Rainy Road Warrior Newsletter
Crowd-FUN-ding!
Warning: set your sarcasm detectors to low or else they might overload.
Putting together a crowdfunding campaign is such a joy! There’s so many wonderful aspects to it. From the Kickstarter design interface that’s more basic than a Web 1.0 page, to random crashes that cause you to exit the site then re-login, to reformatting your layout itself even after you’ve saved it, to artists that suddenly stop producing work because they just saw a sad cat, to spending hours creating promos that are completely ignored by everyone, to other creators acting like self-absorbed, arrogant, disingenuous asshats because they’re desperate to be big fish in this little pond we call comic books.
Oh, the joy!
Sorry. Just needed to get that out of my system. (Actually, there’s a lot more in my system but I’ll slash-and-burn later when the time comes so I can become the villain I was apparently fated to be.)
Brass Tacks
I’ve mentioned before that the strategy that helped me get the most campaign followers/backers was getting other campaigns to mention my campaign to their backers. I’ve contacted 13 campaigns so far and almost all of them have ignored me. One guy that did reply wanted a percentage of all my Kickstarter money raised in exchange. It didn’t make sense to me to give him access to all the money when the final tally wouldn’t have been solely due to him. But I’ll continue to reach out to other campaigns because if even one is willing, it could lead to some more backers. And just one backer can make all the difference.
I’ve also mentioned before that I’ll be creating pre-assembled “packs” as reward tiers instead of just relying on the add-on feature. Most of the items will still be available individually as an add-on but I don’t want to count on that as a way to raise the average backer pledge amount. And the packs will have a built-in discount over getting items individually.
I’ve separated the packs into digital, physical and combo (digital + physical). And each of those sets will have a basic, mega and ultra tier. So there will be a budget level, a mid-range level and a higher price level to appeal to the broadest audience.
In the next newsletter, I should have a preview version of the campaign that people can check out and give their feedback before it goes live.
EoD Preview Still Available!
In case anyone missed it in the last newsletter, here’s a link to a rough PDF preview of Epic of Darkness. It contains several pages from each story.
Note that in this preview, there is a story called “Roketto-Man” that’s in black and white but it will be in full color in the finished book. And, in case it’s not yet clear, these stories are for mature readers. So, if you’re uncomfortable with sex, nudity, foul language, violence, adult themes, etc, don’t look at it.
https://1drv.ms/b/s!AuLuDQeZqlmtjTAW3XhQ3hDolOwE?e=gU9mPr
The Amazing Con-Man - Tiny Time Tunnel Con (Hickory)
Unfortunately, this was yet another dud. All we sold a set of my daughter’s books.
Going in, I had high hopes that this would be a better experience than Hero Hype. (I mean, it really couldn’t get much worse!) This event was in a bigger space — at least twice the size of the last one. And there were many more comic book vendors (I counted six) so I figured this show might attract more people looking for comics. Also, the entrance fee was only $5 and kids got in free.
But attendence was very low. Have no idea why that is. Maybe it was just too soon since the convention in Hickory last month. Only a few people came by our table and those I pitched to weren’t interested. Once again, I couldn’t even give away the ashcans.
And I’m pretty sure that I didn’t shart my pants that morning so I don’t think it was my stench keeping people away.
One thing I decided to do while twidling my thumbs at this show was to change my display a little bit. Standing there all day (because they only gave us one chair), I realized just how ridiculous it looked to have only that one opening in the middle of the cage. It really felt like I was peeking out of a tiny window to talk to people. So, for the next show, I’ve decided to take out four of the middle panels in the cage as you can see in the pic above. I tried it out at the end of the show to see if the structure would remain stable. Any artwork that I would hang there will instead be placed on the outside of the cage to attract anyone that might only be viewing us from the sides.
And the next show will be at Farley Con on August 13th. It’s in East Ridge, Tennessee which is just outside of Chattanooga. By the way, my full con schedule for this year is on my website.
The show seems to be GI Joe-focused (which is awesome because I was a GI Joe fanatic as a kid) and Larry Hama is slated to appear. I was thinking that maybe I could meet him and give him a copy of Book of Legend, since the story “Silent Night” was greatly influenced by GI Joe #21, “Silent Interlude”.
Once again, you can check out my The Amazing Con Man video series at the following link, where I go into a little more detail about each show. And at the end of the year, I’ll do a wrap-up talking extensively about the whole shebang.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbdT7-MGwCZP1UaUldDk9vQ/playlists
This Week in Randomness!
Are you interested in astronomy, cosmology or just science in general? Then you might be interested in Anton Petrov’s Youtube channel which you can find here. He talks about a wide range of fascinating subjects and I’ve gotten many story ideas from his videos.
~Michael T Gonzalez
