When Should I Pull the Trigger?

Re-assessing the Crowdfund Timetable

I’ve been learning what I can about crowdfunding for about a year now. It’s pretty common wisdom that “you need to build a crowd before you can fund.” Maybe it wasn’t that way when crowdfunding started, but that’s how it is, now. You can’t just put a comic on a crowdfunding platform today and hope that readers will find and back it.

My hope was to crowdfund the print edition of Threat Quotient this autumn, but that is not looking realistic at present. So I’m contemplating pushing the tentative campaign window back to the spring. That would give me time to:

• build up more of a crowd

• finish some marketing blitzes and have them ready for Launch Day

• benefit from more competitive print pricing, post-Bidenomics

• let readers/potential backers accumulate some disposable income

• have more, perhaps all, of the book colored, shaded, and lettered

But what are the risks of pushing it back?

• it won’t be launched when I go to BasedCon in September

• Something could happen between now & then to make printing costs even worse

• I still might not have enough backers when spring rolls around

I was too bullheaded and ignorant for too many years to get serious about building an email list. So, alas, I don’t have much of one. It also looks like the time to build a Substack following was a few years before I came to Substack. In fact, all my blogging and social media efforts have attracted fellow authors but not many dedicated readers. I’ve got a lot of followers on Amazon but I would bet money they don’t get notified when I release a new book. I can’t access their details. I don’t even have a clue who they are, outside of the miniscule minority who post reviews.

Part of my strategy just became more of a priority: getting a teaser floppy printed on newsprint so I have comics to bring with me to BasedCon. Alternacomics will print a comic with a page count that is a multiple of four, up to 48 interior pages. I just have to settle on where to end the extended preview, and prepare a “limited edition” cover.

The graphic novel in question, Threat Quotient, is a superhero epic depicting a clash between the globalist left and the dissident right. I post weekly episodes online. You should check it out.