No Need For Egoraven!
or A Tale of Two Kickstarters
This has been the weirdest Kickstarter campaign cycle I've ever experienced. Crowdfunding continues to be challenging with the overwhelming number of projects launching every month, and as an independent creator, it’s getting tougher to get a peek above water in terms of getting attention.
Since I launched the first issue of EGORAVEN: HEIR OF THE FIRST UNICORN in January 2021, it has felt like a whirlwind of trying to stay ahead in terms of promotion and marketing. I have read every book and blog on the subject, feeling like I’m constantly trying to decipher the tea leaves to figure out anything that could push awareness of my series forward, even by just an inch. I often discuss trying to understand marketing and best practices on the Ragin’ 2 the Vlogs Show with Nita Lanning, and boy, were there times when I thought I was getting close to figuring it all out.
Little did I know.
EGORAVEN: HEIR OF THE FIRST UNICORN issue 10 is currently on Kickstarter. Pledge now and support an indie comic creator directly here: http://kck.st/3GaewmH
Around the same time, we had been working with Armiger Entertainment on their Kickstarter for the re-release of the TENCHI MUYO! American comics we worked on back in the 90’s. TENCHI MUYO! is a direct-to-video anime that saw a lot of success, and JD Calderon, Matt Lunsford, and I were contracted by Pioneer Comics/ P-Anime to do an original story adaptation of the anime. We had six issues published, but never saw a collected trade because that wasn’t really a thing at the time, until now. 28 years later, our work on TENCHI MUYO! is finally coming full circle with the release of a collected omnibus on Kickstarter now. We were really excited to see this project back, and depending on how the campaign ends, we might get a second shot at working on another mini-series for it.
The TENCHI MUYO! campaign launched a week after EGORAVEN #10 did.
Support the campaign here: http://kck.st/3EwQgdZ
To say TENCHI MUYO! blew up would be an understatement. Not only did it fund in a couple of days after launch, but it’s currently a Project We Love and is close to hitting $80,000 with a little more than two weeks left before close. JD and I have been following the numbers like the NASDAQ, and this might be the first Kickstarter we’re involved with that will make $100k if not more.
Meanwhile…
Don’t get me wrong. I am ecstatic about how TENCHI MUYO! is doing, and I’m even more excited about JD getting back with this project and the potential opportunities it could lead to.
But I would be lying if I said I wasn’t feeling a way about this. Seeing these two Kickstarters side by side proved that everything I thought I knew about promotion and marketing was wrong.
EGORAVEN has been performing exactly as it has since the first issue in January 2021. I have a very modest following that ranges between 130 to 150 backers. A bulk of my audience are returning backers, which means not only are they picking up my comic, they’re coming back for the following issues.
Logically, I know what’s going on. I know I can’t possibly compare my original, indie comic with a goddamn ANIME IP. But it doesn’t mean I can’t be cranky about it. It’s stupid, I know. But it made me realize something. It’s not about me or my work. It’s not about “marketing harder.” It never was.
On no planet did I ever have a chance competing with the TENCHI MUYO! campaign. No amount of money, no amount of marketing or promotion could have put my campaign in the same position as TENCHI MUYO! I could have posted NON-STOP, and I would still be where I am.
I had been putting all my effort into the wrong things all this time.
If I had the type of money needed to make marketing actually work, I wouldn’t be worried about how my Kickstarter is doing. The problem is that I think I've capped out my audience on Kickstarter and Facebook, and I need to look elsewhere to find more people who would be interested in my work, then bring them to Kickstarter. Not only do I need to learn to promote myself better, I need to find the audience receptive to it. Because the irony of the whole thing is that when you’re in front of the right audience, you don’t need to promote.
In fact, according to Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired Magazine and the creator of the 1000 true fans theory, your job is to create. It’s your fans who will promote you.
TENCHI MUYO! made its funding goal of 50K on word-of-mouth alone.
I’m still trying to figure all this out. I’ve been rethinking the products I create, how my sites are presented, and, more importantly, the circles I participate in. Recently, I had to redo my entire mailing list to migrate everyone from Mailchimp to a new mail server. In that work, I discovered that EGORAVEN has over 600 individual backers across nine campaigns. Imagine what a campaign would look like if just half those people pledged at the same time.
I don’t know what any of this means yet. But I have to admit that it feels good scraping away the parts that I had a suspicion weren’t working, but wasn’t sure why. It’s kinda like realizing I’m a tropical lizard in a desert terrarium. No wonder I’m not feeling well. 😅
There was a time in my life when I thought I was close to figuring out marketing, but really unless you are one of those big companies, it's really more or less shuffling around in the dark. There are certainly things we can do to help ourselves, but I think I just want to focus on making cool shit for now. It's much less exhausting. But I definitely understand that feeling some kind of way looking at all the big boys on Kickstarter.