Boom! to Release Crowdfunding Book With No Comic Examples
Boom! Studios has announced the upcoming release of a Kickstarter advice book called Six Figure Crowdfunding: Why Strangers on the Internet Want to Give You $100,000. It’s described as
a bold, irreverent, hilarious how-to guide from bestselling Kickstarter campaign manager Derek Miller (Cyanide & Happiness), co-writer Noelle Pugh (Joking Hazard), and featuring laugh-out-loud illustrations by cartoonist Joy Ho.
There have been a number of comic projects that managed to hit these kinds of pledge levels. (I was involved with one, Smut Peddler.) So I was curious to see which of those projects were going to be covered in this release from a comic publisher. Here’s the paragraph from the press release that covers some of the material included:
Six Figure Crowdfunding is packed with the collective advice and pro-tips from world-class campaign leaders who have experience raising over $30 million through successfully managing and executing several high-profile crowdfunding campaigns including Dude Bro Party Massacre 3 ($241,071) from Michael E. Peter, James Ashby, Tim Ciancio, Michael Rousselet; Augie and the Green Knight ($384,410) from Zach Weiner; OrganATTACK! ($526,274) from Nick Seluk; Superbook ($2,952,508) from Andrew Jiang; G-RO ($3,307,773) from Netta Shalgi; Pillars of Eternity ($3,986,929) from Feargus Uruqhart; and Bones I-IV ($12,380,214) from Ed Pugh. Presented in an easy-to-follow, humorous format, Miller and Pugh will teach you how to maximize your message, mechanics, and marketing.
Oddly, none of those projects listed are comics. They’re movies, games, a tech gadget… the closest they come are Augie and the Green Knight, a children’s book that managed to tap into the desire over the past few years to see more women’s stories.
And that’s a key piece of advice that I wonder whether will be included: A lot of people who succeeded had the advantage of doing it earlier than you will. As with any guru who promises to make it easy for you to succeed, I’d be leery about this “modern business book for the modern entrepreneur, packed with hard and honest truths about crowdfunding that you won’t get from other authors in the space”. I hope they include the numbers from Kickstarter’s own stats: The total success rate is under 36%. Comics does much better than some other fields, with a project success rate of 54%. Publishing is under 31%. Less than 4% of all projects make six figures or more.
I’ve been notoriously leery about Kickstarter in the past; now I’m suspicious of the “find out how easy it is to make a lot of money online!” approach of this promotion. I’m sure there’s an audience for it, and perhaps Boom! doesn’t intend for this to have comic creators as its primary audience. It’s a odd first choice for them to start a book publishing line, though, if that isn’t the case.
I’m also concerned that too many people already think “all those people got free money, so I can get some just by asking for it” without realizing how much work goes into a successful project, and how necessary it is to already have an audience of followers. Perhaps I’m not giving the book the benefit of the doubt, and it will be a truthful approach, and the promotion is just ridiculously optimistic.
Six Figure Crowdfunding is set to be available July 2018 (although Amazon says end of August). Just in time to promote the heck out of it at this year’s San Diego Comic Con!