Comics
How do you fund a comic or graphic novel?
Budget the colours, lettering and print run, show pages you've drawn, and offer sketches, prints and variant covers only backers get.
Short answer
Budget the book page by page: your drawing time, any colourist or letterer you pay, the cover, the print run and the postage. Launch once you can show finished pages, because backers judge a comic by its art. Offer rewards only they get, like a sketch inside the cover, a variant cover or an art print of a page. If it's your first book, consider funding one issue or chapter first. If the goal is met you claim the funds; if not, every backer takes their pledge back.
Key facts
- One campaign for one book or issue: a story, a goal, a deadline and up to five reward tiers.
- Sign up with email or Google. No publisher, no company, no approval queue.
- Backers get the comic and extras, never a share of the book or any financial return.
- All or nothing: pledges wait in escrow until the deadline.
- Readers and fellow artists who share your link can earn up to 18.5% of each pledge they bring in.
- Each pledge pays 1.5% plus a flat $0.99.
What does it cost to make a comic?
Your own drawing time is the biggest cost, and the one most artists leave out. Then whatever you pay others, and the print.
- Pencils and inks: your hours, or an artist's page rate.
- Colours: a colourist paid by the page.
- Lettering: by the page, or your hours again.
- Cover: your own, or a guest artist for a variant.
- Printing: page count, paper, colour and the size of the run decide it.
- Extras: art prints, stickers, bookmarks.
- Packaging and postage: stiff mailers, so the corners arrive square.
Get a print quote before you announce a page count. Going from 48 to 64 pages can change the price of every copy.
How big should the goal be?
Enough to print and post every copy, and to pay everyone who isn't you. Say a 48 page graphic novel you draw yourself:
Colours at $25 a page, $1,200; lettering $300; a guest variant cover $250; 500 copies at $4 each, $2,000; prints and stickers $300; mailers and postage $600. That is $4,650, so a goal of about $5,000 leaves room for fees.
If that is more than your readers can fill, fund one issue instead. A 24 page first chapter costs far less to print, and a delivered first chapter is the best pitch for the second. The goal planner runs both versions.
What rewards work for a comic?
The book, and the things only the person who drew it can make:
- The digital edition before the print ships.
- The printed book, signed.
- A sketch edition, with a small drawing inside the cover.
- A variant cover only backers can get.
- An art print of a favourite page.
- The backer drawn as a background character, for a high tier.
- An original page or cover sketch, for the top tier.
Sketches cost time, not money, so count the hours: fifty sketches can be a week of drawing. The smallest pledge is $10, a good place for the digital edition. The reward tier planner shows what each tier leaves after printing and postage.
How much should be drawn before you launch?
Enough to prove the book is real: finished pages, not only the idea.
Show the first pages in full colour and the rest as layouts, so people see the quality and see that the book is moving. Set the deadline before the printer needs paying, and promise a delivery month that counts the pages still to draw, not just the print.
Where do you find readers for a comic?
Where they already read you: your webcomic, your art account, the table you share at comic fairs.
Post a page or a panel every week of the campaign, each with the link. Ask the artists you know to share it, and switch on the share reward: you set it from nothing up to 18.5% of each pledge, paid by the program to whoever shared the link, in the same transaction. For readers who have never backed anything, how reward crowdfunding works explains it in a few minutes.
What does CoFunders charge?
Writing and previewing a campaign is free. Opening it costs $5 on the free plan, and each pledge pays 1.5% plus a flat $0.99. The share reward you set comes out of the pledge too.
The percentage fee on a pledge follows the plan of the account making it. It's taken when the pledge is made, so it isn't returned if the campaign misses its goal. Paid plans aren't on sale today, so the published fee is the free plan's fee.
Every fee is on the pricing page.
What if the goal is missed?
If the goal isn't met by the deadline, you take your pledge back from escrow with one tap, and nobody has to approve it. What comes back is the amount held for you: your pledge minus the fees taken when you backed (the platform fee, the flat fee, any tip and any share reward the campaign pays).
For a comic, that means no reader pays for a print run that can't happen. Come back with a shorter book, a digital first edition or a single issue.
How do you start?
Start with a draft while you finish the first pages: writing and previewing it costs nothing.
- Sign up in the app with email or Google.
- Write the story of the book, the goal, the deadline and the rewards.
- Set the share reward and publish.
- Post the link with a new page, and pin it on your webcomic.
Everything you can fund has a guide for each kind of project, and every other question is in the answers.