THIS IS SERIOUS. A New Crowdfunding Platform To Fight Censorship. Would You Follow Me There?
Hey, guys!
QUICK NOTE ABOUT SUPERHEROES AFTER DARK 5
The line-art for After Dark 5 is all done, and I started on the letting for the project yesterday. I’m already nearly 25% done with the lettering! It should only be a few more days before the lettering is done.
Once it’s done, I’ll compile the art assets into a “Monochrome Edition” of After Dark 5 that is complete—sans coloring—and get the PDF to all of the Kickstarter backers.
Okay, back to the original post!
FOLLOW ME TO A NEW CROWDFUNDING PLATFORM?
I know my Substack is usually about fun art and tiddy comics, but I do run a serious business with SinR Studios. I’ve been self-employed for over 20 years and have self-published comics through Kickstarter for a decade. My ability to monetize my work has allowed me to support my wife, kids—and now grandchild—entirely independently.
Unfortunately, the looming shadow of censorship—both political and subject matter-related—is always a concern. And if you’re doing mature “tiddy comics”, you’re always riding a fine line. That’s no way to run a business.
Mine and Jex’s long-term goal has been to go from “adult” comics and expanding out to more mainstream PG-13/R-rated comics. I’m always looking for ways to reduce as many single points of failure as possible and if you only use one, a crowdfunding platform is the biggest single point of failure.
As an independent publisher, this is all I need to run my business:
an idea
customers
a payment processor
We’ve never had a shortage of ideas and you all have been such an awesome group of supporters and customers. What this post is about is the precarious and unsteady nature of relying on certain crowdfunding platforms/payment processors.
THE WAY CROWDFUNDING WORKS
You go to a project page of mine.
You see the cool art and the reward tiers.
You see the reward tier you want.
You click on the tier and pay.
And that’s it. The process is the same whether you use Kickstarter, Indiegogo or any other site.
To be clear, ALL I WANT TO DO IS MAKE COMICS FOR YOU. The specific payment processor is of no consequence to me as long as I’m allowed to run my business with the expectation of no potential censorship.
THE PLATFORM is… “FUNDMYCOMIC.COM”!
The website, FundMyComic.com, is an independent platform run by comic book fans that houses comic projects and that is explicitly anti-censorship. If I ran my projects there, there would be almost 0% chance that I’d be restricted from making comics for you in any way. I am not being sponsored by them; this is an honest interest on my part.
It works exactly the same as Kickstarter and Indiegogo and fulfillment would work the same.
Simple question: Would you pre-order my comics from FundMyComic?
***VOTE HERE***: https://vote.easypolls.net/64785e80b760c7005f091d44
I’ll likely be launching a pre-order graphic novel EXCLUSIVELY on FundMyComic in the next few months. That will be the test.
I hope you have a great day and weekend!
Shade
shadedraws.com