Kickstarter Campaign For Comic Book That Aims To Reward Retailers As Well As Backers

from the interesting-ideas dept

It’s always neat to see whatever creative ideas people come up with to make their various crowdfunding projects more interesting. Writer Alex Wilson recently alerted us to his own Kickstarter campaign for printing The Time of Reflection, a short comic he wrote, which recently won “the Eagle Award” at the London Comic-Con, as part of a challenge sponsored by Universal Pictures (as part of a promotional campaign for Snow White and the Huntsman). I’m a bit surprised that Universal didn’t require them to then hand over any copyright on the comic (you see that happens sometimes with these kinds of contests), but it looks like Alex and Silvio (who did the drawings) are free to do what they want with the comic. So they’re doing this Kickstarter campaign to do printed copies of the comic.

That, alone, probably wouldn’t be that interesting, but Wilson added an interesting little twist. There have been plenty of concerns about what’s happening to independent comic book shops in the digital era, so Wilson is looking to use Kickstarter as a way to also “give back” to some of those shops. For anyone who pledges over $3, not only do they get a copy of the booklet, but they also get to designate a local, independent comic book shop and Wilson will send a copy to that shop as well (at no cost to the shop), at which point the shop can turn around and sell it, give it away for free, burn it, whatever (and yes, he’s checking with each shop before sending it to make sure they’ll take it…). Who knows how well that aspect will work, but it’s a neat idea to increase awareness and distribution on multiple levels. First, it’s really a way for backers to effectively buy an extra copy for the stores in question. Second, by getting the book into cool indie comic book shops, Wilson clearly is hoping to get more awareness of the book as well. The campaign is already well over its initial (modest) goal of raising $450, and it will be interesting to see how well the retail tie-in goes. Hopefully Wilson will stop by again and update us on how various retailers responded to the whole thing, and if anything interesting comes out of it.

Filed Under: comic book, crowdfunding, retailers, time of reflection