By Ife J. Ibitayo
Having found the illustrator I’d been so desperately searching for, I was back in action! I was setting milestones, approving drawings, and spending money—lots of it. As my bank account plunged toward zero, I knew my next order of business was finding a way to pay for this massive project I was undertaking. But few appealing options presented themselves.
The Road Not Taken
I could try to find a traditional publisher like Simon & Schuster. But the thought of trying to convince a literary agent to try to persuade a traditional publisher to potentially pay me a reasonable advance seemed both daunting and time consuming. Months would pass before I even had the opportunity to begin The Biballical Chronicles in earnest, and that’s assuming one of the few gatekeepers was willing to take a chance on a green comic book creator like me.
Or I could try to find a comic book publisher like Image. But that felt like a nightmare wrapped in a fool’s errand trapped inside a moonshot. Not only was it incredibly difficult, the number of horror stories I’d heard about comic book deals made my skin crawl. Somehow, I had to launch out on my own and find a way to convince people to pay me money to do so.
Source: Kickstarter; Credit: Kickstarter
Convincing a Skeptic
The premise of Kickstarter is brilliant in its simplicity. You create a project, set a time-bound monetary goal, and anyone with a credit card can fund you in exchange for cool rewards.
However, in practice, Kickstarter seemed to be a place where many naive creators had their dreams crushed and many gullible consumers had their money stolen. I’d never really viewed Kickstarter as a viable business model until I attended a panel on it at Los Angeles Comic Con. I heard Brittany Chapman-Holman (“Mother of Frankenstein”), Sean Persaud (“Shipwrecked Comedy”), and Anjali Bhimani (“I am Fun Size, and So Are YOU!”) describe their own Kickstarter experiences. They had raised tens of thousands of dollars, delivered rewards to hundreds of paying customers, and somehow lived to tell the tale.
After taking a copious amount of notes from these seasoned veterans, my three main takeaways were: First, there are nearly infinite ways to ruin a Kickstarter. From unreachable goals to unrealistic timelines, you didn’t need to look far to find a graveyard littered with the carcasses of Kickstarters gone awry.
Second, even when executed correctly, a successful Kickstarter requires a tremendous amount of work and forethought. Planning one of these was not for the faint of heart.
Third, despite the risk and toil, it can be a win-win for both the creator who’s raising the money and the community that pays for it.
Conclusion
That last point shattered my preconceived notions like a bat to a fine china collection. The knowledge that a dedicated, passionate creator like me could form an audience of passionate, paying followers renewed my hope that I could transform my dream into a reality. Now all I had to do was convince hundreds of people that I was making something worth buying.