Listening to your audience

The year was 2015, I had just finished my most successful Kickstarter ever (at the time). We raised $8700 for my Katrina Hates the Dead graphic novel from 294 backers.

Not only were my first two books graphic novels, but they were also dark fantasy.

I was planning my next year, and I had a problem. I didn’t have any more comics coming out, and nothing I had was fantasy or horror.

What did I have?

Two novels (a mystery novel called My Father Didn’t Kill Himself and a sci-fi novel called Spaceship Broken, along with a children’s book called I Can’t Stop Tooting, which wasn’t even written by me. It was written by Garrett Gunn and drawn by Nic Touris, edited and published by me.

They were very different in tone, style, and genre, and different from anything I had ever released before.

Still, I had no choice but to put those books out because I had nothing else to show people. I didn’t think it would matter that these works were so disparate in tone and genre.

I was young and brash at the time, so I figured my audience would follow me anywhere. Now, with a much bigger audience, I worry they will never buy anything from me again. How a couple of years changes everything.

The results:

My Father Didn’t Kill Himself – $3431 from 155 backers

I Can’t Stop Tooting: A Love Story – $2162 from 65 backers

Spaceship Broken – $1866 from 75 backers

Every campaign I ran in 2016 made less and less money, and from much fewer backers than Katrina Hates the Dead.

Meanwhile, my graphic novels were selling BETTER than they ever had before. I was still able to SELL what I had, but my audience wasn’t buying any of my new work.

What happened?

I severely misjudged my audience and what they wanted. In fact, I didn’t even care what they wanted. I was making what I wanted to make and assuming they would buy it because I was so amazing.

What a douche.

Luckily, I learned that I made a big mistake after my first launch and began work on an anthology designed for my fans, based on input they had given me over the years.

2016 was a disaster for launching new products, but in February of 2017 I launched Monsters and Other Scary Shit, an anthology of comic and illustrated novel monster stories, where my fans helped me choose:

• the cover artist
• the creators involved
• the theme

It was everything my fans said they wanted, and in return, it raised $27,000 during the Kickstarter launch, making more in that launch than I had in Kickstarter ever before.

They spoke. I listened. My book succeeded.

And I learned then to listen to my audience. I’ve entered a lot of new markets since then, with novels and courses being the two most prominent, and every time I do, I spend an inordinate amount of time asking my fans what they want.

And every time I launch, I end up successful at the end of it. All I did was switch from making products only for me to making products that fans will love too.

It’s always in my style and with my take, but now it’s a collaboration to find what will resonate with us both.

These were products that I loved and my audience loved, so I wasn’t compromising anything.