Name some. Those who actually want to, do. All the ones I've heard talk about such things just wish they could get another Batman gig.

Maybe someday we'll learn the lesson of Siegel and Shuster.

But famous does mean a lot more power to do what they want than most people have. It means they have access to avenues of getting their work out there that unknowns don't have. And instead of availing themselves of those, they're pushing the little guy out of the way and shoving their way to the front of the digital bread lines. And when they're done there might not be any bread left for people who actually need it. And that annoys me.

In this day and age I think people are smarter than that. If a campaign goes wrong I don't think EVERYONE who pledged will blame KS. Is everybody mad at KS for what happened with Sullivan's Sluggers? If so, that's their choice who they point their frustrations towards.

And besides, people get ripped off- it's a fact- but I don't think in general KS is synonymous with rip-off, unless you have a skewed POV.

Bottom line is it's up to you to buy. In other words just like stuff you buy on-line it's up to you if you buy it. If you don't want to it's your choice- but money made will continue to be made especially in the methods were it's proven to be fruitful. That's just the world we live in.

I want to do one eventually. And I don't see it going away. People will just move to the next biggest thing. KS may go away but I don't see crowd funding going away look at Myspace and now Facebook people will eventually move on but social media isn't going away.

My point is as long as there is a demand there will be supply.

I agree. They should stay far, far away.

I'm going to have to defend Aaron Diaz and Dresdan here. The people sending money to his Kickstarter know full well what they're getting into. It isn't fraud or wrong doing on Aaron's part. His fans are loyal to him, and they're willing to shell out the cash to support his projects; ready made or not. I applaud what he's doing, and wish I had that level of success to pull off a 500k Kickstarter project. The guy cut his teeth for years in the webcomic world cultivating a fan base, and he deserves all the money heading his way. You really can't blame Kickstarter or Diaz for people WANTING to send him money to support him. They love him, and they love his artwork.

Instead of criticizing the man, we should be taking notes.

I obviously need to work on my sarcasm. :whistlin:

We should be taking notes on how to fleece our fans with non-commitment?

Today I learned, that I should spend all my time on twitter talking about how good I am, instead of actually doing anything. It obviously gets better results.

What project are you supporting? read that kickstarter a little more closely. You are buying a book of previously published work, not supporting any future projects. you are supporting him playing games and spamming twitter.

It is completely unethical. If the stretch goals represented something realistic and tangible, that would be another matter. But it is a book sale, run as a donation drive, masked as a crowd funded project. fraud.
I don't know who came up with the idea of selling books at $25-$600, pay what you feel like paying, but masking it as an investment is somewhere between evil and genius.
Do you REALLY think, if that book was for sale on Amazon.com, and the price was $25-600 pay what you like, ANYONE would pay $600, because they want to help the author? no, because everyone would know damn well it was a simple sales transaction. hell, this "invest" crap avoids sales tax.

But again, how is it unethical if the people know exactly what they're purchasing? If someone is selling me a car that has frame damage and has been in a flood, and don't tell me it has frame damage and has been in a flood, and purposely scrub the records so that there's no way I can know the vehicle's history, that is unethical and is wrong.

However, if they sell me a crappy car, they tell me its a crappy car, and I KNOW its a crappy car, and I buy the crappy car anyway, how is that unethical? That's just me being a stupid consumer.

Now you can argue that Diaz's fans are idiots for supporting that Kickstarter drive, that's your opinion and you're welcome to it. However, you can't say that Diaz is being unethical, because he's telling them exactly what they're purchasing. It's their money, they can spend it anyway they see fit. If someone wants to spend $40 on a print, a pdf, and three mini-prints that's their business. If 7k people want this guy to sit on his butt and play videogames all day, again, that's their business.

Diaz definitely isn't evil, but he's definitely a genius. Again, we should all be taking notes.

Agreed.

I really don't see anything wrong with using Kickstarter to sell previously published works (particularly if they have never been collected into one edition before). Though there should probably be something exclusive to those backing the Kickstarter campaign (a special cover, or bonus material not included in other printings).

I'm planning on doing three separate Kickstarter campaigns for each of the three issues of my comic book. Depending on how much interest I can build after the completion of the third, I can easily see myself doing a fourth Kickstarter to do a trade paperback.

I don't think there's anything wrong with using KS for the trade just because the content had previously been published before.

The most amazing thing about this is that Aaron Diaz got thousands of people to pay $10-20 for what essentially they're getting from his website for free.

Absolute genius.

"the customer is always right" Blaming fans is just completely missing the point. its not their fault.
They are fans not experts on the field. We can not expect them to have the knowledge of what goes into the creation of works. and we can not expect them to have the time, or resources to research every one of these with the due diligence required, to prevent fraud.

Asking them to protect themselves is absurd. and it is our responsibility to look out for them. If we see them getting taken advantage of, we damn well shouldn't be taking notes on how to fuck them over ourselves, we should be calling that shit out, and letting them know, they are being used.

I'm not blaming anyone. I'm pointing out that the customers/fans have every right to spend their money anyway they see fit. I'm also pointing out that there isn't some mass deception going on here. Diaz is pretty transparent in what he's offering and selling. Do you honestly believe that 7k + people can't figure out that this isn't new material? Do you honestly believe that all of those people don't realize that they can just go to the store on his site and order those books for cheaper? I figured all of that out in less than 5 minutes.

