Sunday Mailbag- Crowdfunding Goal?

Q: You seemed to be somewhat dismissive of crowdfunding projects in the past, yet here you are doing one. Why the change of heart? Also, why the high $45k goal?

A: I don’t think “dismissive” is an accurate description. I’d use the word “selective”. It’s true I have not promoted very many Kickstarters or IndieGoGos on my blog, but that’s not because I have anything against crowdfunded projects. I am just very picky about ones I do promote. I have to be convinced that

1. They are creating something that really interests me
2. They are going to follow through and make the book or movie or comic or whatever the project is

I actually have promoted a number of Kickstarters and IndieGoGo campaigns here on the blog. All of them were caricature/cartoon/comics related and they were all done by people I knew professionally and I was sure were going to actually produce their product within the timeframe they promised (more or less… cartoonists are notorious for being last minute animals). All of them followed through as promised, thereby validating my faith in them.

How did we come up with the $45k goal number? Math. After you subtract the costs of printing and shipping, and IngieGoGo’s cut and payment processing fees, the amount left over gives Des and I what will be a basically a small book “advance” to do the work over the next 10 months. That’s typically how books done by publishers do it. They pay the creator(s) an advance to create the book, and that advance is set against their royalties for sales. Once they reach the point where the advance amount is less than the royalty amount, the creators start getting royalty payments for sales. The advance our campaign goal is going to give us is actually very small compared to all the time and work that will go into the 88-100 pages we’ll be doing. Des is writing the equivalent of two full issues of MAD. I’ll not only be drawing the same, but doing all the production and design work as well. We are betting that we will sell enough additional copies to start to approach a living wage for doing all the work. That’s the same kind of risks a publisher takes paying an advance and producing a book… there’s no guarantee the book will sell and they could end up losing money on it. If we were doing this project for an established publisher, I don’t think Des and I would agree to anything less than an advance that would be twice what would get if we hit our goal… so this is a gamble on our part with our time and efforts.

By doing the IndieGoGo, we are hoping enough people are interested in us creating this book to fund the “publisher” part (albeit still a lot less than a typical publisher arrangement would be), so we can do the work and hopefully sell enough additional copies to actually make some money. Will it work? Who knows? The first step is reaching the goal. If we don’t reach our goal, all backers are refunded and the book won’t happen. If we DO hit the goal, we will do all the work and produce a great book, and then hope we can sell enough of them to make it financially worth it.

It’s a risk for all involved, except for those who are doing the backing. If we don’t reach our goal, all backers get refunded in full. If we DO reach our goal, Desmond and I will complete the book on time. We are longtime professionals and don’t blow deadlines. Even if we don’t sell any additional copies and our small advance ends up being our entire payday for the book, we’ll still get it done. I know you hear horror stories about people who promise to do crowdsourced projects and either never produce them, or deliver them years late. That won’t be us. We’ve been doing these together for 20 years, and never missed a deadline for MAD.

We thought we’d take a shot. Maybe there are not enough people out there who love the movie parody artform to support the project. I guess we’ll find out. If you have backed our project, thank you! If not, please consider it:

Thanks to Rich Griffin for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!