How to Fund a Comic Book (or Any Other Creative Enterprise), Pt 4: Adventures in Crowdfunding

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.

How to Fund a Comic Book (or Any Other Creative Enterprise), Pt 2: Grants and Awards

Last post I looked at option (1): treating your project as a hobby. On the one hand, this gives you security, but it also takes its toll on your energies and family life, plus it makes progress slow. So, a far more preferable option - if you can make it work - is...

Option (2): Find funding. There are various forms of funding. You may be lucky enough to have extensive savings, independent wealth (a trust fund or a rich, supportive family), a patron who recognises the value of your work, etc, but most of us aren't in this position. Besides, if you are in this position, then you don't really need to be reading this! You could work hard to save up to take a sabbatical from work, or take out a bank loan, but again, this presumes that you are in a position to do so. Even if your employer lets you take time off, it might take you years to save up enough money to support yourself over 6 months or a year (and comic book and other creative projects can take much longer than that). Bank loans are also chancy: you need to be in a secure financial position to be able to pay it back, because you don't want to assume that your project will be financially successful, because that's just a form of very expensive wager - there's not a huge amount of money in comics (or art in general), some notable exceptions aside.

So, let's assume that - like me - none of the above are open to you. What else can you do? We can split this into various sub-options: (2a) Look for grants and awards, (2b) Go the traditional publishing route, (2c) Go the crowdfunding route, or (2d) Seek advertising or sponsorship. For the rest of this post I'll look at the first option.

(2a): Grants and Awards. I live in the UK, so most of what I'm about to say simply reflects my experience - things will no doubt be different in other countries (let me know if they are). Also, I won't pretend that I'm an authority on this route, or that I've exhausted it, but I have gone some way down that road - and found it largely a dead end. However, please feel free to correct me on anything - I would love to be wrong on this occasion!

Firstly, there is public or government funding. In the UK, this mostly means lottery money, a percentage of which supports the arts. This is distributed regionally. Where I live, therefore, arts funding is distributed by the Arts Council of Wales (but there will probably be something similar in your area). The problem with this, however, is that any viable project must be (a) non commercial, and (b) provide public benefit. So, even if I could persuade them that might graphic novel about Sigmund Freud would help engage the public with the arts in Wales, I wouldn't be able to make any direct money from the project (i.e. sell the graphic novel). Also, I would be up against the type of artist that the council was setup to support: the traditional gallery-exhibiting, public space using painter/sculptor/etc. So, if you're a graphic/comic book artist looking to fund a definite product, then this is likely to be an unfruitful option. You could of course try to broaden the scope of your project - the council are keen on collaboration (especially international), on 'exploring' themes and ways of working, so I could have said that I'd travel to the US to work with my collaborator to 'explore Freud's concept of the unconscious in the medium of sequential graphic art' (or something equally dubious), but it seemed to me to be taking me too far from what I wanted to do (make a comic book), and also somewhat dishonest. It's a shame that there's simply no money to fund that simple ambition, but that seems to be the case regarding public money.

However, remember, comics are also a form of writing. So, if you're also scripting your own comic, then you are also eligible for literary grants and bursaries (unfortunately, in this instance, I'm just drawing). For instance, Literature Wales supplies bursaries for just this purpose. This is also public money (made up of lottery, local council and private trust funding), but there seems to be no restriction on commercial publication. So, if you're writing a comic for yourself or someone else, then it might be worth you checking it out (or whatever the equivalent is where you live). Remember, though, that this is a competition - to stand any chance, your project needs to show potential/be some way along, or else you need to show that you have some literary track record (which, again, will debar many first-time creators).

Having struck out with both of these, I moved on to look at private trusts and funding. The Wellcome Trust, who support biomedical research and the medical humanities, have some money to help engage and inform the public about scientific issues. Given that our book is about Freud (and psychology - according to some, anyway - is a science!), then I thought maybe I was in luck. However, once again there is a restriction here to do with commercial exploitation - I couldn't sell the book I'd made.

And this is the problem with private trusts and funding. Each has their own specific set of criteria and priorities. You may indeed be lucky enough to find that you meet those criteria, but often you'll find that there is some public or charitable goal that the money is tied to, or that applications are geared to organisations with those goals in mind. So, you are welcome to plough through the lists of grants that are available - see e.g. Esmee Fairbairn - but there's slim pickings for commercially orientated comic book projects that I can see.

Which isn't to say that there aren't such grants. Until recently, in the US, the Xeric Foundation funded comics creators to self publish (however, as of 2012, they now only fund non-profit or charitable projects). But apart from being hard to find, such grants are also hugely competitive, and you'd be up against established professionals - and being creative and expressing yourself shouldn't really be about winning a competition.

Again, in summary...

Pros: Can dedicate all your time to your project, can treat it like a normal job (time off for leisure and family). Cons: grants are highly competitive, they are difficult to find, and favour those with a track record or who are a certain type of artist.

How to Fund a Comic Book (or Any Other Creative Enterprise), Pt 1: The Ties that Bind

Firstly, I should point out that the title of this blog entry is more of a question - I don't really know. But I do have some thoughts.

