7 Things Holding Comic Creators Back
As we get ready to launch on Kickstarter again, it's always good to reflect on the challenges creators face before crowdfunding...
Late last year, I surveyed a few hundred comic book creators, in an attempt to get my finger on the pulse of the state of comics and crowdfunding from the creator’s perspective. I did a similar survey back in 2016, and was curious what has changed and what’s stayed the same some eight years later.
I’ve only just started diving into the data, but one of the first questions, I was interested in answering was, for the creators who still have yet to launch a project on Kickstarter… what’s holding them back?
As someone who is getting ready to hit the Kickstarter launch button for the 34th time since 2012, it can be easy to forget what it was like BEFORE launching that first campaign. In reviewing the survey responses, here were the top seven things creators without Kickstarter experience said they were lacking that stood in the way of them launching a project on Kickstarter:
The 7 Biggest Things Holding Comic Book Creators Back from Launching Their First Kickstarter Campaign:
#1: Lack of Time
#2: Lack of Confidence
#3: Lack of Knowledge
#4: Lack of Money
#5: Lack of Support
#6: Lack of an Audience
#7: Lack of Motivation
On the latest episode of my podcast, I dive deep into each of these, and also share some thoughts on how to battle back against each of them.
But a couple things that struck me about this list of 7 things holding creators back…
First, just about every creator who launches a project on Kickstarter probably is also battling one or more of the above. When I think back to that first Kickstarter launch, I had a lot of uncertainty around whether the audience was big enough to fund it, whether I had the time to juggle a full-time job/ my pending wedding / and massive Kickstarter project, and was certainly aware that there was a ton I didn’t know about fulfilling a large hardcover project.
So, the important thing to know is that waiting for those feelings of lack to go away isn’t a prerequisite to launching… because they might never go away! I know plenty of veteran crowdfunding creators who feel those same feelings of lack before, during and after even very successful launches. It’s part of being a human and a creator.
And that’s the second thing… those seven lacks aren’t just Kickstarter specific. Actually, they’re the most common seven reasons people will cite for why they haven’t achieved all sorts of goals in their life. They’re the universal things that holding all of us back from more.
There’s a great Vincent van Gogh quote, where he says, "I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it."
Know that every time a new project launches on Kickstarter, there are one or more creators behind that project who are probably battling a ton of negative feelings, anxieties, pressures, and more… and yet they are launching anyway!
SINK: MONSTERS LAUNCHES ON VALENTINE’S DAY
Speaking of, ComixTribe has a very special launch dropping on Valentine’s Day later this week for the latest installing of our longest, running, highest-selling series SINK from John Lees and Alex Cormack!
This campaign offers Vampire Variants, Connecting Cover Sets, New Trading Cards, Day One and Early Backer Bonuses and Some Highly Limited Premium Rewards Only on Kickstarter!
We’re trying to get to 450 pre-launch backers before we go live on Wednesday morning, so if you can, we’d love to have you hit our advanced notify pre-launch backer page!