Table of Contents
Welcome Back (0:00)
Project Updates
Main Story
Funds Raised (02:47)
Total $ Per Campaign (03:58)
Average Pledged (04:44)
Popular Pledge Levels (05:47)
Funding Stats (08:16)
Overall Budget Covered (09:21)
Cost Split (10:29)
Backer Count Comparison (12:37)
Backer Counts (13:46)
Digital vs Physical (14:51)
Backer Types (16:18)
Where Backers Are From (17:07)
Backer Profiles (18:41)
Backer Platforms (20:04)
Marketing and Followers (21:07)
Kickstarter Video (22:19)
Kickstarter Referrals (24:18)
Non-Kickstarter Referrals (26:17)
Backerkit Launch (28:05)
Reflecting on the Campaign (29:12)
What was the low point? (31:24)
What will you do differently? (32:31)
What was the biggest surprise? (33:49)
What worked really well? (36:13)
Can I do it again? (37:31)
What completely bombed? (39:58)
Lessons Learned (41:06)
Thank You! (42:38)
Release Info & Updates
Upcoming on Substack (43:08)
Upcoming Conventions (43:52)
Pesto Comics Release Calendar (44:16)
Instant Ink Comic Book Podcast (44:33)
Secret Bonus Epilogue (45:00)
A Note
Usually, with my Substack entries, I write and refine them before reading them for the podcast. I’ve done this in reverse this time, having more of a free-flowing conversation through the slides of the post-mortem for Big Smoke Pulp Vol. 1.
What follows isn’t exactly a transcript, but a cleaned-up version of what’s said in the video of this post - for those who still want the notes but don’t want to listen to a 45 minute presentation.
Now, on with it…
Welcome Back
This was a little different than anything I've done in the past. Every campaign I've done thus far has been for a comic of some sort. A visual medium which is a lot easier to come up with advertising for than the prose book I’ve done this time.
There are a lot of advantages, but the audience is different from the comics crowd. Given that the audience I've built thus far is mostly comic book readers, it was a good way to dip my toe in the water and see if going into the prose side of things would be successful.
Spoilers: it went pretty well.
I'm going to get deep into the numbers. We're going to look at the funds that were raised, the backers, how some of the marketing played out and we'll do a small Q& A at the end going through the vibes throughout this campaign.
This post mortem is not something that I've created myself. I’ve co-opted this concept from Comixlaunch by Tyler James. I've added and removed pieces to make it my own. If you're really looking to get the most out of your Kickstarter campaigns, I always recommend checking out Comixlaunch for yourself. It's a great program with a great community behind it.
Now, before we get into the numbers…
Project Updates
Naked Kaiju Woman is Growing!
The follower count, that is. With just under a month to go, we’re seeing more and more folks coming onboard. Have you given it a follow yet?
Lend your support by following the campaign on Kickstarter.
Naked Kaiju Woman launches on January 8th.
The Post-Mortem
I won’t bury the lede. Let’s start talking dollars…
Funds Raised
In comparison to previous campaigns, it's the best one I've had - even without calculating the average per day total. It outperformed everything I had done so far.
There are some caveats we'll talk about when we get to the next section. Just know, I’m very happy. It outperformed Crazy Latte Thing Called Love, which is quite a feat because that was by far my best performing campaign.
The way that campaign started - the trajectory of it is still unmatched. That said, we reached a higher total a whole five days sooner.
Total $ Per Campaign
Here’s another view of the total funding:
I was less confident jumping into a new category, so I lowered the goal. I believed it might do half of what we had done on previous campaigns.
We blew by that total very quickly, funding within three hours and doubling that within a day. Had I kept my goal at the $1000 CAD, we would have hit that on day one anyway.
That momentum continued throughout. We didn’t experience a “zero day” (a day in which no backers backed) as it was continued steadily climbing throughout the whole duration of the campaign. Right now, Big Smoke Pulp Vol. 1 stands as the best performing project I have launched thus far.
Average Pledged
You can really see where the difference was made with the average pledge per backer. We almost doubled the best performing campaigns.
Both From Parts Unknown and Crazy Latte Thing Called Love were pretty close in terms of how much each backer had pledged. Crazy Latte Thing Called Love had nearly twice as many backers, so the end total was higher than From Parts Unknown.