Any independent creator making something for themselves is likely to face the financial conundrum: how to make a living whilst doing what you love. There seem to me to be two main options: treat your project as a hobby, or find funding. Let's look at the first option.

Option (1): Do it in your spare time. You have a job, and evenings and weekends you spend developing your dream project. This is fine, in terms of security, but takes a heavy load on your energies, time spent with family, etc. The other downside is that progress will be slow. You're unlikely to have much spare in the tank once your main job is finished for the day/week, and your family will eventually begrudge you spending all your time away from them (as much as my family may resent being described as 'ties that bind' perhaps...). Nate Simpson's comic 'Nonplayer' is a good example, here. It's been in development for about 5 years, in which time he's published a single 32 page issue. Admittedly, Nate works in excruciating detail and is a perfectionist, but his struggles are fairly typical of those faced by people trying to fit their project around their day job (read his honest and inspiring blog and see his amazing work here).

There are sub-options within this option: you could take on part-time work. However, unless your PT work is well-paid and can be contained into set times (it doesn't spread into the week), then you face other problems. However, unless you're lucky, PT/casual work tends to be less well paid (requiring you to supplement it with other work - which defeats the point), or can spread out into the week (irregular shifts) - the fact that it's PT/casual tends to suit the employer (especially with the advent of zero hour contracts...). However, if you can find PT work that is both well-paid and self-contained, then this might make this option viable. In my experience, though (and this is my current financial model), it seems to be increasingly difficult to find this type of work.

So, in conclusion...

Pros: security. Cons: slow progress, fatigue, toll on family and personal life.

Next time - Pt 2: Finding funding...

Patreon

In a further attempt to get some funding to complete the comic, I've opened a Patreon account. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it's a crowdfunding website that allows supporters to back individuals rather than projects. So, rather than (say) support a comic, you give a certain amount per month in order to support the comic maker, and whatever else he or she may be doing.

For me, this is great, because it frees me up to do whatever I want - and I've got a fairly diverse range of interests/skills (illustration, comics, cartoons, fiction, non-fiction, etc). This means that if I can get enough people who are willing to pledge a small monthly amount, then I can use that to develop projects that wouldn't take place otherwise (like this one).

However, there are some consequences for this blog. Since some of the rewards for Patreon supporters will be to get a behind-the-scenes look at the production of the comic, then that won't be material I will be sharing here. I'll still post things from time to time, but my main energies will be on developing content that will keep Patreon supporters happy.

I'll also use Patreon to share stuff I don't share here - some of my writing (short stories and longer works), board and card game designs, and other comics. So, if any or all of these interest you, then please head over there and take a look: http://www.patreon.com/woodpig

Reflections on a mini milestone, Part 2

As promised, here are my thoughts about the technical aspects of comics production after page 1.

Firstly, what was intimidating was the feeling of having to build a world. So, you're not just drawing a character with a particular background, but situating someone in a virtual environment. In short: You do panel 1 - yay! - and then realise that you now have to draw the same figure again, perhaps from a different angle, with different gestures or facial expressions, etc. The same goes for the background - the figure gets up and goes to the window - what does the room look like from that position? And so on, all of which is a big headache - at least if you're concerned with being consistent (which, I'm guessing, most comic book artists will want to be).

There is a side issue here regarding how faithful to be to reference material. Since Freud was an actual person who lived in an actual time and place (in this case, Hampstead in London, 1939), then it's possible to track down photos of the house (which is now the Freud museum), the surrounding area (Google Earth is handy here), and basically drive yourself crazy with the search for authentic pictures of what Freud's actual chair was like, or what brand of cigar he smoked. I did a bit of this, but quickly realised that (a) I'd go mad, and (b) for the amount of effort involved, it wasn't worth it - the vast majority of readers wouldn't even notice. So, for the sake of saving time, I've decided to take shortcuts - or what is sometimes termed 'artistic licence'. For instance...

Freud's desk is a clutter of objet d'art - little statues, figurines, etc - which would drive me insane to draw faithfully. So, I've made do with suggesting their presence, without too much concern for whether I copy the desk exactly, or even whether the objects are identical from panel to panel. I'm a perfectionist about lots of things, but really who has time for this amount of detail? More importantly, why would you want to? It's art. You want realism, take a picture. (And with that get out clause, I move on...).

I've got a number of other things to say about the technical aspects of comics production, but they can keep until another time. However, I'd just like to finish with what is perhaps the biggest thing that struck me: just how long everything takes. The first page took me about a week - planning, sketching, fine tuning, inking (not to mention lettering, word balloons, etc). I've done another page since then (more next time), but - even if it only took me two days per page - we're looking at almost 300 days of solid work just to do the line art (based on the script, the book currently comes in at 142 pages). If I want weekends free, then we're looking at 20 months to 2 years! How do people do it? I'm talking I suppose about independent creators, here - how do they fund something like this? There's Kickstarter, of course, and publisher's advances, but even so that's a long time for people to wait for something they've invested in. Anyone have any thoughts?