“This is the end, my only friend … Of our elaborate plans, the end.” - The Doors

Thank you, Jim. And welcome, friends, to Before You Launch That Kickstarter! For this piece, I’ll discuss the results of our latest KS endeavor, Mission to Print: The Art of Hotel Whiskey Tango.

In summary, we came up short. Over the course of 45 days, 82 beautiful people pledged to help us reach 71% of our target goal. Before I get into what worked and what didn’t, a sincere thanks to each and every person who supported the effort!

So what worked? With 82 backers pledging more than $3,500, I’d argue we did at least a few things right - here they are:

• Social Media: Without flooding timelines or begging, we reached out to friends, family, and colleagues and invited them to look at our cooking. Over the course of time, we tweeted and shared, mindful to include notable milestones or special offers but careful to not to inundate. The response was amazing. 

• Networking and Outreach: Our team did a good job of creating awareness for our project through networks but more importantly, via folks we didn’t know. Mission to Print was picked up by CoolHunting New Orleans, invadeNOLA, Silicon Bayou News and Comics Beat. We even scored a Kickstarter staff pick! For all the doors we knocked on, did everyone answer? Aw, hell no <enter Samual L. Jackson audio clip here>! Earning pub is a lot like sales (and baseball) - you won’t hit it often but you have to keep swinging.  

• Merch Assortment: From original works of art to custom apparel, it’s evident we offered desirable merchandise as rewards for pledging. From the least to most expensive, backers sought after 100% of the items offered. Mix it up!

• Visual Appeal: Today, folks are facing multimedia overload. From Bad Piggies to Netflix’s bad assortment of movies, competition for attention is fierce. If you’re lucky enough to have someone click-through to your project, have something waiting that’s compelling. We took added time and expense to produce legit photos and videos and used them to tell our story. What’s your story?

Now that back-patting is complete, what could we’ve done better?

• Duration: Remember The Tortoise and the Hare? Where slow and steady won the race? We experienced a steady pace of support and pledges for which we are grateful. Unfortunately, the clock simply ran out on us. For your Kickstarter project, consider the distance and how long you can afford to run. If there’s no need to rush, then don’t. 

• Goal Setting: Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing proposition. Hit pay-dirt or sleep with the fishes. Was our goal of $5,000 to high? Negative. It’s what we needed to accomplish what we set out to do: print and distribute a tangible compliment to the digital graphic novel, Hotel Whiskey Tango. Why bring it up? While “greed is good” according to Gordon Gekko, don’t get greedy. Get what you need.

• Purpose: Perhaps we took our eye off the ball. For all the things we did right - social media, networking, earning media - we could have done a better job of communicating the purpose of the project. While we love new media and digital books, we (and countless others) also value art in traditional forms - that’s what Mission to Print was all about. There are heated debates going on about the future of books, whether or not the printed kind is on its way to pasture. We could have seized the opportunity to befriend print-defenders and art advocates to generate additional support for our Mission. 

After all was said and done, and although we fell short, there was something more we could do. Stacked neatly in a corner at our Epilogue headquarters sat a lot of rewards already bought and paid for.

“Why not send this anyway?” asked artist in residence, Ron Domingue. ”Why not send this to our backers as a measure of goodwill?” 

And so we have. And so should you. Whatever it is, give your very best. 

Before You Launch That Kickstarter! is an ongoing series about the Kickstarter experience, written by Marc-Alain Reviere. You’re invited to frequent this blog for tips, lessons and amusing anecdotes. 

Welcome to Before You Launch That Kickstarter! This week I’m writing about risks and rewards. I’ll share my real-time KS experience while touching on purchase decisions, demand planning and the importance of having a backup plan. Here we go!

A Smart Buy?

In my last entry, I mentioned the toilet paper tussle. My girlfriend prefers buying in bulk  to save money while I’m content with purchasing as needed. So who’s right and how does this relate to any Kickstarter project?

From a purchase decision standpoint, I’ll have to concede that my girl is right. We have extra space at home (no storage cost), the product will be used (certain demand) and we’ll save dinero in the long run. Still, the best reason to buy big (think of your Kickstarter here) is because there’s little financial risk involved; parting with a Jackson won’t bust us nor prevent us from purchasing other products.

Takeaway: While the analogy is crappy, flush risks not resources. Buy big when forecasted demand is strong but leave room in the cart for other items.

Plan B (As in Backup)

For our project, Mission to Print, we decided to diversify the breadth of our rewards with vinyl records. In doing so, we assumed considerable risks. That’s because records are expensive to press (cost of goods sold), order fulfillment takes time (committed capital) and record players aren’t exactly as popular as iPods (uncertain demand). Although our project still has 25 days to go, demand is weak and the records are moving about as fast as cold molasses. So was this a poor purchase decision? Should we have used those funds to offer something else? The short answers are (1) I don’t know, (2) it depends and (3) time will tell.

Fortunately, we considered this scenario in advance and developed backup plans. Right now, we’re moving to give away portions of inventory to musicians who contributed to the record. Doing so will enable the artists to generate new revenues (on tour and through their websites) and expose us to new markets and potential customers. Records will have stickers referencing Mission to Print and our digital publishing company, Epilogue (cross promotion), and include free digital downloads redeemable exclusively through Epilogue’s website (drive traffic). Finally, we’re planning a social media push to slash the record price for those who share or retweet Mission to Print on Facebook and Twitter. 

Takeaway: Whatever you set out to engineer, plan to leverage leftovers creatively. Generate ideas and build value into other projects. 

Next Week: What to do when the clock is ticking and you’re halfway there: promotions, networking and modeling success. 