That said, Big Smoke Pulp had nearly the same amount of backers as Stay Cool and From Parts Unknown, and yet it broke all-time highs because of the average pledge amount.
It makes sense in context. A typical comic book campaign has 24-32 pages. Big Smoke Pulp offered over 500 pages of short stories. It was a totally different offering.
Popular Pledge Levels
Something interesting happened with this campaign with the most popular pledge levels. They weren't bundles or digital copies this time around.
The most popular level was the main offering: the physical pocketbook edition. It was different than what I expected. One might think that comic book collectors would skew physical and readers would go digital. This was the opposite. It looks like readers want something that they can carry and have on their couch and read and flip through the pages.
That said, I wonder if potential digital backers were some waiting for a post-campaign offerings. I wasn't shy about what the plan is: going wide on all the usual digital publishers. Perhaps those readers were waiting for it to show up on Amazon or Kobo or otherwise. Even with all the DRM that is included in that (where on Kickstarter, it's a DRM-free.) Maybe folks just aren't so concerned about that on the reader side, where it’s a sticking point for comics.
Alternatively, for the Kickstarter exclusive hardcover: we hit that limit very quickly. The fact that still ended up on the most popular ranking is pretty impressive given that there was a cap.
On the flip side of that, the Kickstarter exclusive hardcover actually top to the highest funding pledge levels thanks to the higher price-tag. Perhaps the exclusivity and the limited nature of it really drove backers to go for that version knowing that the pocketbook edition would be available both on pestocomics.com (coming soon!).
There was a way to get around the limitation on the hardcover and that is how the third level highest funded found its place: the “every version of Big Smoke Pulp Vol. 1 tier. This included the paperback version, the digital and the hardcover.
Though we ran out of the hardcover tier, we still had the ability to print more based on people who wanted both. It made a big difference. The hardcover drove the success of this campaign - along with physical editions, in general.
Funding Stats
We ended up with a campaign total of $3,906 CAD. That's well above our $500 CAD goal. Thanks to 123 backers that backed, the campaign hit an average of $163 per day.
After 3 dropped backers, 5% in Kickstarter fees and 3%+ in Stripe fees, the final total was $3,435.76.
This was much higher than I've seen with any of the comic book campaigns so far. This equaled a 781% total of our funding goal thanks to keeping the goal artificially low. Even if we had used the usual $1000 goal, we still would have been at nearly 400x our target.
Overall Budget Covered
Being so successful, even with the lower backer count than Crazy Latte Thing Called Love, allowed us to cover the budget more than ever before.
Big Smoke Pulp Vol. 1 had the advantage of not needing to hire out for art, outside of the wonderful cover by my good buddy,
.I’m less in the red than ever, like I am with the many other campaigns listed. I rely on conventions and backlist sales to recoup the upfront cost. This means with Big Smoke Pulp, we're starting ahead. This has a much better opportunity to get in the black than any campaign thus far.
Cost Split
Production was merely 20% of the expense this time around. Shipping, is still an estimate at this point as we're waiting on prints to arrive. In fact, I have overestimated how much shipping will be.
The main costs, the thing I've already paid for, is printing. That's 68 percent of the cost of this time around. With comics, you can invert this and the production would be two thirds of the cost (with a higher overall price tag).
So the 20% of production has two factors:
The fee for the aforementioned amazing cover by
.Getting all the 40 authors that provided short stories paid out.
It's, frankly, on the low end of the industry standard rate, if I'm being completely honest. Plus the added caveat that it is in Canadian dollars. That said I did try to make them whole with bonus author copies if they helped with the Kickstarter campaign. This also helped contribute to the extra high printing costs, in terms of percentage.
Over two thirds of the cost of the campaign is printing. I now understand why authors will go to IngramSpark use print-on-demand. If you know that you're getting paid for the book before printing it, it sure makes it a lot easier.
There are ways to go about it and it's something I can explore for the future. However, right now, it was done as I would have with comics. Everything is pre-printed. I'll package them all and fulfill them personally.
Backer Count Comparison
Backer counts look a lot different than the funding amounts. Crazy Latte Thing Called Love had an incredible first two days and never looks back.
