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Thursday, December 13, 2012

Comic Books To Be or Not to Be: That Is the Adventure Breaks Kickstarter Publishing Records

Posted by Alison Hallett on Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 11:29 AM

[Disclaimer: I know my co-workers disapprove of posting Kickstarter campaigns on Blogtown—but Kickstarter has become a significant force in publishing, particularly comics publishing. So screw 'em.]

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I've pledged to a few Kickstarters in my day, and I'm not sure ever seen a campaign that's as much fun as Ryan North's attempt to fund a Choose Your Own Adventure-style version of Hamlet. I've certainly never been part of one that's as successful: As of today, North's officially got the most-funded publishing project on Kickstarter—and there's still a week to go.

From an initial goal of 20k, North's raised over $335,000—with each new goal, he unlocks new rewards, like releasing new artists to provide illustrations for the book, adding an ebook prequel and then a hard copy version of the prequel, and donating copies of the book to libraries and schools. Plus, with every 5k raised, he releases another chapter of the book and lets Kickstarter contributors vote on which director the story will go—which means I actually look forward to getting emails from his Kickstarter campaign. I donated $60, and look how much cool stuff I get! Also, I'm a good person, because he's donating all proceeds from the book to the Canadian Cancer Society (info that's now scrubbed from the Kickstarter page proper, as it apparently violates their TOS to mention charitable donations during the fundraising phase). North has even factored in holiday gift giving: One tier unlocks an e-card you can send to the book's intended recipient.

On a more local note, I just threw some money at a comics anthology called The Big Feminist BUT that asks creators to share what feminism means to them these days—the title is kind of glib and terrible, but I was persuaded by an excellent excerpt by Lauren Weinstein that Bitch Magazine posted yesterday. Plus, you can't argue with a fantastic contributors list that includes Hope Larson, Gabrielle Bell, Jeffrey Brown, io9's Charlie Jane Anders, and Jen Wang, plus Portlanders including Bitch editor Andi Zeisler, Jesse Reklaw, and the late Dylan Williams of Sparkplug Comics.

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