Thing 1. Kickstarter
A majority of my spoons these days has been going to running
the Kickstarter campaign for The Chronicles of the Tal Nor issue #1. You can
view and donate to our Kickstarter here www.tal-nor.com/ks
It amazing how much time and energy one of these campaigns
take. In my case, unsurprisingly most of
this time and energy is spent worrying.
Because this blog is a place of raw, unedited honesty, I’ll tell you
that it’s not looking too good for our little Kickstarter experiment. As of writing this, we stand at 30% with just
12 days yet to go. We didn’t get off to
the start I was hoping for and that is my fault. I underestimated how important the video is
to a successful campaign. Due to time constraint,
budget constraint, technical difficulty and plan old poor execution, the first
video I made wasn’t good. More than that, it was straight up terrible. We have
since shot another video and my artist, Kelsea Jewell, has also made a video which is fantastic. If fact you should head over to our
Kickstarter www.tal-nor.com/ks and
watch it right now. I’ll wait.
Welcome back, how great was that? Not only is Kelsea Jewell incredible with the
watercolors, but is funny too. She
really came through, but I fear it’s too
late. You see the way Kickstarter works
is that you have a window where your campaign is listed as new and most people who
don’t know you that just check out the new comics, just watch the video. Also the Kickstarter Staff, just watches the
videos when picking what campaigns will be marked as their favorite. They do this within the first 24 hours.
I’m also not the greatest at promoting the Kickstarter. Asking for money has always made me feel uncomfortable. I find it much easier to throw the link out
there into the void of Twitter and Facebook than ask individuals if they would
donate. I know that 1st time kickstarters
get 80% to 90% of their funds from people they know. I just feel super uncomfortable with directly
guilt tripping my friends and family into giving me money. Especially since most of them aren’t comic
fans so the rewards are not something they will enjoy.
I also have periods of thinking that all I’m offering is really
cool art and a mediocre story at best. I
know this is my depression talking. In
my moments of clarity I know that the story is solid and the dialog is actually
funny at times. Know this because there
have been some people who read the book wrote in to tell as much. How did
anyone get a copy of the book to have written? Because I took it to Space!
Thing 2 - SPACE
One reason there was time constraint of the Kickstarter was
because I wanted it to coincide with the Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo(http://www.backporchcomics.com/space.htm). My sister, Kat LoGrande, and I split a table
at this years show. I wanted to make a special
edition that was exclusive to SPACE. My hope was the between the promo cards
and comics sold I would drum up a big bump in donations to the Kickstarter.
First off let me tell you I had a blast at this year’s
SPACE. It was almost everything I wanted
in a Con. Our table neighbor was Jack
Wallace of Disposable Fiction. I’ve know
Jack for years via email and have done a bunch of lettering for him. You should check out his stuff at http://www.disposablefictioncomics.com/index.html
It was amazing to meet him in person and we got along swimmingly. It's always a fear when you meet people in
person after only knowing them online, that you only work as online
friends. I was super luckily that wasn’t
the case with Jack or with Joel Cramer (http://www.joelcramercomics.com/) another creator that I knew only online . In fact all or the creators were
awesome. I was able to reconnect with David Branstetter (http://strawmancomics.com/) and became fast friends with Kuroitenshi (http://kuroitenshi.com/).
The comradery and creative spirit was fantastic. So many great creators all in one room celebrating
their love of comics and showing off their creations. What more could you ask
for? Attendees, that what you could ask for more of, Attendees. I don't know if it was the change in venue or
change in date ( SPACE was originally set to be in April but when their original
location closed suddenly it had to be moved to a new spot and to July) but
there really wasn't much of a crowd.
I was able to make sales and actually had a pretty high sell
rate per person I talked to. Unfortunately
I really didn't talk to a lot of people that were not also Exhibitors. I joked that the same $20 traveled around the
con each person selling to the next. I
would still do it in a heartbeat, I just kind of wish I didn't get so many exclusive
SPACE editions of the comic printed.
Here was my brilliant idea, I would offer a special
pre-release version of the comic that you could only get at SPACE. The fact that it was an exclusive would be a
selling point. Although to be honest,
Kelsea’s art is the best selling point.
It worked for the people I actually got to talk to. But now I have box of comics I really don’t
feel great about selling, because if I did sell these comics elsewhere, I kind
of feel like I was lying at SPACE. But I
don’t have any problems giving these away.
If you want a chance to win a copy of the SPACE exclusive edition. Go to the website for the comic and subscribe
to the newsletter. You'll see the
subscribe button on right hand side of the main page. I'll pick a winner or winners if we get
enough entries once our Kickstarter ends.
Like I was saying I loved SPACE and will absolutely want to
do it next year. I just need to temper
my expectations and realize that I'm going for fun more than sales. Hopefully next year I'll have both.
Thing 3 – Day Job
Not to go into too much details, but sufficient to say my
plate is super full at work. I have a
tone of stuff that needs to get done and done now. This is sucking up any leftover energy from
the Kickstarter. Running low on spoons.
Thing 4 – Health stuff
I’m broken in a ton of ways.
Long time reads know this. I go
to the doctors all the time. Some doctor’s
office are great for being productive, but most aren't.
Thing 5 – The Writing Group
I love my writing group. They are amazing people. The two
times we meet each month are some of the highlights of each and every
month. Earlier this year I had the brilliant
idea to produce a ‘zine with everyone contributing a short story 7,000 words or
less. Wouldn't you know the deadline I
set all those month ago would coincide with my Kickstarter perfectly? I've been try to read everyone submission and
getting everything organized, but fitting it in with everything else has been a
challenge to say the least. And to top
it off the internet at my house died last night. I'll be internet free until Friday night, I
hope. Friday morning Verizon is meant to come and fix it. I’m posting this thanks to the free Wi-Fi at
Wegmans. I have been getting stuff
together for this project slow, but it is moving and I hope to make a big push
tonight and this weekend.
Well that enough for now. Remember the Kickstarter can be found at www.tal-nor.com/ks Please donate, even if
it’s just $1 every bit helps. Also
passing it along to those that you think might like comics is a big help too. We have preview of the first eight pages on our site at www.tal-nor.com
Until next time, keep making things.
T.
