kickstarter Archives - Being Me, Myself.

The Long Journey

By Ife J. Ibitayo

I still remember a conversation I had with a comic book creator I’ll call Leo. The quality of his detailed frescoes, his sharp dialogue, and his imaginative world building drew me to his booth at Los Angeles Comic Con. And as an aspiring comic book creator myself, I asked him what his experience had been like.

With weariness in his voice, described how tough the journey had been. Looking at the swath of popular indie comic book series he and his team had created over the course of a decade, I’d imagined that he of all people would be happy with the empire his hands had built. But he told me, “Sometimes, when I compare my journey to that of the friends I went to college with, I see their success, their families, and their money, and I wonder if I made the right choice.”

He spread his arms out to encompass his fellow comic book creators and said, “There are many people who come into this space, stick around for a year or two, then fizzle out. But those who’ve stuck around for 3, 5, or even 10 years, they’re the veterans. The only metric that matters here is time.” Yeah, that was not the most encouraging welcome I’ve received!

The Road not Taken

In the past year I’ve entered a new artistic community, founded a company, and created my first comic book. But I also quit my job, moved across the country, and took on student loans. In one of my first classes as an MBA student, I learned about a concept known as economic cost. Economic cost doesn’t just include the cost of choosing a particular choice. It also includes the cost of not choosing the alternative. And my alternative was pretty tempting.

I was an engineer working for a good company with a good salary surrounded by a good community living in a good city. The path forward may not have been easy (engineering rarely is), but it was relatively straightforward. The potential for management in my company, leadership in my church, and stability for my family all lay before me. But I sacrificed that to pursue my God-given dream.

And the key question that presents itself to me nearly every day is: Was it worth it?

A Fork in the Road

Jesus Himself told a story about this dilemma: “‘Which of you, wishing to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost to see if he has the resources to complete it? Otherwise, if he lays the foundation and is unable to finish the work, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, “This man could not finish what he started to build.”’” This very question has consumed my thoughts in recent days: “Will we be able to finish what we started?”

Conclusion

I’ve had to ask myself whether or not we would let this Kickstarter mark the end of our journey or its beginning. We are nearly finished with the first issue in our three-part series. But years lay ahead to finish the other two. The path to completion is muddled and many questions lie ahead. But I’ve counted the cost, and Lord-willing, I want to see this through to the end.

Let My People Ball Kickstarter September 7th — Let My People Ball Kickstarter Progress as of September 7th, 2023.

Our Kickstarter for the first issue of Let My People Ball is live from August 15th, 2023 to September 14th, 2023. If you’re as captured by the vision as we are, you can support us here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/let-my-people-ball-1/the-biballical-chronicles-let-my-people-ball-issue-1

The Long Middle

By Ife J. Ibitayo

A Kickstarter launch is like the start of a new relationship. The hot rush of anticipation and trepidation flooded my system as I embarked on this exciting adventure. Everyone I know and even some people I don’t took notice as we blasted off.

But like all glittery new things, my Kickstarter too has grown a little old. A couple weeks in, the initial adrenal rush of backers has puttered out; the money has dried up; and I’m left with a gap to fill both temporally and financially. When this moment arrived, I knew I’d hit the Long Middle of my campaign.

The Kickstarter Stages of Grief

To continue with the relationship metaphor, the Long Middle can be like a very painful, very visible breakup. The world watches as you flail about, trying to salvage the sinking ship of your grandiose ideals of instant fame and fortune. (Well, as much fame and fortune as 500 fans and $5,000 dollars can get you.) You’ll tailspin through the stages of grief:

Denial—“There’s no way this will fail. God won’t let this fail. I won’t let this fail. No matter what, we’ll find a way to make this work.”

Anger—“How could this be happening to me? I did everything right! I don’t deserve this!”

Bargaining—“If only I’d spent more time on this, tried a little harder, done a little more, we wouldn’t be here.”

Depression—“We’re never going to make it. It’s all over.”

