ComixLaunch: Crowdfunding for Writers, Artists & Self-Publishers on Kickstarter... and Beyond!

A ComixLaunch listener alerted Tyler to a sudden and suspicious proliferation of seemingly AI-Generated Comic Book Kickstarter projects that have appeared on the platform recently. After taking a look, it does indeed seem like something fishy is going on, and one or more actors have been able to get obviously soulless, fraudulent projects past the Kickstarter project screeners. In this session, Tyler shares signs of obviously fraudulent comic book Kickstarter projects, discuss the ramifications should projects like this proliferate on Kickstarter, and offer advice on what legitimate creators should do now.

Commonwealth Comix co-founders Ryan Kroboth and John Endingfield II join Tyler for a discussion about their new partnership and collaboration on Wurst & Mayhem, a D&D style adventure comic. We'll talk about the evolution from friendship to creative partnership, the challenges and best practices for getting a new joint venture off the ground, and how much fun they're having on the new project!

Join us for a special panel on ComicTopia, the inaugural crowdfunding event hosted on BackerKit this month. The discussion features Lafayette Morrow from BackerKit, as well as creators including James Mascia of Dren Productions, writer Frank Martin, Joel Rodriguez of Metal Ninja Studios, and Eric Erdek, known for Espresso Detective. Lafayette provides an overview of BackerKit’s evolution from a crowdfunding support tool to a full-featured platform, emphasizing community engagement tools and their successful transition to hosting events like Pintopia and ComicTopia. Creators involved share insights on their current projects, their experiences with BackerKit’s platform, and unique event features such as cross-collaborations and the backer train feature. The discussion also touches on issues like handling mature content and strategies for successful crowdfunding.

In this episode of ComixLaunch, Tyler James interviews Christian Douglas, a Dublin-based writer and founder of Unpopular Comics. They discuss Christian's creative journey, his new Kickstarter campaign for 'Unpopular Tales 2: Pinochia, a cyberpunk retelling of the classic fairy tale, and the broader mission of Unpopular Comics to revitalize classic stories with modern twists.

For the past decade, illustrator Dave Swartz has moved from self-publishing, to pencil-for-hire, and back again. His current project, Confederate Monster is back on Kickstarter. In this conversation, he and Tyler will discuss the challenges and opportunities for comic book illustrators working in comics today.

In this session, Tyler will share his top insights from attending a presentation by Andrew Marks, director of Kickstarter's new Kickstarter Performance team, outlining what this new crowdfunding marketing service can do for creators, and answering questions from Kickstarter users.

The ComixLaunch Pro spotlight shines on writer and professor Will Allred, who shares lessons learned from his creative journey.

In this session, we'll break down the news that Kickstarter just pushed live a massive overhaul to how creators create and send shipping surveys to backers. In this session, we'll take a deep-dive into the new survey tool, and share the good, the bad, the confusing, and the ugly with this latest platform update.

For YEARS Kickstarter creators have been asking for abilities to easily copy info from past projects to new ones. It looks like Kickstarter has FINALLY taken a step in this direction, as creators can now copy rewards from past campaigns. Let's take a deep-dive into this new feature to see if it's everything creators have been asking for.

With his first novella ready to launch, writer James Powell is considering experimenting with a shorter than average Kickstarter launch… much shorter! A mastermind roundtable of veteran creators discuss James' launch plan, and share pros and cons of ultra short launches.