Kickstarter Comics Tips: 3 Giant Mistakes I Made
By Zack Quaintance — As I write this, we are rapidly approaching the 48 hours remaining line for our campaign for Next Door. I think a natural question that keeps coming to my mind is whether I want to do this again. It’s a tough one to answer, and it’s probably one best not answered as of yet. To be totally honest, as far as Kickstarter goes I’m just not in the headspace to think about my future with the platform.
What I am, however, ready to do is assess the mistakes that I’ve made in the past, specifically with this very campaign. Ho boy, and trust met, there have been many. But what I’m going to do now is focus on just three of them, on the three giant mistakes I made before/in the early days of this campaign. There is, perhaps, not an actionable Kickstarter comics tips to be taken away here today, but there are lessons to be learned from my missteps.
So, now let’s get to the really juicy stuff here and look at the three giant mistakes I made on my first Kickstarter campaign.
1. Failed to Make a Video: My single biggest mistake in the course of this campaign is not making a promotional video for our book. It’s been on my to-do list since before the campaign even started. I even have copyright-free music for the thing sitting on my desktop for it right now, but I just couldn’t get it together to execute the thing. The reason, however, that I really wanted to get the thing done is because so many experienced Kickstarter creators have told me how important it is within that platform for potential backers to be able to look at you, hear your pitch, and relate on a more human level than is allowed by static text. I underestimated that personal connection on the platform, and I think that was my single biggest mistake.
2. Went Too Light on Visual Assets: I didn’t prepare well for this thing when it came to assembling visual assets. We had some, sure, we wouldn’t have gotten literally anywhere without the visual assets we had. We had a great 3-part cover by our interior team of Pat Skott and Ellie Wright at launch. We had a sequential four-page preview that functioned really well as a mini-encapsulation of what we’re doing with the book, and we had some unlettered art from the short comic. But simply put, we should have had much more. We added our incredible Anna Readman cover partway through, which we should have had at launch. We’re still waiting to debut our Comics Bookcase logo sticker, which we should have also had at launch. And, quite frankly, we should have had more of the book done for marketing purposes. In my estimation, 10 pages is a minimum threshold if you can afford it for completing prior to launching a Kickstarter.
3. Media Strategy: Finally, we’ve done really well in this past week with media coverage. I’ve appeared on Rockin’ Robbie’s fantastic comics YouTube show. I had a great long-form interview with Multiversity, and we have a few more pieces on the way as well. That’s all well and good for the last three days, but the first few days is more lucrative and important. The tip here is to spend more time on the media rollout, rather than the concluding coverage, because a strong start sends buzz rolling down hill in a way that can help you throughout your entire campaign.
That’s it for today. Join us back here tomorrow for one last Kickstarter Comics Tips blog entry.
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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.
