From the million-plus dollars raised for a graphic novel about stick figures to an all-female anthology showcasing the works of women in comics, the crowdfunding website Kickstarter has become one of the biggest graphic novel publishers in the US.
Research by US book industry magazine Publishers Weekly puts Kickstarter – which is set to launch in the UK later this year – in fourth place in a ranking of the US's top five graphic novel publishers over the three-month period from February to April. Seven of the site's graphic novel projects raised more than $40,000 (£25,690) over the period, 25 of the 115 successfully funded projects earned five figures, and one – Rich Burlew's The Order of the Stick comic – made $1,254,120. Kickstarter made $2.2m in gross revenue over the three months, Publishers Weekly estimates, behind Marvel ($6.9m), DC ($4.3m) and Image ($2.98m).
When the amount of revenue a publisher receives, rather than gross revenue, is estimated, however, Kickstarter moved up into second place, with $1.99m in revenue behind Marvel with $2.76m and ahead of DC with $1.72m. This was calculated by Publishers Weekly by multiplying publisher totals by 40% and Kickstarter's total by 90%, as on Kickstarter, 90-92% of a pledge goes to the creator/publisher of a project, while a regular publisher will keep an estimated 40% of the list price of a book.
"In terms of fairness, [DC, Marvel and Image] will have more titles sold on a given month than are listed in the Top 300. They'll have a little better revenue percentage than 40%. Not all of Kickstarter's comics projects are graphic novels, but the majority are. Even with these caveats, Kickstarter is in the conversation for the number two publisher of graphic novels. Clearly, crowdfunding is making a huge impact in the graphic novel market," said Publishers Weekly.
Recent popular Kickstarter comics projects range from Brawl in the Family, a video game parody webcomic which has raised $27,220, nearly triple its $10,000 goal, to an illustrated storybook about two kids inheriting an "odd old house with generations of accumulated wonder", A Cabinet of Curiosities, which has made a whopping $35,820 when it was setting out to make just $4,000.
Kickstarter enables its creators to offer different financial incentives for backers, so for Burlew's Order of the Stick comic – the most funded creative work in the site's history – users could pay $10 for an Order of the Stick fridge magnet and a digital PDF of the original comic story, $200 for books, prints and autographs and $5,000 for a walk-on cameo for the donator's original Dungeons & Dragons character.
As well as graphic novels, the site is also used to raise money for a range of book-related projects, from a Steampunk Alphabet Book to author Neal Stephenson's sword-fighting video game, which has raised over half a million dollars. And it comes recommended by the fantasy author Neil Gaiman, whose wife the musician Amanda Palmer used it to raise over a million dollars to finance her new album, book and tour.
"I really like pre-selling things as a way of bringing them into the world – it means we're making enough for the people who want them, we can afford to make them as well as we want, and it means that people are getting something real. We aren't worrying about marketing costs. We don't have to get a record label, and then try to persuade them to make the thing we want. We just do it," Gaiman has said.
