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It occurred to us that we should break down the #accounting that applies to our @Kickstarter campaign for William Robertson and @LapkoYulia’s TheGlassWall, which can be seen here: http://spengu.in/GlassWallKs #Crowdfunding #Comics #Publishing
We’ve seen other campaigns where the goal is to raise just enough money to fund production. Laudable, but doesn’t seem to provide any money for the creators. Presumably once printing costs are covered, creators will share in the proceeds of sales. But this isn’t clearly stated.
Paying our creators, however, is the main goal of our campaign. We’ve seen from the survey creators by (still) #ComicsLaureate @streakofpith that most creators make very little, if anything, from their efforts: http://hannahberry.co.uk/survey/ #artsfunding #arts
We’re trying to develop a new business model that will allow us as #publishers, to pay a reasonable lump sum UP FRONT to creators. Certainly, that’s what we set out as our goal in our earlier press release: https://www.soaringpenguinpress.com/news/soaring-penguin-press-switch-to-a-crowdfunding-business-model/
Below is the specific calculation. We should note our calculations are based on printing only 1000 copies of the trade edition. Obviously the various tier rewards have an impact.
We set out a goal of £6000. Cost of printing and shipping runs about £1950. Admin and marketing are set at £975. Which leaves £3075. Our plan is to pay £2000 to the creators, leaving us with just over £1000.
(We should mention that @Kickstarter and the Stripe payment gateway will take about 10% off the top. So if we reach £6000, they’ll take £600. So our £1k looks a lot more like £400.)
We appreciate that £2000, as nice as it is, is nowhere near a decent payment for a 128-page #graphicnovel.
However, with the printing costs now covered, every subsequent sale is pure profit, whether it’s directly from our website ( http://www.soaringpenguinpress.com , as you were about to ask) or through our distributors (where we get about 25-30% of cover).
If we split that with our creators, the balance of the print run could bring in a payment to them of as much as £6000. Not enough to compensate for their efforts, but much better than the traditional royalty model. #ukcomics
Obviously, we’d very much like to get that number higher, for ourselves, as well as for them. This is our first go at changing the paradigm; we’re learning as we go.
And this is why it’s so important that our @Kickstarter campaigns succeed: we need to show that it’s possible to pay the creators of comics an actual supportive wage. #Comicart #comicbook
We need more creators and fewer government campaigns encouraging creatives to give up their dreams and go into working in “cyber” #Fatima #SaveTheArtsUK
So, if you haven’t done so already, please visit our campaign http://spengu.in/GlassWallKs . We have a few sample pages to whet your appetite which may get you to put your hand in your pocket. It’s a terrific book by two wonderful, new creators #Arts #Funding
