In 2018, I ran a Kickstarter for $13,000. I was an experienced KS creator and had meticulously planned the campaign. Unfortunately, outside factors forced me to cancel it 3 weeks in and (successfully) relaunch shortly after.
It’s been 3 years and I want to talk about it!

This campaign was for the first printing of AD Volume 2 and the second printing of AD Volume 1. I planned to launch on 4/4, a holiday in the comic's world, and finish on 5/4, the day before my birthday.

Launching KS at the beginning of the month is tricky, because most people are short on spending money (1st paycheck of the month typically goes towards rent, bills etc.) But it was a fun tie in. Readers were excited! I spent the end of March hunkered down working on the campaign.

Unbeknownst to me, there was drama going on at KS. The new comics outreach person was exposed as a scam artist and fired before they started the job. This left the comics section of KS completely uncurated for weeks.
More on that in a bit.

So the campaign launches at midnight and by the end of the day, we’re only at 23% funded. Rule of thumb is that you want to be 33% funded by the first day, or else you’re in for an uphill battle. Say I’ll roll with it, but Internally I was freaking out and knew it was over.

2 days in, I learned about the comics outreach drama and I kinda knew it was already over. A feature from KS does WONDERS for new readers and backers and can make or break a project. But the same featured project sat there for weeks after its campaign ended. Everyone floundered.

I worked MoCCA Fest and cried in Central Park. Clearly, my career was over. :, D I tried to keep a positive front so no one would see how bad the situation was, which was a bad idea. Later I found out one of my friends was calling me a greedy bitch behind my back (lol? Lol!)

I completely sold out of books at MoCCA, making the pressure to restock my books even greater! The campaign was starting to get its footing, raising about $4k by the end of the first week. I was feeling a little better, especially after some positive press.

On 4/9, the campaign started to plateau. People were backing out while trying to get me to send them higher tier rewards they weren’t actually backing for. Of all the campaigns I’ve done, this one had the snottiest ppl I’ve ever dealt with. Maybe larger $ goals brings them out??

I did a bunch of live events and we FINALLY got half way funded by the middle of the second week! I was cautiously optimistic. I was also run completely ragged. I was making videos and art and commissions while working a full-time job and preparing for upcoming conventions.

By the 3rd week, we were around $9k. But as we approached the beginning of the next month, people started dropping out. They needed to use their money for household expenses, which is what you gamble when you launch at the beginning of the month. It went back into the $8.5k range

I knew we weren’t going to make the goal. At this point it was a matter of pride. Did I want to have a canceled campaign? Or did I want to have a campaign that didn’t reach funding.

KS Creators pride themselves on having perfect track records with their campaigns. They use it to advertise themselves and to show how respectful and responsible they are to their peers.
I took a shot and I missed.
I’d rather have it canceled on my own terms than fail.

So I canceled the campaign. I wrote up an update explaining the situation and told backers that I would relaunch in May.

((The next day I found out I didn’t get into an art residency, so you can imagine how GREAT I felt. :, D ))

Absolutely no exaggeration, I wandered around Manhattan in the rain for hours. :, D

The day after my rainy sulk, I got back to work.
I sat in a cafe at Astor Place and recorded my Kickstarter video in public with 0 fucks given. There was one one some NYU girl looking at me over her bagel. 0. Fucks.

I relaunched on May 1st with a much more manageable goal of $4,000. This was just enough to print Volume 2 and a small amount of Volume 1. It left basically no wiggle room. Ultimately, the campaign raised over $7000 and was a featured project several times over.

The campaign was funded and successful within hours. Soon KS had a brand new wonderful comics outreach person who began curating the comics and illustration section again. Everything changed after that.

So, that’s the history. What did I learn from it?

1) You can't plan for everything, but you must pay attention.

I have a habit of staying off social media when I'm neck-deep in a project. But if I had been on comics twitter the last week of March, I would have seen the discourse with my own 2 eyes. If I'd waited on the launch--

--by 3 weeks, I would have been in better shape. The section was being curated again, features were being doled out. Also, the project would have launched and been funded in the 2nd half of the month, when ppl have more entertainment/spending money.

2) KS Launch time is crucial

Never launch at the beginning of the month UNLESS your project only runs for 2-3 weeks, thus ending in the 2nd half of the month. Launch around 10 on a weekday, it gets the most eyes on your project. Never launch at midnight.

3) If you do literally everything yourself, you will burn out.

I'm the writer/artist/distribution/social media team. I have no one to fall back on. Because I have to be everything, a smaller campaign is more manageable.

4) The larger the campaign, the less you're serving your homegrown audience and the more you're a customer service rep.

Random people will be mean to you because they can be and have no attachment to you, your work, or any understanding of how crowdfunding works.

5) The more $ you seek to raise, the more everyone wants to know your financial situation & be REAL WEIRD about it.
Completely separately from my KS, on 5/4 I paid off my car loan. Ppl made comments about this-- like if i had money to do THAT why was I asking for $13k for comics?

An evergreen comment--- your personal finances are your business and no one else's. And vice versa.

Even small creators like me have separate business finances.

6) A failed/canceled campaign doesn't mean you're a failure.

This is hard pill to swallow, especially if you're like me and beat yourself up a lot. But it's the truth. And anyone who ignores an otherwise unblemished track record has issues they need to work out

IN FACT. In some kind of cosmic irony, my 1 failed campaign juxtaposed against 9 successful ones made me the subject of a video about running successful campaigns and bouncing back.

7) Be gracious and thankful for your supporters.

I'm always so thankful for my readers. I think my work mostly attracts nice people, because everyone was so sweet to me when I canceled the campaign and so supportive when I relaunched. It made everything a lot easier. Thank you.

8) Raise your goals in smaller increments.

This isn't evergreen, but it might be helpful for indie wonder kids who have a growing following but are still ~the whole team~

Generally speaking, jumping from $3K goals to $13k goals is hard to adjust to financially and socially.

Unless your audience has grown literally exponentially since your last campaign, that's a huge jump. Dedicated readers will have extra financial stress and you'll be singing and dancing to casual readers who probably won't back anyway.

If I'd launched this campaign at a better time (middle of the month, 10 am, when someone was curating the comics section) I think it would have been successful. I'd probably still have copies of AD vol. 1&2. It probably would have still been a huge struggle and just been funded.

But hey, you live and learn!

That's my major take away from this project. I lived it, I learned from it, in the end everything was fine.

My pride hurt for a bit, but then I got right back to it.

I ran 2 successful campaigns back 2 back, bringing in over $9,000 by that July.

Oh! I wanted to add something!

Why did I ask for so much money???
Well, supply couldn’t meet demand. I needed to order more books to meet demand, but my printer was at their limit. I had to look overseas, which costs significantly more.

I had an unusual situation where my online fandom and convention fandom were almost completely separate. The Venn diagram of these two groups barely overlapped. My intention was to order enough books to satisfy online demand and real life demand.

Ultimately, I did that by holding lots of smaller kickstarters. Eventually I raised closer to $34,000 to print my books.

But I wanted to do it the business smart way. I wanted to have thousands of books upfront rather than always be reordering.

This is a problem that many smaller creators face. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a solution for my books problem yet. I’m still always sold out and doing reorders.

USPS knows me as the comic book girl because they deliver so many boxes of books to my house :, D