Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, kickstarter

Murder & Midnight: Book One

Writer – Jon Eastman. Artist – David Ward. Letterer – Kelly Eastman. Kickstarter ends Sunday 9/21/2014 at 9:00PM PST. Books are scheduled to ship in January of 2015.

Jon Eastman writes,

Murder & Midnight is a fantasy graphic novel trilogy about a man named Raith who travels to a remote island at the fringes of the known world, his only companions his two black birds. All Raith wants is a chance at a fresh start, and he gets his wish when he meets a young girl and her uncle who offer him a peaceful existence on their farm. It seems like a fairytale life, but no matter how hard Raith tries to deny fate, the sickness that weakens his body, the secrets that haunt his dreams, and the ancient magic that tears at his soul all converge to force him toward a dark destiny tainted by regret, madness, pain, and worse…

Our Kickstarter for Murder & Midnight: Book One ends Sunday at 9:00PM (PST), so we're in the final hours! The campaign is to raise funds to print a beautiful quality, 144 page hardcover edition of the book. Thus far, we've been lucky enough to make the minimum goal for funding! (big yay) And we've hit one of two stretch goals as well. Maybe more before the end?

This is my second Kickstarter. The first was for my alternate history, Arthurian dieselpunk-ish series, 13 Legends. I learned a lot about how Kickstarter worked from that experience.

Scratch that… I leaned a lot about how Kickstarter worked back in 2012 from that experience. And many things have changed in the interim.

The fact that Kickstarter is no longer vetting projects added to the fact that they've opened the doors to creators in Canada, the UK and Australia means… there's a TON of material to sift through. Crowdfunding is more crowded than ever! Even if a project has merit and does everything right in terms of networking, info design, price points, has a great video etc… if you're not a household name (in comics, that is) and bringing your copious numbers of fans with you to the site – you might find it pretty tough.

I feel really lucky that a small community of awesome supporter (many on twitter) have taken up the cause of spreading the word about Murder & Midnight, because, without that, I don't think we'd have made the goal yet (or perhaps at all).

So maybe not that much has really changed after all? The same rules hold true, it's just that now, ignore a few of them, and your chances of success drop dramatically lower.

I think that the days of the half-hearted kickstarters with terrible concepts, lackluster layouts, unfathomably bad videos, and rewards that nobody wanted – the days of these types of campaigns making their goals… yeah…. that time has passed. (oh please, let it have passed)

These days, you need to think as comprehensively as possible. You need a great concept, a story that people want told, excellent art (or at least art that fits the tone of what you're going for), above average video editing chops, savvy marketing, PR, social media etc… basically you need to be good at a ton of areas that have very different skill sets. Or you need friends who will to work for free. Or you need to be rich…. but then you don't need kickstarter, right?

And the glossy sheen of novelty that crowdfunding had a few years ago feels like it's worn away, revealing indifference, and sometimes outright cynicism.

So my advice is be your own harshest critic about your material before even thinking of running a crowdsourcing campaign. It's a crazy amount of work in all areas, and should only be considered if you're willing to face it with a smile. And most importantly, for a project that deserves all that effort.

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