How to run a comics Kickstarter: a guide you probably shouldn’t totally follow but should maybe consider?

My friend Rob Crean teaches stand-up comedy. I’m going to get the wording wrong, but he’s often asked by students, “how do you make it in comedy.” His answer is something like “if you want to be successful in comedy, the best thing you can do is be born rich. I cannot overstate the importance of this.”

This is, I think, sound advice for any creative endeavors that we hope to parlay into what we “do.” Most Wikipedia deep-dives reveal to you that this or that actor or director or writer knew this or that person, went to this or that private school, is inexplicably related to a professional baseball pitcher, etc. Money buys a lot of access. It’s not the only thing, but it is a thing. 

So what do we, the people who were not born wildly rich, do when we want to make something we can’t afford to make? We beg our friends and family for money. This has never been easier than with the rise of crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter. 

A few months ago, I ran a successful Kickstarter for a horror comic I wrote called Nightmare Man (which you can still get on Gumroad and Comixology). I had never run a crowdfunding campaign before, and I had never published a comic book before. I wasn’t even completely sure I knew that many people who read comics anymore. 

In the months leading up to the campaign, I’d partnered with some talented artists to make some short comics and shared them online for free. They’d been well received, and I was surprised to see people I hadn’t talked to in 20 or 30 years (I’m 38), but who I was connected with from the earliest days of social media and had since barely interacted with were throwing some likes my way. But that was free, short comics inserted directly into their feeds. Creating a physical product is a different ballgame, and so is getting people to pay for it. 

I reached out to people I knew who had run Kickstarters for other stuff. I asked total strangers on the internet what they suggested. I read Kickstarter campaigns to figure out which ones appealed to me (and backed a few things in the process). I also tried some things that I thought would be good ideas, and had a ton of help along the way from the indie comics community and from friends and family far and wide. The following is a braindump of what I learned. Not all of it will be applicable. Not all of it will work the same way for you. Hopefully, some of it will be useful for other comics creators prepping for their first (or second or tenth campaigns). 

Setting Things Up

Setting your Kickstarter up is a daunting task. I recommend strongly that you go through Kickstarter’s platform and document all the things that you need. The most notable things you are going to need are the following: 

  • Art that shows some of what you’re doing

  • Copy that explains what you’re doing

  • Reward Tiers to let people know what they can get

  • How much you’re trying to raise

  • Promo video and tier graphics (technically optional)

Art: Going through these in order, I cannot stress enough that if you are going to run a comic book Kickstarter, YOU NEED TO SHOW PEOPLE WHAT YOU’RE KICKSTARTING. This means working with the artist, if that person is not you, to do a cover (or at least a mock-up of a cover), some character designs, and if possible, a few partially or fully completed pages. This will probably cost you some money, unless you are working with a very new or very generous and trusting artist. You need to be planning to pay the artists you’re working with. Even if it’s only a token amount, putting some money up will GREATLY improve your working relationship with the artists who are spending significantly more time than you, a writer, have to on this project. 

Copy: You’re also going to have to write some catchy copy that explains your project. Particularly if you’re a writer, this is crucial because you are trying to convince people to support your writing. If your pitch of what you’re doing is incoherent, or worse, boring, you are essentially asking to fail. 

It is advisable to look at other Kickstarters that are running successfully. There isn’t a format that works, exactly, so much as there’s a feel. Comics that are pitching a story that feels honest and authentic to the writers appear to work a lot better than ones that are trying to please audiences. The exception to this is, of course, very horny comics, which will fund themselves without delay, but that I do not have any experience with.

You’ll also see what doesn’t work. Stuff like bad and sloppy grammar and syntax are red flags, sure, but so are meandering introductions and descriptions full of buzzwords. To me, my Kickstarter was supported by people outside my own network in part because you could feel that the story--it’s aesthetic and it’s tone--were mine, not a marketer’s. Another really good example of this can be found in Steve Urena’s Slow Pokes campaign and Frankee White’s Starless Daydream campaign. These campaigns are completely different, but they sound sincere and uniquely of the creators. I didn’t know either of these people before I jumped into comics and now that I’ve read their works and talked to them, that they made the things they made and promoted them the way they did is completely unsurprising. Their voices are in their work, and it shines through their promo copy.

