Getting Readers to Try Something New... When It's No Longer Exactly New

A few thoughts on serializing comics over the long term.

There are a ton of advantages to crowdfunding an ongoing, long running series like SINK…

• You have an existing fanbase and customers excited about the new launch and ready to come out again.

• Any reviews, critical acclaim, and team accomplishments accrue over time. Once an award-winning series, always an award-winning series!

• You know what that fanbase likes and can give your fans more of what they’ve bought in the past.

• You can reuse proven marketing assets (images, taglines, ads, social media contest, etc.) to sell the new campaign with minimal revision.

• You have a backlist of product (past comics, trades, merch) etc. that has already been created that you can sell in the new campaign, which raises the average pledge level and the overall profitability of campaigns.

It’s for these reasons and more that I have long said serialization is one of the best ways to start your crowdfunding career… stick with one project and keep launching!

And yet, there are some challenges that ongoing series have.

First, there is always something special about something NEW. Many comic fans LOVE the idea of getting in on the ground floor with a brand new series, rather than being late to the party.

Second, and this is something that a lot of loooong running series are facing, is that it can be tougher to get new readers on board in the middle of run if the costs of the catch-up tiers are too high.

Take SINK for example. To get ALL caught up on SINK, which is now starting its fourth volume, you would need to read 15 issues of the main series and a 64 page original graphic novella DIG: A Sink Tale #1. One, that’s a time commitment, and not every reader wants to sign up for that journey. Two, that’s a financial commitment. Now, we’ve done our best to help by condensing the catch up bundle into just THREE TRADES (available in both economical softcovers as well as premium hardcovers ) plus the new issue.

But even in an economical softcover with a discount, that catch up tier is going to run at least $100… which can be a lot for an on-the fence potential new backer to drop just to get caught up on a new series they may not be 100% sure that they’ll love.

SO, WHAT’S A PUBLISHER TO DO ABOUT IT?

While there are no perfect answers to these challenges and nothing that can be done to make a long-running series brand new again, there are a few things that CAN be done to help lower the barriers to entry to new backers.

For example, finding NEW ENTRY POINTS to your long-running series can be a great way to bring aboard new readers.

For SINK, during our last volume, we were able to add “VAMPIRE” to the branding because volume 3 focused around the Scottish legend of the Gorbals Vampire, which seemed to bring in some new readers.

And for the this new issue, we’re centering it as a love-letter to Halloween and a clean jumping on point for any fans of October 31… not just SINK. The Halloween Horror Movie homage covers also helped reinforce the “if you like that, try this…” appeal. And timing it with the actual Halloween seasons does seem to have paid off, as we’ve added over 100 new backers this launch so far.

And then there’s the issue of the price points barriers to entry. Physical rewards have real costs, not just when purchasing the books, but also the cost of storage, transporting, and more. This makes deep discounting on Kickstarter and other places challenging, and not great business sense for indie, craft comic brands. However, DIGITAL does give more flexibility.

For example here in the home stretch of this current Kickstarter campaign, for SINK, we’ve just made the first 160-page digital volume (SINK #1-5) available at a 75%-off discount. (JUST $5!)

And we’ve paired that with a JUST ANNOUNCED 500 BACKER DIGITAL BONUS of 10 downloadable comics from the ComixTribe archive AND from some of our hardworking indie comic pals that are on-brand appropriate not just for SINK but for HALLOWEEN!

Sometimes to get the fence-sitters off the fence, you need to make a DEAL TOO GOOD TO REFUSE!

We’ll see how this limited time, ends at midnight Halloween offer goes over…

IN THE COMMENTS… What other ideas have you seen that help get NEW READERS into long running series?