Option (2c): Crowdfunding.
Whenever people mention independent creative projects, you can be sure that the word 'crowdfunding' is not going to be far behind. This has all been made possible by the Internets. Years ago, if you wanted random strangers to give you money you had to be either a hedge fund manager, a busker, or a prostitute (not meaning to disparage the noble professions of prostitution and busking, by the way). Now, you can just set up a Kickstarter. For those not familiar with the concept - I'm assuming you're either over 50 or under 5 - it involves asking for small individual financial pledges in return for rewards, with pledges only being collected if a certain funding total is reached (some crowdfunding sites work on slightly different principles - e.g. allowing fundraisers to keep the money whatever the total raised - but this is the most common approach). Anyway, crowdfunding now seems to have taken off and entered mainstream awareness - soon, even, online spellcheckers will stop underling its non-hyphenated form in red (along with 'fundraiser' and 'spellchecker'). Then, it will have fully arrived.
For small, independent projects, crowdfunding is great. As long as you are realistic in your goals, your timescale for the project, and calculate the costs of supplying the rewards, then your cut of the profits will be far greater than it would be through any other more traditional channel. So what's the downside?
First of all, the crowdfunding universe is getting very crowded. Remember the innocent days where you'd create a web page and then sit and watch the counter to see the visitors role in? You laugh now at your naivety - you realise that just because you build it, doesn't mean that they will come - but the very same realisation seems to pass many crowdfunding fundraisers. I saw a comic book crowdraiser recently - the art was fantastic, the funding goal was realistic - and yet hardly anyone pledged. It never got made, failing to reach a tenth of its goal. Then I checked the creator's Twitter feed, and not only had he not mentioned his project, but he had hardly tweeted at all. He had also not bothered to connect his Facebook account. And this was a very talented artist with an idea I would have loved see get made.
However, if you're a good organiser and can handle the figures, then crowdfunding makes sense - but you have to sell it. And this is the problem. I've run two small crowdfunding projects over on the French site Ulule, both to fund a yearly caricature calendar. My goals were realistic - humble, even - and I bugged the shit out of everyone on Facebook, Twitter, etc. The first year I ran it, I got almost double my goal; the second year, I got half. Had the novelty worn off? Maybe. But I think also that after the first year I had exhausted the financial goodwill of my acquaintances - not my close friends and family (those who will always support me), or my dedicated fans (be they in single figures, those who really like my work), but those on the outer fringes of my personal acquaintance who obviously thought, 'He's doing it again?! Well, I gave last time to support him - he can't expect that every year' (or something like that). This may or may not be true, but I stand by the underlying realisation: just as "you can't run a war on gusts of emotion" (to quote P. M. S. Blackett), you can't fund a Kickstarter on goodwill contributions. You need to go beyond the realm of people who know you, have met you, or are otherwise acquainted with you, and you need to appeal to the general wallet-owning/Paypal-using populace purely in terms of disinterested interest (er - if you know what I mean?). On the strength of the project idea alone. But just how do you do that?
There would seem to me to two main ways: either you have a great idea, which goes viral; or you build up a cohort of fans, who can be relied upon to support you whatever you do.
Regarding viral Kickstarter type projects, these certainly exist. People with no fan-base have hit upon a project which just seems to have captured the interest of enough people, who have in turn shared and spread it about, and soon you have a runaway success. Max Tempkin's Philosophy Posters Kickstarter would seem to be a good example of this: from what I can work out, Tempkin didn't have any broad and loyal fanbase before he started this Kickstarter (someone correct me if I'm wrong); he simply had an eye for design, and a simple idea (to provide posters of interesting/inspiring/thought provoking quotes, illustrated in a simple, attractive way) - I think he only started with 10 designs. Of his initial goal of $2,000, he ended up raising $41,167. Not bad.
But it's hard to plan for viral, runaway success. By all means, try for original or quirky or whatever you think will have the best chance of being popular, but the best strategy would seem to be to build up a following before you launch. This means that you must either build up a formidable Twitter or Facebook army at your beck and call, or have a hoard of loyal fans that will jump straight over to Kickstarter at your say-so. And herein lies the problem: it's a vicious circle. For to get followers, you need a product to draw their interest; but - in our case - we're looking for followers in order to develop the product. We can make do with samples, of course - a few pages from the forthcoming graphic novel - but my experience suggests that (unless in some way your idea manages to capture the zeitgeist) you'll struggle to generate the numbers, and hence the funding.