Reward Tiers: I have some post-campaign insights on this. The tiers I put up were fine. I probably could have charged more for the “Nightmare Maker” tier, which was essentially a “give me money to make this in addition to the cost of the comic and I’ll say thank you inside the comic.” It turns out, people who support tiers like that are doing it because they want to help you. I charged $20. It probably should have been $25. 

Meanwhile, my “get the comic” tier” was, I think, right on the money. I charged $5 for physical (plus shipping), $3 for digital, $8 for both, and $10 for both with the physical signed. I am a firm believer that keeping things as cheap as possible is a good move when you’re starting out, but I probably could have gone higher for the signed ones. It’s fine. 

The hill I will absolutely die on is the $3 digital tier. While it’s not a lot of money, it actually has a higher profit margin than the print editions, and it gives people an entry point to your work. It gets you their emails for your newsletter. Most importantly, it gets a person who might tweet, post about, or otherwise review your comic, which can (and in my case very much did) lead to more sales both during the campaign and in the future.

I messed up in my higher tiers. They weren’t bad, but they weren’t cost effective. We had original art packages that, in retrospect, devalued Matt Rowe’s work and didn’t take into account the cost of him shipping the work to me from Canada so I could do fulfillment. We had a poster tier with a very cool hand printed poster with art by Rowe, printed by James Weinberg. I didn’t charge enough for it, but it was cool so I didn’t care. 

I also didn’t take into account how much things weighed and how much shipping costs outside the US. I am going to say this unequivocally: Do not do international shipping on your Kickstarter. A single comic costs between $15-23 to send to even the closest countries. There is no way around it. Just don’t do it. It sucks, but it is what it is. Which leads me to…

How much are you going to raise?: Kickstarter takes its share. It’s like 5%. You need to pay for:

  • Art (lines, colors, lettering)

  • Printing

  • Packing materials (including tape, labels, ink toner)

  • Shipping

Obviously, there are fulfillment options other than you, but if you’re trying to keep costs down (which I recommend on your first go), you’re going to be doing the packing and the mailing. Keep in mind too that any stretch goals you add later will both increase costs (in most cases) and may also increase shipping weights. 

There are ways to cut corners, but you are going to want to be smart about it. For me, I bought labels and printed them because that was worth the time it saved me from hand-writing mailing labels. That may not be the case for you. I also lettered my comic myself and prepped it for printing. I know there are a ton of people who say you shouldn’t letter your own comic and that you should hire a professional. I, generally speaking, agree with this. However, I have a bit of design experience, my wife is a type teacher and her first job was running a giant printer, so I had a bit of knowledge and someone to ask if stuff got hairy. A good letterer costs $5-15 a page, so if you don’t know what you’re doing, pay them. 

The artist I worked with, Matt Rowe, was not insanely cheap (nor was he oppressively expensive), but he was able to do all of the art, including the colors. He also had an interest in design, so he did the logo for the comic and did graphics for the tiers. This was a thing I had forgotten to do, and I was immensely grateful to him for doing it. Don’t forget to do graphics for your tiers!

A note on shipping: I saw people charging $5 for domestic shipping (US) and $10 for international, so I did that too. I don’t know how they do that, because it is too low. I’ve already spoken about international shipping (reminder: don’t do it), but even domestic shipping cost me more than $5. It ranged from $5.30-5.90 despite no changes in the box’s contents. This was in part due to my using Gemini shipping boxes (which also cost money). They are incredibly protective, but they are also heavy and all but guarantee breaking over the 8 oz that keep you in the flat rate threshold. 

