The Kickstarter Thread

**50%grey** · 07-12-2012, 11:38 AM

Kickstarter is getting to be amazing both for the Indie artist as well as the established artist in getting upfront money to finish a project. Both Comic Books, Graphic Novels, Sketchbooks, and How to DVD's are all prime for a Kickstarter.

Lets pool our resources as a group, and make this thread a how to do a successful Kickstarter for people on this board as well our new people coming in.

1) How do you get your Kickstarter to become a Staff Pick?

2) Based on successful Kickstarters what is a good target number to ask for, and what should your pricing plan be?

3) How do you generate Buzz for your Project?

Just keep asking questions in this thread, as well as people trying to answer those questions, and I'll update the top post with the information.

**hadesillustrations** · 07-12-2012, 11:50 AM

This is a great idea! I need to pay an inker, colorist, and letterer at some point if I want any of my comic projects to truly happen. I was gauging much of a Kickstarter goal on what it would cost to pay professionals to handle those tasks. I figure an inker is going to need $60-90 per page over pencils as complex as my own and a colorist would likely be around $50 per page. Not sure about a letterer - maybe $10-20 per page? That's an average $140 per page that I'd be looking for as production cost. On a four issue limited series with a slightly oversized first issue (26 pages), that's 92 pages, running $12,880, plus four covers, likely running the same amount, for a total $13,440, unless I get covers done by another artist - that could drive the cost up dramatically.

Anyway, the figure for just creating a four issue limited, with decent quality indy talent is around $13-14,000, according to my calculations. I've seen Kickstarters hit these numbers without too much of a problem. I'm curious about the strategies used to attain these goals!

Note that none of this cost even takes paying myself into account, which should actually be added in, especially since cranking out full issues is a full time job, so other paying work would wind up getting put off. Something else to think about...

**SHAMWOW!** · 07-12-2012, 12:32 PM

you should make it /indie gogo too for people outside of the USA

**50%grey** · 07-12-2012, 12:39 PM

I have someone on my facebook that launched a successful funding for his small press book.

I'm going to ask if he will stop by ,and relate some of his experiences since he is on issue 3 now.

**Carl_Shinyama** · 07-12-2012, 01:00 PM

Hades, you'll need to factor in the amount that Kickstarter takes if you meet your goal and the costs involved in providing incentives

**Senji** · 07-12-2012, 01:34 PM

This is a fantastic idea

I plan to use Kickstarter too for my own project too but its still a long way before my first issue comes to fruition. Either way I'm sure there is much to learn about launching a successful Kickstarter Campaign and plenty of inspiration to draw from.

**weirdozhead** · 07-12-2012, 02:14 PM

1. Build a ravenous fan base

2. Make a cool/slick video explaining your case

these two points seem pretty common among the top earners, everything else you can bs imo (somebody's actually raising $250k to animate 30 minutes of stick figures, and they're almost at their goal)

**Inkthinker** · 07-12-2012, 02:40 PM

From what I can tell, the best solution is to have a finished (or near-finished) product ready to go. Unless you're an established, well-known creator that people feel they can count on to produce, they're going to be more comfortable with the feeling that they're effectively getting an exclusive pre-order of the book rather than paying for something to be made a year or so from now.

I reckon Kickstarter is most effective (for comics creators) as a way of recouping an investment, not as a way of creating the initial stake.