I’m pretty sure I’d already hit all these major notes by Day 2.

While this might sound a little premature, I think that we all spend most of our lives navigating this nebulous gray region that is the Long Middle. Life is not so much full of beginnings and endings as it is middles. Our new job, new spouse, and new child will all eventually become just our job, spouse, and child. The newness will fade, and we will have to grapple with the choices we’ve made that led to where we are today.

When the new inevitably grows old, we have a very important question to answer, will we thrash or will we trust?

Thrashing vs. Trusting

I, for one, have spent a lot of time thrashing. I think to myself, if I send out one more post or release one more TikTok video or email one more influencer, maybe that’ll unlock the key to reaching our funding goal. Many of my friends have been quick to correct me saying, “That’s not thrashing, that’s hustling. You got to do what you’ve got to do.” But when my project makes me have trouble falling asleep at night, and I find myself contemplating it as soon as I wake up in the morning, and I feel guilty stepping away from my computer during the day, I don’t think there’s a meaningful distinction between the two. It’s far less about what I do and far more about how I feel.

Conversely, trust is not a cessation of activity, but finding peace in the midst of it. In the words of an Old Testament prophet, “Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit” (Jeremiah 17:7-8). Or to put it in the slightly more modern terms of the Philadelphia 76ers, “Trust the process.”

Conclusion

With less than two weeks left to go in our Kickstarter campaign, I’m still holding out hope that we can make our dream a reality. And I’m continuing to work toward that goal every day. But I’m trying to strive toward it from a place of faith over fear and by trusting rather than thrashing.

Let My People Ball Kickstarter Progress as of August 24th, 2023.

Start the Presses

By Ife J. Ibitayo

If raising money in this day and age is tough, getting attention is excruciating. Having blogged for years to my small but mighty band of subscribers, I’ve been tempted to conclude that I’ve been shouting into the void. Or, as the late great Samuel Coleridge put it, there’s “water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.”

Start the Articles

The art of getting attention is alchemical in nature, a mixture of science and magic that boggles the brain, frustrates all formulas, and defies duplication. I’ve learned this is the hard way in the comic book space. There are only so many outlets that cover indie comics, and even those that do have only so much reach. The comic-book equivalent of The Rolling Stones and Vogue is hard to identify, and if found, they’re not going to be talking about your indie Kickstarter.

The Pullbox Preview: Let My People Ball Prologue — Our very first press response!
Credit: The Pullbox

Start the Follows

The flip side of this is developing an organic following through the power of social media. I’ve heard so-called marketing gurus recommend, “Find your crowd and craft your message to match that audience.” But that guidance sniffs of the inauthentic. it feels like trying to snap off a piece of your soul and wrap it up in a pretty box so that other people will devour it. And with that kind of dubious outlook on Instagram and TikTok, you could imagine how that journey has gone for me.

But in the midst of this Kickstarter, I’ve had to remind myself why I leapt into the publishing industry in the first place: Because I love telling stories.

Don’t Stop the Stories

I was a Toy Story kid. I played with action figures and wind-up contraptions long after many of my classmates had grown out of them. I had narratives that needed to be expressed via mouthed sound effects and flying plastic playthings.

I scribbled down short stories, mixed together beats, and cobbled up dance videos long before that became vogue because I’ve always enjoyed sharing my creations with the world.

Conclusion

I have not figured out the best way to reach people yet. I might not go viral anytime soon or become the next overnight internet sensation. But I will continue striving to get my work out there. Because as much as I love creating art for myself and art “for art’s sake”, nothing quite compares to making other people feel deeply. And if I can have the privilege of making even one more person feel deeply, I will continue to wrestle with this inscrutable beast called the internet.

Our Kickstarter for the first issue of Let My People Ball is live from August 15th, 2023 to September 14th, 2023 and can be accessed here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/let-my-people-ball-1/the-biballical-chronicles-let-my-people-ball-issue-1

Kickstarting a Dream

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.

Kickstarter’s Well Known Logo.
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.