> Started Marketing too late. I probably should have either started with a Kickstarter, pre-announced the book, or found a publisher. Book marketing is competitive enough that I needed a better plan than I had.
I've done three Kickstarters for comic books. "When your Kickstarter is running" is not the time to build your fan base.
My method was to post pages online for free as I drew them. Once I had enough to be worth publishing in a book, it was time for a Kickstarter for a modest print run. I typically met my goals within the first week, if not in the first weekend, because I'd slowly built my following while drawing the book, instead of once it was all done.
This works well for me, and for a whole ton of other independent comics creators. It would probably work better for someone making an abecdeclarium than for someone making a lengthy, difficult graphic novel about a lesbian robot with Philip K. Dick problems; a short verse with a cute drawing about a nerdy subject is exactly the kind of thing that people love to hit the 'share' button on without prompting.
You do have to be cool with a lot of people seeing your work without ever giving you a single cent for this to work. Just think of it as something like the Red Hat model, where you contribute to the Linux kernel for the benefit of everyone who uses it, and get paid by a far smaller number of users to support it. :)
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(Of course "get my story about putting together a Programmer ABCs to read to your kids on the front page of Hacker News" ain't a bad piece of promotion either, given how many people are saying "ooh I just ordered it for a kid in my life".)
> Started Marketing too late. I probably should have either started with a Kickstarter, pre-announced the book, or found a publisher. Book marketing is competitive enough that I needed a better plan than I had.
I've done three Kickstarters for comic books. "When your Kickstarter is running" is not the time to build your fan base.
My method was to post pages online for free as I drew them. Once I had enough to be worth publishing in a book, it was time for a Kickstarter for a modest print run. I typically met my goals within the first week, if not in the first weekend, because I'd slowly built my following while drawing the book, instead of once it was all done.
This works well for me, and for a whole ton of other independent comics creators. It would probably work better for someone making an abecdeclarium than for someone making a lengthy, difficult graphic novel about a lesbian robot with Philip K. Dick problems; a short verse with a cute drawing about a nerdy subject is exactly the kind of thing that people love to hit the 'share' button on without prompting.
You do have to be cool with a lot of people seeing your work without ever giving you a single cent for this to work. Just think of it as something like the Red Hat model, where you contribute to the Linux kernel for the benefit of everyone who uses it, and get paid by a far smaller number of users to support it. :)
----
(Of course "get my story about putting together a Programmer ABCs to read to your kids on the front page of Hacker News" ain't a bad piece of promotion either, given how many people are saying "ooh I just ordered it for a kid in my life".)