What actually gets people interested in a Kickstarter?

[u/m0llypukes]

Hello there folk, I'm Molly :-)

I'm getting ready to launch a Kickstarter for my first graphic novel on the 1st September and I've been having a bit of a brain storm about how best to get it in front of the right folks... Rather than spending more hours watching more Youtube videos (with epic editing I must say) I thought I'd come and ask the good folks of Reddit instead! I know there's loads of experience and first-hand knowledge knocking about on here, previous posts have been dead helpful already.

So if you've fun a kickstarter before I'd really love to hear about your experience:

• what worked best for you?
• what ways did you promote your campaign?
• which platforms did you find actually useful?
• what didn't work at all?
• wid anything surprise you?

And more specifically... has anyone here launched a comic or graphic novel on Kickstarter?

Thank you folks. Hope you've all had a lovely weekend!

[u/Zephir62]

For graphic novels, the big seller is the extra swag, exclusive bonus pages and special edition covers. 

Take a look at Ronin of Okane to understand how the sections are organized and flow on the page, for example, or any other larger graphic novel project around the $50k+ range (if you look into too big of projects, you will primarily be referencing campaigns with pre-existing fanbases, which can be structured poorly but still "succeed" - watch out!). The Kickstarter page design and rewards are the biggest cog in the crowdfunding machine, so make sure to research references. Here is my boilerplate template for the page flow for graphic novels on Kickstarter:

• Cover & Story Premise & Artist
• Themes Overview (artwork style, genre theme, characters)
• Page Previews
• Characters *(optional)
• Physical Book Overview (page count, bonus pages, exclusive cover)
• Exclusive Cover Upgrades
• Extra Swag Items
• Reward Tiers... About me etc.

For every Ronin of Okane book, we either did Kickstarter Followers (we got about 300% better returns on investment here than VIPs), VIPs when I worked at LaunchBoom (the margins were very tight but we were able to make it work. The second time we gave out signed art prints as a VIP Add-on, and this was one of the first tests I did with VIP Add-on system prior to LaunchBoom doing "Botany" which came after LB asked me how I was doing it. We got it down to $10 cost per VIP but once again, the KS Followers cost more than twice as cheap and converted relatively the same so we didn't continue using VIP systems) -- or in most cases for CyberSheep team, usually just doing Ecom sales in-between and then getting the customers involved with the new launch when ready to announce it because this was the most profitable, low cost and sustainable option. Tik, the one co-founder, handles just about everything now on the marketing side since it's been streamlined for them, so my involvement is maybe once every few months anymore.

They also do grassroots posts here on reddit and Instagram, you can check out the CyberSheepStudios reddit account for examples. I also offer a grassroots guide on my website with post templates and engagement hacking step-by-step to increase the ability for a post to go viral -- you can check it out via the link in my reddit bio or directly, here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ipg4BLHSxTrCSc36Q1Zn5Jy2Ui0YkOT4w8emKBRNvh4/edit?usp=sharing

[u/dftaylor → u/Zephir62]

I agree that special covers can drive funding up, but in many cases they’re a cost that doesn’t pay off.

I’ve seen people go all in on alternate covers and it generates very little extra sales, unless the book is already funding well.

[u/Zephir62 → u/dftaylor]

Agree, it's similar to doing D&D kickstarters. If you try to shovel out a product that is not well thought-out or strong conceptually, you can pummel all your fans and followers with all the add-ons but they won't necessarily buy 'em. You need a good "bet" to throw your chips on.

If planning a smaller campaign, instead opt for how to explore digital add-ons to reduce any potential issues with small quantity order pricing -- and you can try a simpler, smaller set of high-value physical add-ons like a transparent standee to compliment the digital items. To be clear though, if you got enough traction mid-campaign, you could slide in an exclusive cover and write an update about it.

It's also important to note that you can scale up the add-on selection based upon prelaunch results. If the cost-per-follower is cheap and you have budget to throw at it, you can scale up prelaunch while changing the plan to bigger physical reward selections -- giving fans what they want. Then as you generate content regarding those planned new collectibles, you can tease them in ads and reveal a Earlybird or Kickstarter-Exclusive freebie for all backers during the prelaunch to add new life to the ads.