It remains the most popular campaign I've had thus far. A surprising contender that actually started behind this campaign for Big Smoke Pulp Vol. 1 was Stay Cool. Around day five or six, Stay Cool overtakes Big Smoke Pulp but is ultimately overtaken by again by this campaign in the last couple days.
The mid-campaign surge Stay Cool experienced wasn't replicated here, but Big Smoke Pulp had been steadily funded with new backers coming in every day. Slow and steady wins the race - or second place, at least, as Crazy Latte Thing Called Love gets another surge near the end which is totally unmatchable.
All said, I’m very happy with how the backers did come out to support this campaign. It is a mild improvement from the previous ones and trending in the right direction.
Backer Counts
The backer counts were in line with Stay Cool and From Parts Unknown.
Likewise there was 80 new backers, not dissimilar to past campaigns. Crazy Latte Thing Called Love is the unicorn. It added a whole bunch of new backers.
We’re consistently getting around 40 backers that come back to support every campaign.
A BIG thank you to all of you.
There is a split in terms of where backers have all joined the campaigns, So it's not necessarily that everyone who supported Unlimited Udo backed everything down the line. Although there's a handful of those backers. (And to you, oh my goodness, I thank you so much. I really do appreciate it.)
We've had backers joining campaign by campaign and with every one of them, a past campaign has brought a backer back to this campaign.
It's nice to see that even though this is not a typical comic project you’d see from me, there were still backers that gave it a look and we're happy to support.
It does mean a ton.
Digital vs Physical
Earlier I mentioned the split in digital and physical backers. You’ll see that there's a total flip in terms of physical versus digital. This was overwhelmingly a physical copy campaign, which also lent itself to the costs being so much higher in terms of printing as almost everybody was grabbing a printed version of this book.
Crazy Latte Thing Called Love had a similar outcome. We had a lot of variants available for that. It was much more of an event type of launch, where Big Smoke Pulp was a little more subtle in terms of marketing.
Selling out the hardcovers alone helped us surpass digital sales. I'm very interested to see how that plays out with future books.
Backer Types
Just over 70% of backers are physical backers. Previous campaigns never cross, 44% physical, so this was unexpected with my experience of how comics are supported, relative to prose books.
Print-on-demand for comics is not as reliable, or even available here in Canada, where for books there seems to be a well-established system in place to do that.
Where Backers Are From
We have backers from all over the world. The top three are always consistent in terms of:
the order
their appearance
The U. S. always is the majority of my backers. (And again, thank you to all the Americans reading! You guys are the reason that this does well at all.)
Seeing Canadians back, being Canadian myself, means a lot. It's not all friends and family either, which is wonderful. I’ve been lucky to meet a lot of these backers in person. It’s probably the right ratio relative to our population.
I always have backers from the UK and this number stays relatively consistent. It's also a lot of returning backers within that number. (I really do appreciate you guys coming back over and over!)
I don’t know that I have sent a package to Mexico yet. Surprisingly, I've done so to Luxembourg before. Same for Germany and the Netherlands.
It’s always great to see these books making it outside of the local area and that Kickstarter reaches a worldwide audience.
Backer Profiles
Two thirds of backers to this campaign are “power backers”. Those are backers on Kickstarter constantly looking for campaigns to support. Usually they’re also “super backers”. I'm one myself with over 900 plus campaigns backed.
It's the ecosystem of Kickstarter that makes Kickstarter successful. There are some “core backers” that are a little more choosy, and I do appreciate that's a nice chunk.
From “passive” to “first-time” to “casual” build up that last third of backers, which is very impressive. Any “first-time” backers mean a lot. These are individuals who didn't even have a Kickstarter profile until they saw this campaign. The fact that Big Smoke Pulp was the book that brought them to the platform is huge.
I’m similarly impressed to see so many “casual” and “passive” backers, as they are a little more judicious with what they choose to back and chose this.
Backer Platforms
More than half of backers are doing so on a desktop.
I've done a couple of presentations now about crowdfunding on Kickstarter and how you have to build your story page with mobile in mind. I still think that's valid, as you can see the other half of people who back, it's nearly a 50/50 split, is doing it on mobile. You really have to keep in mind about how you build your campaign page and make sure that it reads well on a phone because the other half of the folks that are going to back your campaign are there.
