A few weeks ago, 30+ amazing writers and artists in our Kids Comics Studio program launched the first Kickstarter that KCU has ever done: Let’s Go!, an anthology of comics for kids.
The campaign is nearing its end and I already have an interesting takeaway.
Why do comics raise tens of millions of dollars a year on Kickstarter — while not making as much of a dent on self-publishing platforms like KDP or IngramSpark?
It’s not just a matter of audience. It’s a matter of economics.
Comics are expensive to make. Prose is not.
A single person can write a novel on their laptop, create a cover, and upload it to a digital or print-on-demand platform — with minimal upfront investment. Black-and-white printing is inexpensive, and ebooks cost virtually nothing to distribute.
Comics are a different story. They require huge amounts of time-consuming labor: story development, scripting, thumbnails, pencils, inks, colors, lettering — often completed by multiple people over months, or a single person over years. A full-length graphic novel can easily take three years of consistent, almost daily work to complete.
And then there’s printing. Full-color comics are costly — often double or triple the printing cost of black and white books.
Therefore, comics are a product that hugely benefit from amortization. Amortization is an accounting term that refers to “the gradual writing off of the cost of an asset.”
When a graphic novel is published first as single issue comics, the upfront production costs can be recouped issue by issue. By the time the collected edition comes out, those costs may already be partially or fully paid off, making the collected edition closer to “pure profit.”
That’s why the American comics industry traditionally sold serialized “floppies” first, using revenue from each issue to offset production costs before releasing collected editions (“trades” or “omnibuses”) that brought in additional revenue.
But there’s a problem.
When comics publishing imploded in the 1950s after the congressional hearings on “Juvenile Delinquency,” the industry narrowed its focus to a single niche audience: superhero fans. It developed an entire ecosystem revolving around “the direct market,” comic book shops that catered to that narrow demographic.
Only over the past 20 years, with the rise of “graphic novels,” has it become abundantly clear that there are many other types of readers who enjoy comics. Just like in prose, there are comics readers for every type of genre: romance, fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, humor, memoir, etc.
But “graphic novels” have been championed by book publishers, who do not have any business model to support serialized publishing.
Therefore, the industry has been walking a razor’s edge: building a passionately enthusiastic, growing fan base for a product that has ultra-thin margins, and relies on talent who are by and large barely paid minimum wage for highly skilled, artisanal labor.
Kickstarter is the platform that changes the equation.
It gives creators and publishers a way to fund graphic novels one piece (or “issue”) at a time, building audience support — and covering costs — incrementally. In other words, crowdfunding offers the serialization model that comics publishing needs, updated for the digital era.
The market reflects this. Comics consistently rank among Kickstarter’s most successful categories, with over $188 million raised to date and some of the highest success rates across all project types.
So the question is: Will traditional publishers embrace this model?
Within the graphic novel category, crowdfunding represents a chance for meaningful business model innovation — to be one part of a sustainable ecosystem for creators, publishers, and readers alike.
In an industry where margins are razor-thin and talent is chronically undervalued, that may not just be smart business. It may be essential.
In the meantime, please check out (and support!) KCU’s first foray into Kickstarter waters: Let’s Go!: a Kids Comics Studio Anthology.