Before You Launch That Kickstarter! is an ongoing series about the Kickstarter experience, written by Marc-Alain Reviere. Please visit this blog weekly for tips, lessons and amusing anecdotes.

Kickstarter is the world’s largest funding platform for creative projects and you’re ready to get in on the action. But how does one kickstart a Kickstarter? While I can’t say I have all the answers, I can share the experience (as it happens) of launching one project, Mission to Print: The Art of Hotel Whiskey Tango, so that you might gain some insight before launching your own. To start, I’ll skip the minutia (like Kickstarter’s builder template for customizing every aspect of your project) and touch on big-picture items I think are more important.

Clarity: What the F is this KS about?

Remember that clarity is power and Kickstarter is like any other digital consumable. In order to compete for attention and eyeballs (and wallets), you have to make an impact. Make sure your copy is clean, your images are stunning and your rewards are desirable. It’s similar (but different) to that old line sung by Wille Nelson, “If you got the money honey, I got the time!” The difference is, this audience doesn’t have the time.

Takeaway: Sing your song but make sure the diddy is short and sweet for someone to give a damn (or a dime).

Outsource Everything

A while back, a friend told me about a best-selling writer or business person who said, “outsource everything.” I don’t need to know who he is or what she wrote to ponder and appreciate that for a minute. For Mission to Print, we worked with freelancers and on-demand vendors to bolster the appeal and breadth of our reward packages.

Use your network to find talented and always-hungry artists to produce your video or design apparel. Ask a friend who knows the local music scene to put you in touch with an up-and-coming band like The Viatones. You can pay for music rights to enhance the quality of your video, for example.

If you experience difficulties writing copy, there are simple and affordable ways to get quality, custom content. One option, Zerys, is designed specifically for content projects and is a writer marketplace with thousands of professional, freelance writers.

Takeaway: Save time and create a better project by outsourcing. 

Rewards, Risks and Decisions

There’s little chance of hitting your funding goal unless you offer desirable rewards. To get it right, you need to think about the person who might support your project, who they are and what they like. Find demographic data and develop a backer profile before you establish your offering. Then, sharpen your pencil and break out the calculator. It’s time to review costs, margins and everything else you loved about Accounting 101. Skip this exercise if you must, just know that some people actually manage to lose money on their project because they didn’t flex their critical thinking skills. 

Let’s say you choose to offer an art book for a reward. If your cost is $12, pricing the book for $20 should be all-good right? Not necessarily. Ask yourself: How will the book get to the backer and where does the backer live? It may cost $2 to ship each book to your office, and then cost $10 more to send it to a backer living in Toronto. In this scenario, pricing the art book at $20 results in a net loss of $4 for the pledge. So how do you solve this problem? You could certainly raise the price for the book or maybe you could … buy in bulk???

I’m a man, and I detest shopping. I really detest shopping when my girlfriend drags me with her because, inevitably, we get to arguing about toilet paper. No, we don’t fuss about ply-count or which way the ribbon should hang when we get home. We argue about how much we need to buy. I always want to grab the two dollar 4-pack (and get the hell out of there) but she’s won’t have it. Her preference is to buy in bulk as part of some “spend-to-save” logic that’s hard for me to grasp. Silly as it sounds, this dilemma has everything to do with your Kickstarter project.  

Next Week: What’s better? Buying big to reduce average unit cost or purchasing as needed, even if it costs more? Learn how to gauge demand and reduce the risk of buying unnecessary inventory. 

Before You Launch That Kickstarter! is an ongoing series about the Kickstarter experience, written by Marc-Alain Reviere. Please visit this blog weekly for tips, lessons and amusing anecdotes.

The knee jerk reaction when many comic creators read or heard about the Terms of Agreement for using iBooks Author to publish books was that your content would be exclusive to the iPad and subject to a separate agreement with Apple. During the early stages of creating Epilogue, our publishing label, and Hotel Whiskey Tango we wanted to publish the book through Kindle Direct Publishing; however, the desire to make it illustrated and the numbers behind the iPad were growing exponentially and quickly releasing HWT for the iPad became our primary focus.

It’s no understatement to say comics are going through an era of digital disruption and comics face the interesting challenge of being a niche market that hasn’t quite embraced digital as much as their other print counterparts. Our initial thought was that maybe we can release HWT as app and explored using Adobe Desktop Publishing Solution as another option for authoring a graphic novel but it was simply cost prohibitive when it comes to server charges and service fees on top of the Apple 30% tax. iBooks Author is free software and free to publish to iBooks Author using iTunes Producer as long as you purchased your ISBN numbers (you can buy a group 10 for $250 c.f. $395 for just the single edition license of Adobe DPS). If we were a traditional print magazine publisher who used InDesign into our common workflow then Adobe DPS might have made more sense.

Furthermore, Apple has provided an infrastructure for independent writers and artists an entry point to distribute their work without much development knowledge and as much simplicity as putting together a Keynote presentation. Much of the complaining stems from the inability to migrate the same functionality to other devices using iBooks Author, namely the Kindle Fire, but when you think about it — there really isn’t a “tablet” market — there’s currently only an iPad market with currently over 60 million iPads sold and over 90% of the current tablet market.

The ability to add music, movies, and interactive with iBooks Author also provide a more immersive reading experience beyond the normal ebook. It also allows Epilogue to extend its content beyond graphic novels into music and potentially film. It’s not a perfect authoring environment but iBooks Author gives us a distribution channel within the iBooksStore without many obstacles. iBooks Author ultimately helped with our vision of what we wanted HWT to be.