That said, I recommend charging $5 for shipping a single comic and accepting some loss here. If the entire package for a single, normal length comic book goes over $10 including shipping, you might find some people balking. This is not a fact, but it is my gut. In fact, it’s definitely a fact in some cases, because I definitely balk at comics by creators I don’t know doing projects I’m not legitimately excited about that are more than $10 total. Maybe I’m a Scrooge, but it just seems like too high a gamble. A lot of people ship in flat rate envelopes with the comics bagged and boarded and it arrives fine for a buck less. Consider that.

I also recommend including your shipping costs in your Kickstarter rather than having a post-campaign system to collect money for shipping. It will mean having a higher minimum for your campaign, but people don’t read everything, and I have seen multiple people complain about having to pay more than expected for shipping on Twitter after they’d already backed a successful campaign. It also means creating more work for your backers. You can do this if you’re Scott Snyder, because the people backing you already know what they’re getting and like the creator. If you are not Scott Snyder--if you are instead, for example, a middle aged museum professional who is relying on the kindness of people you do not know or don’t know well in order to fund making your dreams come true--you’re going to want to do your best to make things as easy as possible for people. 

Should you do a video?: Yes. Do a video. Your computer has the software and you have art on hand. Even with a voiceover, it actually seems to help. I did mine with music from a friend’s band that was creepy and loud, fitting with the comic’s whole vibe. If you don’t know how to make a video, google it. It’s way easier than you think it is. 

Preparing for Launch

Once your campaign is set up, you send it to Kickstarter for approval. They say that can take a few days, but they approved mine literally instantly. I suspect this was in part due to how much content I put in. 

After it’s approved, they give you a link to get people to follow your campaign. This is important. Get this link and post it (but not too much--don’t want to oversaturate) and share it with friends and family.

This is where we get to the part you don’t want to do--asking people you know for money. 

You’re going to be a bit surprised how receptive people are. I wrote an email to about 20 people, mostly family and very close friends, explaining what I was doing. Most of them know I love comics and like to write, and were supportive. In the email, I didn’t just tell them what I was doing, I also gave them very specific instructions for what I wanted them to do. Specifically, I asked them to do the following things:

  1. Back the project on Kickstarter as soon as it launches. This is very important. Kickstarters do a huge chunk of their fundraising and see a sizable amount of their traffic on their first day. People who come across your project and see it being funded early have more reason to believe you’re legit, I guess. I don’t know, I’m not a psychologist. All I know is that if a campaign’s been up a few hours and it has 3 backers, it tends to fail. 

  2. Share links I post about the campaign. This is a no-brainer. Their networks reach outside your network. Surely a few of them have co-workers or college roommates who like some of the stuff you like. 

  3. Comment on posts about the campaign. The fucking algorithm, man. Posts that are getting responses seem important to social media platforms (particularly Facebook and Twitter, where I got the most traction). If I post something and then 5 people respond to it and then I respond back, my other more dormant friends are more likely to have it pop up in their feed. 

  4. If they are comfortable, ask people to back it. There is a difference between sharing a link and asking people to act on it. If you share a link for a Kickstarter, people might look at it. If you share a link to a Kickstarter and say “My old friend/colleague/son/ex-lover/professional enemy is making a comic and I am really excited about it. Please check it out!” a lot more people are going to look at it. 

I conceded in my email that this felt awkward, but that I really wanted to make this project to succeed, and to do that, I’d need help. Almost everyone I asked did one of these things. Most of them did all of these things.

Launch, baby!

At launch, you share the links everywhere and you wait. You send a reminder email to your friends and family, you post on platforms you use. Hopefully, in the lead-up to this you’ve been networking a bit yourself on social media with other people who are making comics, and they’re willing to share your links, too. 

But really, initially, you wait.

Once your campaign is running, one of two things will begin to happen. You will be getting backers, or you won’t. Either way, you should be doing the same thing--talking incessantly on any platform you can (including real life) about your campaign. This behavior is only acceptable for about 3 days and then you have to tone it down, but those first 3 days, go crazy. 

Take screenshots of the Kickstarter bar going up, of how many backers you have in the first hour. Say things like “Oh man, already at XX backers! If we get to XXX before lunch, my heart will explode.” You’ll be surprised. It does work.