I'll go a bit further; They know all of that and they don't care. They WANT to spend money on this guy because they like him and the work he does. In other words, this guy has a very loyal fanbase. It's really that simple.

And yeah, in sales the customer is ALWAYS right.

What the heck are you even talking about? Protect them from what? Who is taking advantage of them? Who is fucking them over? Again, these people know EXACTLY what they're paying money for. They know EXACTLY what risks are involved in supporting this guy. Diaz isn't trying to pull any type of deception here. He isn't doing anything he isn't capable of doing. He isn't tricking anybody. These are adults who are fully capable of reading everything on that Kickstarter page, not a bunch of ignorant children getting bullied out of their lunch money.

You'll have an argument if Diaz takes the money and vanishes into thin air. Until that happens, this sounds more like a personal issue with the creator than anything malicious on Diaz's part.

I suppose I must respectfully disagree :) I truly do understand your perspective, but I'm not sure you realize just how close minded most publishers are to creator owned books, even from "famous" creators. Creator Owned often equals less profit. Even if they went with your book, you're counting on that publisher to fund the creative process, which means they get an even bigger cut, not to mention since they fund the process they have a say into how many pages they're funding, and sometimes say into the creative process.

Put that against Kickstarter offering 100% creative control, with no relinquishing of profits. Unless these well known creators are rich enough to fully fund their own time, KS is often the only option to move away from the monthly work on OTHER peoples books. If you're talking RICH people that go to Kickstarter, then I understand that better, but well known creators are often caught in their own creative difficulties in which KS is their only option to be creatively free.

Some well known artists that went to Kickstarter

Jamal Igle: Molly Danger

Humberto Ramos: Fairy Quest


Thanks for the thoughts, everyone! It's always interesting to read.

I can see what you're trying to say. May I ask though, if he would have taken money from a Publisher to print the physical copies, wouldn't that be okay by you?

If so, then why is it so bad that he chose to go straight to the readers himself to sell the book, and keep the money that would have gone to a middle man (a Publisher)? I would think that more money to the creator is better than a big cut to a publisher. I think he made a good choice.

The people obviously had a demand for a physical copy of the book, despite it being for free online. He's not taking advantage of people if they want what he's selling.

I do respect your opinions on things, I just feel it's unfair to call projects names and saying people are scammers when they are only in fact trying to rely less on Publishers and be more in charge of their own sales. This is not much different than putting the book up for pre-sale on his own site, except this way he is able to reach out to a lot more people.

I do understand that people don't like the pre-done work on Kickstarter though. If I had a choice it would go to people who need it to complete their work rather than those who have already done it. So I get that side of the argument. So far though, KS seems capable of supporting all endeavors. Hopefully that aspect won't change.

To be clear, Renae, and no offense intended, but I'm not talking about well-established professionals like you and the people you mentioned. I'm talking about downright FAMOUS comics creators. People who write two or three DC, Marvel, or Image titles a month. There's only 20-25 of those people on the planet. One such name was mentioned in this thread, and the thought of a name that big on kickstarter makes me upset.

And whatever trials or hardships a truly famous comic book creator might have getting a creator-owned book made, you can multiply that for the unknown creator by a thousand. The type of people I'm talking about can pick up a phone and any editor in the business will give their pitch serious consideration. Whereas a guy like me has to hope an editor doesn't immediately throw my submission in the trash.

Even if a full-time comic writer (and this point is specific to writers) isn't rich with money they're rich with time, contacts, networks, and access. Even if you write 3 comics a month, that doesn't come close to the time commitment of most normal full-time jobs. And such a person would know tons of working professionals and their name is enough to entice very talented people to be willing to collaborate with them. If schlubs like me can find talented people willing to work for back-end pay, why can't one of the most famous comic book creators in the world do the same?

I'll trade places with any of those guys any day. I'll take their contacts and their networks and their access and the power of their name, and in exchange they can hoard all the kickstarter dollars they can muster without those things. And we'll see who gets a project done first.

At at the end of the day, the kind of people I'm talking about ought to be, if not rich, then more than capable of financing production costs on a comic book. Much more capable than most unknown people. If you've been in the business for 20 years and have been working for the big boys the whole time on books that sell and you can't even cover production costs on a creator-owned comic, then something's very wrong.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...ng-megalopolis

Leaving Megalopolis by Gail Simone and Jim Calafiore

They raised over $117,000.

This is probably the quintessential example of what Screwtape is talking about. These are famous creators using Kickstarter for a creator owned project.

Could they have taken it to Image? Of course. But should they have to? I don't think so. Could they have formed their own publishing label? Of course. But should they have to? Again, I don't think so.

Also, take a look at some of the rewards: Get yourself drawn into the book; Portfolio review by Jim Calafiore, Script Review by Gail Simone.

These are not things that publishers tend to offer when they sell their books.

Could they have set up a web site and done all of this themselves? Sure. But why should they go through the hassle of creating a web site to do exactly what Kickstarter is already doing?

As has been stated, there's not a finite amount of Kickstarter pledge dollars. The overwhelming majority of KS backers are driven to the site specifically to fund a particular project. So it's not like Gail and Jim are stealing potential pledge dollars from us small folk.