Kickstarter comics Projects analysis September 2020

This morning as I was scrolling through Kickstarter, I wondered what percentage of projects accounted for different funding and backing levels, so I spent a while figuring it out. Here is a spreadsheet of my findings.

Spreadsheet link

Now, this is all just one snapshot in time, but with 239 projects live on Kickstarter, what did I find?

Well, first off, all of the four biggest projects to launch this month, ALL FOUR of them, were either from a big publisher (Boom!, Skybound), a major property (Earthworm Jim), or from one of the biggest writers in comics (Scott Snyder).

There used to be an off chance for a smaller project breaking through into the stratosphere, but I fear those days are either gone or waning. However, with only 154 projects out of 16,807 projects raising over $100,000 in all of Kickstarter comics history, there is only a .1% chance that happens to a project anyway.

Second, if you hit $10,000+ on your campaign and or have 300+ backers, you were in the top 10% of all comics projects.

The common line from Kickstarter historically has been that the top 25% of projects on Kickstarter raised over $10,000, so having that number be only 10% shows me that far fewer projects are breaking out into the top end of the bell curve.

Historically, $2,500 was the mean Kickstarter comics project funding total. Since 56.91% of projects are funding below $2,500, that seems to still hold true.

I do not have the resources to add up all the money from the category right now and calculate the mean. However, I can roughly eyeball the median, which isn’t perfect, but it’s the best I’m going to do without a research team and on a Saturday morning.

Given all of this, it would seem like the biggest increase as far as percentage of funds raised is in projects funding between $5k-$10k, as roughly 50% of projects still make up the >$2,500 space.

The squeeze at the $10,000+ space can be accounted for by more projects funding between $2,500-$10,000 than before, but there may be other factors I’m not seeing.

This is also assuming that historically 25% of projects in the comics category did raise over $10,000, which I have no first-hand data to corroborate.

If true, though, then that is worrisome, as it means that fewer projects as breaking out, possibly because backer funds are being disbursed between more projects. That’s my guess at least, but while it’s an educated one, it’s still just a guess.

If true, though, it could mean that if you are used to funding at $10,000 from 300+ backers, you might need to set your sights lower.

However, interesting, while the $100,000+ campaigns have taken the lion’s share of the blame for the trouble funding this month, it seems the much more likely culprit is simply that there are 60-80% more projects than usual on the category, and they are cannibalizing each other.

According to Kickstarter’s own data, people are STILL backing projects at the rate they did before the pandemic, and if that’s true, then there is as much money flowing through the category as before.

I’m not in a place to do an analysis of how much money was made by the comics category this month compared to previous months, but if my suspicion is correct, then I would expect to see that there was not much growth in the category over the past year, and with more campaigns, those funds are being disbursed between 60-80% more projects. However, that is just a hypothetical suspicion based on what I’m seeing.

This month seems to be a glut, which could be a rebound from the dearth of comics projects in March through June. This is what happened in the overall world of book publishing as a whole, as books that were supposed to be released earlier in the year were all crammed into August and September.

What’s the good news here?

If you are in the 50-200 backer range and between $1,000-$5,000 in funding, there are TONS of people to work with to do backer swap and marketing outreach with right now. It’s a veritable bonanza, if you do it right.

However, on the flip side, with 60-80% more projects than in previous years, it’s very easy to be drowned out if you aren’t doing marketing and reaching out to your OWN audience.