Chances are, if you make comics, at some point you’ll be out here crowdfunding a book through Kickstarter. But just like every comic may be some reader’s first, creators, too, need to start somewhere when it comes to promoting their first indie or self-published comic.
After covering Kickstarters and similar projects on his own site, Comics Bookcase, writer Zack Quaintance decided to test the waters with his first crowdfunded work, Next Door, a neo-noir crime comic about a young couple who move into a gentrifying neighborhood and run afoul of the longtime residents. Joining him on this journey are artist Pat Skott, colorist Ellie Wright and letterer Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou.
While the Kickstarter was funded within the first 24 hours, managing a monthlong campaign was still a stressful experience that brought out Quaintance’s compulsive side, and forced him to use marketing muscles he didn’t know he had. As the campaign winds down, he shared with Xavier Files some tips for managing your first Kickstarter.
The First Three Days: I’m going to start off with a simple tip about the first three days — don’t go to work, don’t plan on exercising (more than a quick walk) and ignore your family unless some kind of severe emergency develops. I’m exaggerating a little bit here (especially with that last one), but there’s truth to it. My first day was a blur, and doing anything outside of managing/promoting the Kickstarter was an extreme challenge. Even making a sandwich was a tough thing to fit into my schedule. Be ready for that.
Co-Promotion: We had a great first three days of our campaign, getting full funding from a number of generous folks and blowing past basically all of my expectations. But then things slowed down. This is where co-promotion comes in. When running a comics Kickstarter, you should find campaigns running concurrently with yours and promote them. This benefits you because chances are they’ll promote back — there’s an unwritten code — but also it’s just the right thing to do.
Set Aside Money for Concurrent Kickstarters: This ties into the co-promotion. Expect to spend a lot of money during your campaign. Part of this is to support your concurrent creators, but another part of it is that you’re going to spend exponentially more time on Kickstarter than you usually do. As such, you’ll browse more Kickstarters than you usually do. As such, you’ll find so many good comics, and you’ll want to be able to buy them all. It wasn’t practical for me to back all the campaigns I wanted to … but I did it anyway. If I’d set aside money in advance, I wouldn’t be feeling so guilty right now.
Refresh Your Backer Page Obsessively Until You Wake up in the Middle of the Night to Do It in Your Sleep: If you’re anything like me, you’re going to refresh your backer page. You’re going to refresh it a lot. You’re going to refresh it while in the middle of important Zoom meetings for work. You’re going to refresh it while working out. You’re going to wake up and refresh it in the middle of the night on your phone just because you can’t sleep without knowing if that last bit of promotion you did pulled in a new backer. This is not so much a tip as a warning … and maybe even a cry for help.
Capitalize on the Popularity of Marvel Studios’ Upcoming Film, ‘Eternals’: You just can’t go wrong tweeting things like, “Attention! People who are interested in Marvel Studios’ forthcoming film Eternals are 100% eligible to back my Kickstarter!” Joking aside, all of that is to say that I learned about how important it is to get creative with your promotion, finding new ways to get people reading and sharing your tweets promoting your Kickstarter, to get them to stop scrolling past and click, be it through random connections to very popular Twitter discussion topics or sharing never-seen-before art. ABP, my friends, always be promoting. Speaking of which! You can still back Next Door on Kickstarter right now, for a few more days anyway. So hurry while you still have a chance!
For more on Quaintance and Next Door, listen to his recent appearance on WMQ&A.
Dan Grote is the editor-in-chief of ComicsXF, having won the site by ritual combat. By day, he’s a newspaper editor, and by night, he’s … also an editor. He co-hosts The ComicsXF Interview Podcast with Matt Lazorwitz. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two kids and two miniature dachshunds, and his third, fictional son, Peter Winston Wisdom.