So, then, aside from those who manage to pique the ever shifting wind of popular interest - (Pique the wind of interest? Never mind - let it go) - most who are successful on crowdfunding platforms would seem to bring their audience with them, either through an extensive pre-existing social media network, or through a pre-existing fanbase (usually both). Some try to fake this, of course - trying to build up their Facebook 'likes' and Twitter followers through those dubious pay-for-popularity services or automated following robots (I'm not sure if I've just made that up...), but genuine interest is hard to fake (but if you can fake it, you can fake anything!). So how do you create genuine interest? Assuming that you have a product/skills that will be of interest to at least some people somewhere, the challenge is to find those people, connect with them, and when the chance comes, engage their support. Which all seems to come back to having something substantial to engage people with - there would seem to be no shortcut for most of us to achieve this. It's just a matter of hard work.
Comics creator Gannon Beck has written an excellent article on Patreon and Creator Owned Webcomics, where he looks at various crowdfunding models, and applies them to independent comics creators. Patreon is like Kickstarter, but for people, not projects: people fund you. This is a great idea: suddenly, 'I need to pay the bills' becomes a legitimate cost that fans can help you with, because otherwise there will be no comics/creative project for them to be a fan of, because you'll be out washing cars (or whatever - 'working for the man' anyway). This is something that Kickstarter ignores: it's frowned upon there to ask for help with eating and paying rent, because it's considered that the money can only be related to project costs (e.g. printing comics). So, for this and other reasons - though it's only now beginning to catch on - Patreon is the future for independent creatives, I think - you can see my account here... :)
Beck highlights the benefits for independent creators who go the crowdfunding and self-publishing route. If you can build a following, you get £9 of your £10 book, instead of £1 of £10 via the traditional publishing model. However, to do this, you need to be giving your content away for free (in the case of comics, via an online platform - a web comic - or else through free downloadable PDFs). This may stick in the throat of many traditionalists from the copyright-understanding generation: where's the value in that? Well, the value is in creating a fanbase, who then flock over to Patreon and support your continued creative endeavours, or to Kickstarter to fund your printing of back issues of your comic (for those who want physical copies of your free content, or for old content that you've 'archived' - made no longer free).
Before you traditionalists throw your laptop away in disgust, let me point out that this model does work for some. For instance, Ryan North, creator of Dinosaur Comics, has been giving away his content free for years. When he went over to Patreon and asked his followers for a small contribution so that he could do the comics full-time, enough obliged so that he could do that. At the time of writing (7th Aug. 2014), he has 719 followers who collectively contribute $2,285.47 a month. That's not a bad wage - at least, I could live on it. Most followers only contribute $1 (328 people) or $3 (310 people), which in individual terms is actually very little. And 719 people isn't that much either - I'm sure many more people 'freeload' off him by reading and enjoying his comics daily for nothing. But the few principled people who have the generosity and integrity to put their hands in their pockets for the price of a coffee (or less) once a month ensure that he can continue doing what he loves. And it's not as if the rewards he is offering are the reason for this - mostly he's just offering to let people have the comic a day early, or to engage in an online Q & A with him.
A yet more startling example is Kurt J Mac, whose Minecraft videos are extremely popular on Youtube. Just how popular is revealed when he opened a Patreon account: from what I can workout, he started it just over a week ago, and now has 437 patrons who collectively provide him with a monthly income of $4,685. I could live on that, also.
The lesson from all this would seem to be that, unless you're lucky, crowdfunding is not a way to build a following, or to get known, and is no replacement for establishing a reputation the hard, traditional way. What it does provide, however, is a new model for fans to support creators, one where - potentially - creators can have a greater share of the profits (in return for taking on more of the marketing and publishing responsibilities, etc). Patreon would seem to take this a step further, and suggests that a viable living can be made by focusing primarily on building your fanbase (as opposed to your customers) - and the most effective way to do this is to give your stuff away for free, thus ensuring its widest dissemination so that it gets to those people who are principled enough to support you.
I still don't know what to think of all this, to be honest. I see the logic in it - but also the risk. Giving away stuff for free implies (initially) working for nothing - and how can you live while you do that? In terms of the comics funding conundrum we've been considering, how can I survive while I produce my free comic (to acquire a fan base that will support me in my future creative endeavours)? Once again, the circularity seems unavoidable. Someone has to pay the bills somehow.
So...
Pros: Greater share of the profits, greater creative control, direct contact with and development of a fanbase. Cons: Usually requires a pre-existing fanbase to succeed, difficult to organise and manage, hard to see how it can work independently of some other form of funding (e.g. job that pays for development of the project in its initial phase).
Next: A short word on advertising and marketing.
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