.

Right, Tyler and I talk a lot about the idea of putting some skin in the game with your Kickstarter and you guys definitely took that to the fullest. Yea, even having everything done, people still assume because of the bad reputation of Kickstarter projects falling apart, that ours would be a gamble. Which is too bad, we hope that this success and quick turn around of the book will give us more credibility when we move into the following books. We want to assume as much responsibility as possible, and just use the platform as a pre-order service to gauge demand.

I try to answer all questions the second I see them on the comments and messages. From the get go we wanted to be as transparent and open about the entire thing as possible, so we try to immediately help with anything we can when a question or problem pops up. We spend a fair amount of time responding to every imgur comment, reddit, Twitter, and emails. We just wanted to show that we really do appreciate all the feedback and comments.

Just from personal experience backing other projects, it always stands out when people treat their thing like a community and let themselves be available to the fans backing it for conversation and communication. They ran their Shovel Knight Campaign https: Basically there are two reasons. The first is that the majority of Kickstarter campaigns that fail or under-deliver do so due to over-promising.

What we do make will go directly into finishing the next Steve book, and the one after that. But stretch goals are very risky, and usually cause projects more harm than good. It seems that with a lot of Kickstarters they tend to over-promise and end up setting the project back as a whole. We streamlined our entire approach so that we could make sure that everyone would have their book next year.

We would have had to bump the price up per book to make the stretch goals possible. Our goal is to get a quality thing people want to them cheaply and quickly. Stretch goals seriously inhibit both of those aims. Yes, for both of us. Yea exactly, I learned a lot about the risks of running this kind of thing from them. Honestly for the next one most of what we did this time will be the same. We want to keep it streamlined and focused so it can be cheap and efficient for backers.

The big things that would change would only be tier rewards, cool one off things. This time we did a lunchbox with some special surprises inside, next time we could do a bunch of other stuff. We never want to repeat anything so that each Kickstarter feels unique and one of a kind. With that in mind, do you have any advice for creators looking to achieve the same six-figure level of success you guys have on Kickstarter? The best advice we could give anyone is to finish a lot of your project on your own, and to be completely transparent about it.

Showing people a lot of what you intend to do and having it done for them as a proof of concept helps with the confidence in a project. And treating the backers like people who are helping you, and not as customers is also huge. Be respectful and answer any questions anyone has — it should always be a level discussion. It helps a ton to be involved in whatever community supports you already. Some projects need more and some need less, so the end number is always relative to what the creator needs. Which is kind of the point of crowdfunding, really.

The original idea when Kickstarter began was to get artists the money they needed to make their project real. Get money for studio time to record that album. Rent some equipment to make that film.

That cost screws things up for a lot of people. Naturally, this is going to mean less copies selling in the comic shops. Kickstarter is a direct-to-consumer business model. After the crowdfunding is over, you want to have a commercial release. One way that creators go about addressing the commercial release is to get a publisher. Hopefully, you get a few re-orders and you keep your catalog in print so you can see the benefits of a backlist. The other way is to print up a supply of comics to sell on your own. Particularly in the webcomics world.

Yes, that would be the creator acting and planning like a publisher. Webcomics typically sell their print editions on their own website.

LESSON #2: HAVE A SMALL SET OF SPECIFIC REWARDS (Or: K.I.S.S.)

You can get an account and sell them on Amazon directly. This is the hardest part for comics. Selling digital copies, well… you should know the answer to that by now. Is there a sustainable model to crowdfunding? Did you have 1, people pledge your last project? Then you go out and try and find 1, more. Now, not everyone is going to buy every project you run. If you botch a project or are spectacularly late with one, good luck getting very many your previous pledgers to return. But assuming the customer is happy with what you made, you are building up your own personal sales list and it should grow a little with each successive project.

There is no such thing as stress-free crowdfunding. Are you going to double your pledge count with each project? It can help you raise more money AND it can get newcomers caught up on the series. At are minimum, have the digital editions available if things are out of print. You can and should reach new people with each crowdfunding campaign and not everybody wants to jump into the middle of the story. Is anybody really doing sustained comics business on Kickstarter? Gordon McAlpin recently funded the third collection of his Multiplex webcomic: Then here are 8 projects from Jimmy Palmiotti, the mayor of comics:

• Australia:Life in the Out Back
• What Life Is and What Life Is For
• Shadow In The Sun
• Redesigning the Planet: Global Ecological Design
• Stolen Minds (Beyond Now Book 1)