That said, it looks like the website for Kickstarter is really the best way to do everything. It's just they've put much more thought into their website.
Even when I'm backing campaigns myself, I rarely do it on the phone.
Marketing and Followers
Just because somebody visits your page doesn't mean they're going to pledge right then. That's okay. The platform gives them an opportunity to save your campaign.
I am pretty consistent in how many followers I can bring in, with Crazy Latte Thing Called Love being an outlier. Big Smoke Pulp was actually a shorter prelaunch window and a shorter campaign than most, so the fact that it's staying pretty tight with everything else is very impressive.
I brought it up in the newsletter frequently and I would occasionally bring it up online, but I wasn't doing that full court press that I've done with the comics. I still managed to get a handful of followers and the converted rate is pretty consistent as well.
Kickstarter Video
I tried something new with the Kickstarter video.
I always do a video of some form or fashion. I usually do a trailer or sizzle reel that's 30 seconds to a minute long. That seems to get a lot more completed views than anything else.
For Crazy Latte Thing Called Love, I did a little bit of a hybrid. I started with a trailer and followed it up with a long explainer, saying what's available on the campaign and why we're doing it. You can see the drop off in completed views from the people that actually watched.
They probably watched that trailer followed by my rambling mug and gave up. That's fair.
I mentioned in the post-mortem for that campaign that I wouldn't be doing that again. What I did this time was I took a chunk of the newsletter from launch day, which, I always record it as a podcast, and I made it a video.
All that said, it did pretty well. That launch day newsletter that I do, is usually a bit of an explainer of what's available and some of the background of how we got to this story or project, so it fit really well as a Kickstarter video.
It wasn't even a talking head. It was just captions on a black background. Visually speaking, it wasn't terribly captivating, so I can understand why half of the viewers dropped off before the end.
There's a lot of experimentation to be done with this. This one, given the lower effort I had put in, performed relatively well. I'm not upset about it.
Kickstarter Referrals
Kickstarter’s internal analytics are pretty detailed, because they can tell you exactly where someone clicked that led to someone backing.
There's people who get an email of some sort, it's either a “new project from a creator you've backed”. That's a lot of returning backers, in this case, 12 of them.
There's others who were following via prelaunch. That's why prelaunch is so important. Even though the creator you've backed before added one more backer, the amount pledged is double from the people that were following on prelaunch.
Discovery always feels like a big win. These are backers that scroll through the Kickstarter Discovery page and liked the teaser image, liked the campaign page and decided to back, with no real sense of what it was before they got there.
If there's anything to take from this, it's that email is still king and the work that Kickstarter does for you in that is huge. That's where you're going to get majority of your backers.
Another key thing to note is about being very high up in the algorithm and really showing that your campaign is popular. It makes big difference for where you show up in discovery.
You want people to find your campaign online. Discovery is how they do that. You get recommended in Discovery by pleasing the algorithm and having a great launch day. It looks like, in this case, where we funded within three hours and doubled it within the day really helped in terms of people finding the campaign on the landing page or via discovery.
So it makes a big difference to do well when you start.
(On that note, if you haven’t followed Naked Kaiju Woman yet - please consider doing so!)
Non-Kickstarter Referrals
There are other ways to get backers. Unfortunately, Kickstarter doesn't always know where they're coming from and if you don't provide a specific link, it has no way to parse those people.
15% of the backers on the campaign, I have no idea where they came from other than knowing they were “Direct Traffic”. They found a link somewhere in the wild - which I’m grateful for.
I bring it up new projects at the beginning of every Substack post. These five backers clicked through while the campaign was live - as they would have shown up as prelaunch backers otherwise.
On the socials, there wasn’t too much action: three for Facebook, one for Instagram and one for X. These platforms are pay to play right now, so I’m not shocked about the low turnout as I didn’t run ads.
Ads are the only way you're getting out to all your followers. The results show how I skipped that.
Backerkit Launch
One tool always use is Backerkit. A lot of the backers that came from Backerkit this time out as it's about 8% of the total funded amount. That's 3% more than it was for From Parts Unknown.
