Money for Nothing

Almost a week into the Kickstarter campaign and we’re nearly $6700 funded! That’s crazy. Thank you so much to everyone who’s donated. If not, I’ll include a convenient link below. Sorry for the radio silence last week but I was super busy trying to wrangle a bunch of things and lost track of time. You can check my updates over at the Kickstarter if you’re really sad to miss out on that week of my life. This one will also probably be on the brief side – I was sick this weekend and I’m prepping for San Diego Comic Con so my time is limited. Also Hades II is really fun.

Did a few more podcasts after the ones I posted last time. Shout out to World at War and Aussieverse for some really fun live appearances. If you’re gonna be at SDCC this week, come say hi – I’ll probably be wearing a Waypoint shirt to advertise my book amidst all the other advertising. Hopefully I can break through the noise and make some personal connections. I’m fun in person! A real bundle of joy. Especially when I’ve been trudging around a packed convention center all day. If I start disassociating, please don’t take it personally. But if you do find me I’ll give you one of those super-cool WAYPOINT promo cards.

Launching a Kickstarter is super exciting and super stressful. We sold out of the highest tier, the hardcovers, extremely quickly. So on the one hand, that definitely helped drive the numbers up. On the other hand, the hardcovers are handmade, that’s the draw of the tier, so there are only so many we can offer. We’re looking at different pricing options and ideas for additional tiers – and seeing how much work the truly excellent Dane Styler is willing to do – to see about making more available. That’ll probably be next week after all the madness from the con. Anyway, now that those are gone, we have the softcovers (which are by far the biggest sellers) and those are priced more modestly so the numbers are moving up more slowly now. But they’re still going up! That’s the right direction for sure.

Shout out to the folks on the 1-900-HOTDOG Discord and my real-life friends for stepping up and helping me hit the goal quickly. It’s a real honor to know that people think highly enough of me to support my book with their hard-earned cash. I don’t think they’ll be disappointed. It’s still hard to wrap my head around that level of love from folks. It’s an unexpected feeling. I hope to have more of it.

In the meantime, we’ve hit the expected lull. Kickstarters tend to have huge first days, an okay second day, a valley of death, and then a big final week as people realize they only have a few days to decide or miss out forever (or at least until we can get the book into stores). The trick is trying to get word out to the right people. It always feels weird to me to market my book. I know I have a good product. It’s just awkward for me to ask for money. Which is very silly, because this is a pretty traditional “exchanging money for goods” transaction. Again, the book is done, I just need to fund the print run. Which is funded. So you’re getting something for your money. But it still feels like begging. It’s something I need to get over.

Next week I’ll have a full report from the gauntlet. Still trying to figure out how negatively people will react if I wear a mask on the floor – people are weird about that but con crud was a real thing prior to COVID and I can’t imagine it’s gotten better since. I’d rather bring home some cute art for my wife than some microscopic stowaways. Let’s make WAYPOINT the only thing that goes viral!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/waypointcomic/waypoint-1-4

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