Also, on social media, give your networks the same exact instructions you gave your friends and family in the email. I posted actual instructions on Facebook about what I was doing, how people could help, and what the best things to do were, including interacting with posts and sharing links with personal comments. It was the most active post I had in the whole campaign, and people followed the instructions.

Then, back at Kickstarter, scroll through some campaigns that are doing well and that are of similar audiences to yours, and back them, even with a few bucks on a digital tier. I can’t stress this enough. Back other creators while your campaign is going on. Then reach out to them. Say something nice like “I saw your campaign and thought it was cool. Would you check out mine?” They’ll probably respond. Ask if they’d be willing to share each other’s campaigns on social media and/or in Kickstarter updates. They probably will. Boom. More audience.

The amount of money you raise can be significant, but I can’t stress enough that you should only try to raise what you need to make the project happen. I have a few reasons for this. 

  1. Kickstarter is all or nothing. So if you go for $5000 and you only hit $4998, your project is blown and so is that good will. If you can make the project happen with $3000, you’ll probably still raise that $4998, and you might even raise more, because...

  2. People are more likely to back things that are funded. There’s no risk! There’s no wonder! They’re just buying something. 

  3. You get to say “fully funded” sooner. Nightmare Man actually cost me a lot more than $1500 to make, but I made my goal $1500 because I knew I personally could afford to cover the costs of everything in excess of that (in truth, I already had paid the artist for the full book). This is obviously due to my specific circumstances, but the principle holds. Your goal is what you need to make it happen. We hit our “goal” in 3.5 hours, so then I was able to put up “fully funded in 3.5 hours,” and then people literally shared it with comments like “gotta check this out! It’s already fully funded!” 

Final Thoughts

A few things that are good to know or remember:

Don’t add any stretch goals that cost you significant money. Stickers are postcards are great. Enamel pins? Maybe not. Adding a back-up story of a comic you already made costs very little but seems like a very cool addition (we actually did this with our first short story, Little Things, which we’d posted online but then added at the back of the book when we hit $5000) and actually galvanized some people to push us over the threshold because they wanted it.

You might be surprised who supports you. We had a good share of complete or almost complete strangers back us. We were lucky to get bumped on Twitter by a few comics pros and very nice people at Comic Book Yeti, Comics Bookcase, and Soda & Telepaths, which translated directly into new backers and supporters. But if I’m being honest, the vast majority of the people who backed this book were not friends and family I see and talk to regularly, nor were they total strangers. They were people I just sort of knew. They were former co-workers, people I went to middle school with, people I was in history club with in college and then ran into at museums sometimes when one of us worked there and the other was visiting. They were mostly acquaintances

People like it when people they know are trying to do something creative and interesting. More so when it’s something nobody else they know is doing. It’s hard to listen to everyone’s band or go to everyone’s comedy show or buy everyone’s hand painted decorations. But most people don’t know anyone who makes comics. It’s novel. If you treat it like the creative work that it is, which deserves the same respect as writing books or making music or painting, you’ll encourage that kind of respect from other people. Some people are going to be dicks about it, and that’s fine, but just be confident in what you’re doing, and ask for people to support it, and I promise you, you will be surprised who will come out of the woodwork to lift your project up with you.

Throughout the duration of your campaign, be active and give regular updates, post regularly, but try not to be annoying. Post about other things, and comment on other people’s things. Be nice, and try not to be a bother. Above all else, understand that nobody owes you anything. Bloggers and podcasters may say they’re going to boost your posts and read your stuff and then never do it. That’s because they’re busy and you’re one of a million people asking for them to give you attention. Famous people might be interested in what you’re doing, and if you have an avenue to them, certainly use it, but don’t blindly tag strangers in hope that you’ll get attention, and certainly don’t demand it. 

Just be nice to people. Be supportive and encouraging. Find other people online who are in the same space as you are and try to work together. Unless they’re Nazis or something. Don’t accept or court support from fucking Nazis.

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