It’s a good improvement in terms of how many people saw that email from Backerkit and decided to back - even with the open rate and the clickthrough rate being a lot lower than it was in the past.
I sent half as many emails this time out, but the pledge rate remained the same. Maybe had I sent out more emails, I could have done a lot better.
I'll do this again for Naked Kaiju Woman and I'll be a little more adamant about the emails. With the longer runway, I'll be able to send an email or two extra where I wasn't able to with Big Smoke Pulp.
Reflecting on the Campaign
That’s all the data I have to review for this campaign, so there's a bit of a Q & A in this next portion. I mentioned ComixLaunch with Tyler James has put these together. It’s a few questions thinking about how this campaign went, how we can improve, what went well and what didn't go well.
Let’s get into it…
How Do You Feel Now That the Campaign is Over?
It did pretty well. Better than I had hoped.
I was so close to getting all the costs covered. We had some political turmoil and printing costs got a little more expensive, which is concerning. The printing costs started to eat up anything that would get us close to profitable.
I was really hoping that this would be the one that would hit the black.
So I'm in the middle. I'm happy the campaign did well. I'm upset that the external factors made it feel like it did less well, but nonetheless, I'm still pretty happy with it.
What was the High Point of the Campaign?
The launch and how successful it was right off the bat.
I kept the goal very low. I was expecting it not to do so well. I was expecting it to do a little bit over a goal. I had no faith in my capability to reach out to a new audience.
I know that the authors involved are all wonderful and they all have their own audiences. I should have factored that in.
I'm very happy with how it all played out. Day one was the high point and it continued from there, but it was a big relief.
What was the Low Point?
Dealing with the back end of things. Not realizing how printing costs were going to backfire. It's something I was really familiar with in doing comics. I knew that books are a little different.
I didn't realize how much more it would fluctuate in terms of costs. If I had locked it down sooner, maybe I would have done better budget-wise.
I didn't do so because I was still working on formatting while the campaign was going even though all the writing was done. Everything was more or less ready to go but the actual book wasn't assembled, quite yet.
I wasn't ready. I was fortunate enough to find a sale on my usual printer’s site. That helped mitigate those increased costs.
This sudden increase in costs made it from a successful campaign to an over-budget campaign. I'll just come at it a little smarter the next time.
What Will You Do Differently?
This campaign that changed me in the sense of how I'll approach things going forward. I know I can live in both worlds.
I always thought I could. I've written a lot of short stories. I have always gone to, writing conferences and events but I was always the comics guy. I felt like I was an outsider in that world - but I'm not. Although all I did was add some stories to this anthology, it's not necessarily me that's bringing the audience. I acknowledge this and it’s the next hurdles I’ll have to jump.
Still, I feel like I have a place in that world. It gives me some hope for projects that I have coming in the new year. (More about that January 1st.)
This was all kind of a testing ground for some cool things that I have planned, and I really wanted to make sure that, if I go there to this publishing side of Kickstarter that I'm unfamiliar with - am I going to flop entirely or can I make it work? The fact that this did better than anything I've done thus far has me rethinking a lot of things.
I'm not going to leave comics anytime soon, but now I know I can write prose and it might do pretty well. I'm looking forward to really diving into that in the near future.
What was the Biggest Surprise?
The high ticket value items like the Kickstarter-Exclusive Hardcover selling as well as they did. I thought would be a niche thing. I thought most people were going to pledge for the pocketbook paperback.
It's affordable. It's what you would expect to see on shelves in terms of a pulp book. I thought that comic books would be where all the collectors are and people who want things for their shelves or for their boxes. They want the variant covers. They want the special thing.
I didn't think that was going to be true on the publishing side and I was completely wrong. In fact, I should have planned to print even more hardcovers, given that they sold out so quickly. Had I budgeted a little better, maybe I could have made sure that was readily available for everybody.
What's Your Biggest Concern for the Future?
My biggest concern now is repeating this success. I said the same after Crazy Latte Thing Called Love. After that campaign, I came back to earth with From Parts Unknown and it looks like now I'm slowly climbing the mountain again.
I really don't want to regress from this level again. I just barely got to the point where the campaign was covering itself until the print costs overtook everything. I'm hoping that, with the next couple of publishing campaigns, those cover themselves almost entirely, if not become profitable.
