Posted in: Comics | Tagged: comic, entertainment, Jonathan Rollins, kickstarter, Modern Arcana

The Arcana Of Crowd-Source Funding

Published Sat, 13 Sep 2014 14:00:41 -0500

Jonathan Rollins writes for Bleeding Cool:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/961207059/modern-arcana-volume-1

I want to tell you all the arcane secrets to getting a kickstarter successfully funded. And while editors decide the fate of this article I am at SPX (Small Press Expo) this weekend. Not as an exhibitor but as a fan. Of course most exhibitors are fans. These people who have enough passion and determination (or craziness and stubbornness) to pursue their dreams, usually without the help of a major publisher. People who make illustrated fiction because they love it (even though it doesn't support them), enjoy it (even when they pull their hair out over a deadline), and want to share it (often online for free). People who inspire.

My name is Jonathan and I just launched my first kickstarter campaign for the first two issues of my eight issue graphic novel Modern Arcana. I could run through my whole life story but you've heard all that before. All you really need to know is that I'm devoting part of my life to telling this story because I love it and I hope you will too.

Modern Arcana is an urban fantasy story about our civilizations struggle for balance between our technology and our humanity. The Internet has quickly become an integral part of our modern lives and yet, most of you reading this are probably older than the World Wide Web.

Even in a world full of celebrity & retail hacking, Prism scandals, big data, video surveillance, social media, digital piracy, the emerging Internet of Things, and a hundred other events, we are still in the pubescent stages of a daily evolving digital culture. Modern technology has put us on the path of becoming a more connected and less private species, which is neither good nor bad; it simply is. The problem is that some fear this connection so much that they try to control it instead of accepting it. The protagonist, Andre Dillon, is helping to anchor and safeguard our connection to what we are and what we choose to become.

I'm telling a type of story that I want to read so chances are there are other comic fans of science fiction and fantasy that will want to read it also. But this kickstarter has a ways to go before it is funded. It became a staff pick its second day, but does that mean it will succeed? I don't know. A lot of people who have posted about it seem to like it but will enough pledge to fund it? I don't know that either.

So, no, I don't have a digital grimoire filed away that will guarantee your, or my, kickstarter success. But what I do have as I look around at all these fans and creators, is faith. Faith that it can be done and a belief that if you want it, and do it, it will happen. They didn't give up. Neither should we.

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