By Gerry Huntman (Managing Director, IPI Comics)
Over recent months a number of people have politely and curiously asked me why we crowdfund many of our titles. It is a fair question and, of course, I can easily answer it because this was a carefully considered decision on our company’s part.
Before I outline the reasons (yes, there’s more than one), I should state that many comic publishers now use crowdfunding for differing reasons, possibly some align with ours. I can imagine that if a particular project strikes some publishers as high quality, but likely to attract fewer readers due to the specialised subject matter, they can make it viable by way of a crowdfunding campaign.
Regardless, crowdfunding strategies are commonplace in the comic industry and there is an increasing number of mainstream publishers wading in the crowdfunding space. More on this later.
My answer to why we use crowdfunding (Kickstarter to be specific) can be solidly divided into two reasons:
- We have a huge list of projects that we want to run with but the vast majority are very expensive to produce. And this is before we print them. While we are a financially viable company we are not big, and this normally forces us to run our projects serially, or near-serially. Since projects can take, in many cases, a year or more to complete, we are talking about very cool ideas that might not see the light of day for years, and in some cases, a decade or longer! We decided a smart way to run parallel projects (and shrink dramatically the timeline) is to inject cash flow by way of crowdfunding.
Being acutely aware that we didn’t want to ‘rip off’ comic store buyers of our product following the crowdfunding phase, we always offer much more than just the comic to crowdfunding backers, effectively making our offerings and comics (and pricing) mutually exclusive.
We know that comic store buyers are generally a different group than crowdfunding comic buyers – there are many reasons for this, and consequently our offerings in Kickstarter campaigns have a more ‘Indy’ feel, and include very cool add ons and variants/content. - Equally important to us is a very simple side-effect of running Kickstarter campaigns: we absolutely love them! Seriously, there is nothing more satisfying than publishing work by creatives where they can let their hair hang loose and produce extra world-building material, additional art, and variant covers such as foil, UV-spotting and die-cut, all of which are normally beyond our budget for retail-floppies.
Again, this is what differentiates our offerings for crowdfunding rewards, versus what is offered at comic stores. And, of course, this material is limited in production and can become highly collectible.
To provide you an example, consider The Matron Volume 3 campaign that we are currently running. The Matron is the story of a family living in central Texas whose lives are turned upside down with the downstream effect of gentrification in the region. When times get particularly harsh, the ‘matron’ of the family can don the mystical mask linked to a Czech goddess, and reap revenge and a dark form of justice. The story is an amalgam of homage to 70s slasher films – but with heart – and some off-beat and sardonic humor. This current story arc plays out over 6 issues of comics, which will be able to be purchased from all comics stores. But before they fully sell through retailers we ran 3 separate Kickstarter campaigns, and this current campaign is the last. Each campaign, as its base offering, is a two-comics story in a graphic novel format reward (around 44 pages) plus a load of extra material that adds color and depth to the world. Each of the 3 graphic novels have foil variants, and one has an alternative artwork variant and the current offering will have a die-cut version. Posters, postcards, Christmas and Halloween greetings, are all on offer, as well as trading cards (and more). Stuff that simply can’t be sold through comic stores. If you want a better idea of how it all hangs together, CLICK HERE to view the campaign.
A notable bonus having this crowdfunding/retail model is that it is a win-win-win situation. We win because we can have fun and can accelerate our projects; crowdfunding backers win because they get great comics in graphic novel format with loads of cool extras; and buyers at comic stores win because they get their floppies (and later trade collections) at retail prices. This sits extremely comfortably with us.
I hope that this answers the question posed by some of you, and adds some depth and color to our operations process. As an aside, we would dearly appreciate you having a look at our Kickstarter campaigns (such as the link above, and you can also click on our images), and spread the good word to all.
IPI Comics 