Comixlaunch: Crowdfunding For Writers, Artists & Self-publishers On Kickstarter... And Beyond!

A ComixLaunch listener alerted Tyler to a sudden and suspicious proliferation of seemingly AI-Generated Comic Book Kickstarter projects that have appeared on the platform recently. After taking a look, it does indeed seem like something fishy is going on, and one or more actors have been able to get obviously soulless, fraudulent projects past the Kickstarter project screeners. In this session, Tyler shares signs of obviously fraudulent comic book Kickstarter projects, discuss the ramifications should projects like this proliferate on Kickstarter, and offer advice on what legitimate creators should do now.

Commonwealth Comix co-founders Ryan Kroboth and John Endingfield II join Tyler for a discussion about their new partnership and collaboration on Wurst & Mayhem, a D&D style adventure comic. We'll talk about the evolution from friendship to creative partnership, the challenges and best practices for getting a new joint venture off the ground, and how much fun they're having on the new project!

Join us for a special panel on ComicTopia, the inaugural crowdfunding event hosted on BackerKit this month. The discussion features Lafayette Morrow from BackerKit, as well as creators including James Mascia of Dren Productions, writer Frank Martin, Joel Rodriguez of Metal Ninja Studios, and Eric Erdek, known for Espresso Detective. Lafayette provides an overview of BackerKit’s evolution from a crowdfunding support tool to a full-featured platform, emphasizing community engagement tools and their successful transition to hosting events like Pintopia and ComicTopia. Creators involved share insights on their current projects, their experiences with BackerKit’s platform, and unique event features such as cross-collaborations and the backer train feature. The discussion also touches on issues like handling mature content and strategies for successful crowdfunding.

In this episode of ComixLaunch, Tyler James interviews Christian Douglas, a Dublin-based writer and founder of Unpopular Comics. They discuss Christian's creative journey, his new Kickstarter campaign for 'Unpopular Tales 2: Pinochia, a cyberpunk retelling of the classic fairy tale, and the broader mission of Unpopular Comics to revitalize classic stories with modern twists.

For the past decade, illustrator Dave Swartz has moved from self-publishing, to pencil-for-hire, and back again. His current project, Confederate Monster is back on Kickstarter. In this conversation, he and Tyler will discuss the challenges and opportunities for comic book illustrators working in comics today.

In this session, Tyler will share his top insights from attending a presentation by Andrew Marks, director of Kickstarter's new Kickstarter Performance team, outlining what this new crowdfunding marketing service can do for creators, and answering questions from Kickstarter users.

The ComixLaunch Pro spotlight shines on writer and professor Will Allred, who shares lessons learned from his creative journey.

In this session, we'll break down the news that Kickstarter just pushed live a massive overhaul to how creators create and send shipping surveys to backers. In this session, we'll take a deep-dive into the new survey tool, and share the good, the bad, the confusing, and the ugly with this latest platform update.

For YEARS Kickstarter creators have been asking for abilities to easily copy info from past projects to new ones. It looks like Kickstarter has FINALLY taken a step in this direction, as creators can now copy rewards from past campaigns. Let's take a deep-dive into this new feature to see if it's everything creators have been asking for.

With his first novella ready to launch, writer James Powell is considering experimenting with a shorter than average Kickstarter launch… much shorter! A mastermind roundtable of veteran creators discuss James' launch plan, and share pros and cons of ultra short launches.

Sarah Cooke has successfully launched 3 projects on Kickstarter for her series "No Spell Lasts Forever." Now she's in the process of working on a additional projects that she'd like to launch in the not-to-distant future. That means running more campaigns each year. How can she best grow her crowdfunding project output without being overly demanding of my audience? A mastermind roundtable of veteran creators help Sarah get her head around launching more.

After a lot of success serializing his series Night Wolf on Kickstarter, Rob Multari thinks he's finally ready to distribute through Diamond Distribution to get his books into comic book shops. The problem? How to deal with the upfront funding costs associated with direct market distribution? Tyler and a roundtable of comic creators brainstorm options in this mastermind style session.

Pull up a chair and join an all-star crew of creators as mastermind season of the ComixLaunch podcast returns! As he attempts to move toward being a full-time creator, writer Caleb Palmquist is struggling to find a balance between the things that inspires him as a creator and what the market responds best to on Kickstarter. A roundtable of talented creators dive deep into this vexing challenge that most creators wrestle with.

Kickstarter has rolled out its new "late pledges" feature for all creators... and we now have answers to some of the biggest questions we've had about how late pledges will work! (It's different than you might have assumed.) In this session, we'll break down the new feature and share some best practices for how to use it.

Let's get you caught up on a quick scan of recent comic book and crowdfunding news that ComixLaunch listeners should know about, including Diamond Comics distributors entry into the crowdfunding fulfillment game, as well as recent trends and announcement from Kickstarter.

Get to know award-winning author Brian J. Lambert, as he chats with ComixLaunch's Clay Adams, spotlighting his journey raising over $100,000 in funding on Kickstarter, and decision to join the ComixLaunch Pro program to take his campaigns to new heights.

There's buzz that a crackdown is coming (or is it already here) on the not safe for work (NSFW) spicy comics space, which has become one of the most dominant genres in crowdfunding. Let's discuss!

UK comic creator Will Robson returns to the ComixLaunch Podcast to share what he's learned serializing OUTBREAKS, "The Only Ongoing Zombie Anthology Comic" on Kickstarter over the past year. He and Tyler will discuss the state of crowdfunding in 2024 and topics related to freelancing in comics and living your best creative life.

Kickstarter announced this morning that it will be unlocking a LATE PLEDGES feature soon for all Kickstarter campaigns. Here's an instant reaction discussing the details, pros, cons, questions, and implications.

Writer Jack Harris Jr, creator of Terminus Veil and Clash Digital Publishing is featured in this month's ComixLaunch Pro spotlight. In this session, you'll hear how Jack founded his publishing company on three key principles, which are high quality artwork, diverse characters from different backgrounds, and explosive, thrilling action. His first campaign for Terminus Veil volume 1 delivered all of the above--plus $16k in funding!