That's the goal and that's why my concern is whether this is a high point or the foundation for the future. I got that concern in the back of my head because, as more and more campaigns come out and fewer of them are successful, this all becomes a lot harder to do.
I’ve been looking back for tax purposes and seeing where all the money went. I've really got that on the top of my mind. I'm hoping that 2025 things pick up and go in the right direction.
What Worked Really Well?
Every time I put out a stretch goal, like by the morning it was eaten up.
I think doing stretch goals by improving the book in some form or fashion really makes a difference. That's what I’ll aim to do going forward.
I mentioned even in my previous campaign that I don't want to do so many of the tchotchkes and things like magnets and bookmarks and all that. I still did a bookmark for this one and people seemed happy about still getting something physical.
It doesn't mean I'll stop doing that but I think, at least for the early stretch goals, the idea will be improving the main product.
Can I Do It Again?
I sure hope so! Originally, the title was just Big Smoke Pulp. Right around launch I had decided to call it Volume 1. So, yes, the plans are to have a Volume Two.
I'll aim for the same time next year. This gives me lots of time to do a call for entries and read all the stuff that's out there. I know a lot of the authors that were involved in this one would be thrilled to be in the second edition. I'm happy to have their stories and see where they fit.
I will definitely do it again.
How Can You Do It Better Next Time?
I may lift the limit on the Kickstarter-Exclusive Hardcovers next time. Maybe I can prepare to have even more out there.
Another thing is leaving more time for marketing. Getting that pre-launch up a lot sooner, like I have for Naked Kauji Woman would have helped. I was limited by the fact that my fourth campaign hadn't been fulfilled.
I was able to twist the arm of the Kickstarter Trust and Safety team to let me setup the prelaunch a little earlier than I technically should have. That said, it still wasn't as early as I wanted. Now that I'm a “creator in good standing” and my sixth campaign is in prelaunch - I should be able to get those pre launch pages up very early. (Like this one.)
What Completely Bombed?
This time it was the combination of comics and books. Knowing that they are different markets, I didn't expect this to do that well anyway. Normally I sell two or three of the full Pesto Package reward, which includes the full catalog.
That didn't do so well this time.
The other reward I offered was where I would write the story that the backer pitched to me and included in the book - giving them a “story by” credit.
That was one of those high tier items that the cost was way out there. I'm not entirely upset about that anyway.
Lessons Learned
The biggest lesson of this is that: you guys are wonderful!
The authors were wonderful too. They helped push the campaign on all their socials. I was very pleased with that.
We have a nice Discord setup too! (A big thanks to Joel and folks for keeping that running.)
I think it's a nice community.
I've always been very boastful about how wonderful the comics community is and one thing I've learned very quickly that indie authors are the same!
Coming from film school when I was much younger, meeting those folks and seeing how cutthroat it is - or even where I am now, in the corporate world, and seeing just how transactional everything is. It's always wonderful to be in a community like the indie author community or the indie comic community and just seeing how everyone is there to help one another out. The rising tide lifts all boats.
I think that's a very accurate view of the whole group. Even as a relatively unknown author with the first anthology I've put together - I still got a lot of support.
I'm very happy with how it all turned out. I didn't learn anything “new”, but I learned that there's another community that kind of backs up what they say in that sense and we're happy to support another indie author.
Thank You!
And with that, I thank you very much for checking out this very long post-mortem for Big Smoke Pulp Vol. 1.
I'll do this again for next year with Big Smoke Pulp Vol. 2 and I'll be doing many more post-mortems in between.
There are a lot of projects that I have planned between now and then. Both on the comics side and the prose side. If you are interested in what's coming, make sure you’re here for the post on January 1, 2025.
Until next time...
Release Info & Updates
Upcoming on Substack
December 25
A Year in Review
A Merry Christmas and a look back at the year that was
January 1
A Preview of the Year Ahead
A Happy New Year and a look forward to what’s coming
January 8
Let's Get Naked (Kaiju Woman)
A comic series with nothing to hide.
Upcoming Appearances
Pesto Comics Release Calendar
Instant Ink Comic Book Podcast
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