Five Days to Go
Jess Smart Smiley is Kickstarting a 500 copy run of his cool short story comic “A Map in the Dirt.”
Both Jess and Patrick Farley are five days from their goal (as I write this) and well within striking distance of making it (and they both deserve to). Feel free to help them over the finish line if you like what you see.
I’m intrigued by the Kickstarter phenomenon which seems to be getting a bit more traction than I would have expected. Looks like the arts community is getting increasingly comfortable with this sort of thing.
Donations have been around for a long time of course, but they’ve had a spotty history (Joey Manley once famously said “begging is not a business model” and he had a point at the time). Maybe all we needed was a central clearinghouse to make it viable.
Giving is getting easier! I don’t know about you, but I’ve been really grateful to see things like text message donations and supermarket check-out donations popping up lately.
I give more now, not because my conscience has evolved or anything but just because I’m lazy, and I know I’m not alone. It’s a great trend.
[Edit to add: Both Jess and Patrick made their goals with 3 days to spare! Congratulations to both.]
March 3, 2021
Kickstarter is a great thing, I really love this concept and I would love to use it to start a print-version of my Union of Heroes photocomic, too. Unfortunately right now you can only start projects when you’re based in the US. I really hope that they will change this soon. It would be of great help for international artists of all kind, too.
That’s an important point. Thanks for the reminder.
Not to mention that I just started a kickstarter campaign to do a graphic novel memoir. This would be my first serious work. http://www.terminallifecomic.com
I think an important point is that Kickstarter isn’t just donations… It’s a mix of patronage and commerce, with people offering a range of rewards in exchange for their pledges. For many comics artists, it more closely resembles early pre-orders than donations.
And because it’s all-or-nothing, that alleviates some of the risk that comes from taking money from your fans. If you don’t hit the goal, nobody’s charged and you’re not on the hook for making books you now can’t afford.
Another good point. And the all-or-nothing quality definitely solves that problem of the old model.
It’s also a great chance to see the interest in a project before going forward an putting huge effort into a book that no one wants to read. A successful Kickstarter campaign, like that of Athena Voltaire- http://kck.st/bker7o , should inspire some confidence that fans want to read your book, and that extra motivation and confidence can make the work stronger.
I wonder how difficult it would be to fund a 500-issue run of an anthology using Kickstarter? “A Map In The Dirt” has me thinking “hmm” at the possibility.
To clarify, when I say Anthology, I mean in the same spirit as Arcade, Raw or Epic.
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