Kickstarting Comics! Release Party For Gone Girl Comics #2

Lots of News...

...at Gone Girl Comics central this last month.

• The Gone Girl Comics Kickstarter campaign closed at 260% funded.  I promised to do a breakdown of my Kickstarter experience, which I'll do at the end of this post.
• So, Gone Girl Comics - Issue #2 will be hot off the press this week.
• I was unable to attend the Short Run comics festival, even though I had been accepted as a participant.  This was depressing as hell, BUT
• I will be debuting the comic THIS THURSDAY, December 4th, at Couth Buzzard Books in the Greenwood district of Seattle.

Gone Girl Comincs - Issue #2 Release Party

The event is actually a poetry reading, called What's The Word, where I'll be performing spoken word, talking about comics and selling books.  If you are in Seattle, come on by, it starts at 7:30.  If you write, bring something for the open mic as well.  I'll be doing a feature set at some point in the evening.

In addition to having Gone Girl Comics Issues #1 and #2, I have copies of Blood Root #3 available.  It features my 17-page adaptation of a Czech folk tale, Jezinkas, as well as works by artists from India, England and New York.

Funny story--both the new Gone Girl Comic and Blood Root #3 have crows and ravens on the covers!  Total coincidence, but it makes me happy.

You can find the full event details here.  I'd love to see you there!
 

The Anthology Game:  Outre Press #4 - Silence

This FRIDAY, December 5th, Norway-based Outre Press will be releasing their 4th issue, FREE online at http://outrepress.com/ .       This issue is based around the concept of "silence" and I was invited to contribute an illustration.  I will have a free postcard announcing the new issue of Outre at my performance on Thursday night.

Outre did a "Creator Spotlight" for me, as well, which was sweet.

I have some good news regarding anthology publication, but I'm going to wait and share it a little bit later.  Check back next week for a full update on The Anthology Game.  (You can read my original post about why I'm engaging anthologies as extensively as I am here.)

So About That Kickstarter...

 

I am incredibly grateful to the amazing group of people who backed the Gone Girl Comics #2 Kickstarter campaign!  I've added a "Thank You" page on my website here.

I feel incredibly lucky that my campaign actually exceeded goal.  My original goal was actually a little too close to the bone to do everything I wanted to do.  

I promised to spill all of my secrets about running the campaign, so here are my insights, having never done it before:

• It's work.  Setting up, running, and following up on the campaign is amazingly time consuming, and it ate up a lot of the energy I had intended for actually drawing!  Theoretically, I could have temped for a couple of weeks and made the same money.  But what I loved about it is it gave me an opportunity to reconnect with people from many of my networks, and raise awareness about my new direction: Comics.
• Listen to your friends who have done it before.  Mine told me to raise my goal and set the benefit of a personalized drawing at a slightly higher benefit level.  I should have done both.  About the drawing:  people natural give at $25, it seems, so the drawing would have been a better incentive at one level up...and I have A LOT of drawings to do now (which is great, I love it, I will be so warmed up for my next story!)
• Double-check that budget.  I would have LOST money on the campaign if I had placed the goal as low as I originally planned--due to the cost of mailing printed materials.  I double-checked my actual costs, but still kept my goal minimal, because if I failed....well, first it would just look bad.  And I wouldn't have been able to print anything at all.  
• Do a better video than I did.  My decision to run a campaign was based on a sudden need in a short timeline, and I taught myself iMovie in one day to create my video.  It's not Oscar-worthy.  Should I ever do a Kickstarter in the future, I will get a videographer and do it right.
  
• Communicate personally.  I was surprised that 15% of my funders were actually strangers who found my project through the Kickstarter website.  The rest of them were almost entirely people I sent personal messages to, inviting them to back the project.
• Don't freak out too early.  I tried really hard to NOT be annoying in how I communicated about my campaign.  I attempted to not just hammer social media to death, but post every now and then and send about 10 emails a day.  Half way through the campaign, I panicked and sent out about 140 emails.  It definitely spiked my donations, but I'm not sure the results would have been any different if I had kept it slow and steady.  I think I even lost some potential backers because they saw I hit my goal already, early.
• The 30% idea:  Several blogs I read say that if you hit 30% in the first half of your campaign, you're golden.  I don't know if it's true, but if you can line up for-sure backers to cover 30% on the front end, it can't hurt.

I have A LOT of people to thank.  I was even going to thank everyone who shared the video, but it's actually impossible to keep track.  I do want to give a shout out to inktart.org and The Comics Grinder for running articles on my campaign.  It was really an intense experience, and I'm excited that it resulted in printed books that people can hold in their hands and enjoy!

Thank you!  Until next time...

C-log posts on comics, publication and community that publishes on Tuesdays.

Kickstarting Comics! Gone Girl Comics #2 Takes Flight.

Cover Image for the Kickstarter video.
Come on over to the campaign site and check it out!

Last week, I started a new chapter in my creative life.  I launched a Kickstarter campaign for Gone Girl Comics #2.

It was something of a last-minute response to the theft of my portfolio that I wrote about earlier.  I planned to partially fund the printing of Gone Girl Comics in time for the Short Run comics festival here in Seattle with the sale of the artwork inside.  With that gone, and time ticking (Short run is November 15th!) I decided to bite the bullet and launch the campaign.

 

And so it began: Gone Girl Comics #2 and & The Lost Originals! 

It launched exactly one week ago, and - as of this morning- is funded at 60% !!

 

The internet is rife with articles on how to run a Kickstarter, and Kickstarter themselves offer excellent "How To" guides, but my super-secret weapon is the expert advise of fellow cartoonists who have run significantly larger Kickstarter campaigns and lived to tell the tale.

I promise to spill all my secrets about running a successful Kickstarter campaign.  If my campaign is a success.  I still have two more weeks - until October 27th @ 10 PM Pacific Standard - to find out. 

What I CAN tell you already is this:

For a once-upon-a-time Slam Poet
I  had a rough time with my
video voice - over.

• I simply didn't have time to get a videographer, so I taught myself Garage Band and iMovie and made my own video.  Should I ever crowd fund again, I will get some professional help.
• I set my goal realistically, but did a cost-benefit analysis.  Glad I did, or I would have LOST money on meeting my original goal due to the cost of mailing printed material!
•  I have been sending out personal emails and FB messages to folks every morning, asking them to support.  I'm keeping track of people who share my video as well as those who give.  Non-cash supporters will be thanked as well

I did do one unconventional thing, which is launch my Kickstarter and drop off the grid for three days - no phone, no internet access.  I was OK with it.  I figured, no need to make a pest of myself at the beginning of my campaign, and when I come back I'll see if the campaign has legs of it's own.

Happily, on my return it was nearly 50% funded, and so now I will be here, at my computer every morning for a designated amount of time.  Designated, because otherwise this will eat up my entire attention span, and I won't get any drawing done. 

The cover from Blood Root #3.
I have a 17-page story in this issue,
and am offering it as one of the benefits
in my Kickstarter campaign.

So come on over to the Gone Girl Comics #2 & The Lost Originals Kickstarter page.  With you're help I'll write about the successful campaign in two weeks.  And you know you want to have an awesome comic published with your name on it!

A Quick "Anthology Game" Update

 

Back in July I wrote about beginning my adventures in seeking publication credits, in a blog I titled "The Anthology Game."  At that time I had three comics accepted for publication in anthologies.  Now I'm up to 8 new projects and hope to have some stunningly good news on that front SOON.

Tune in next week and I'll give you the full story, including listing new calls for submissions that I am aware of as well as what I've learned moving forward so far.

C-log posts on comics, publication and community that publishes on Tuesdays.