"FLOPPIES" vs GRAPHIC NOVELS: I think we all stress over this, but my Indie/KS experience has been very similar to the main publishers: "floppies" (a term retailers hate, I'm told) nearly pay for themselves (cost of talent, printing, etc.), while Graphic Novels are where you make the money you can, y'know, live on.
Since I can't afford to produce a hundred pages of a comic without getting paid by someone (be it a publishing company or Backers) the "floppy" lets me get new work out there in smaller, more affordable chunks (for both Backers and myself)— which (Big Bonus!) keeps my comic in the public eye more regularly (as opposed to only doing Graphic Novels, which have a much longer "dead zone" between publications).
As you said, you need to give the people who supported those "floppies" something extra in the Graphic Novel. You not only need to make it worth their time, you have to make it (to my mind) almost IMPOSSIBLE (Ha! My main character is called IMPOSSIBLE JONES; see what I did there?) for them to NOT get the collection/Graphic Novel.
Personally, I do that by collecting the floppies into an oversized (7.5 x 11) hardcover with a ribbon bookmark, extra/new story pages and— in the next IMP KS (launching 2-15-24) a fold-out of the characters in the IMP-verse drawn by Arthur Adams! (Something I have been working towards for YEARS, in order to get on Arthur's dance card!)
How can a fan of IMP *NOT* get that?
Of course, this could all still crash and burn. Maybe that'll be the month no one supports Kickstarters because Elon Musk suddenly decides to buy the company. But I'd like to think I've stacked the deck in my favor as much as possible.
Which, in the end, is all any of us can really do.
"FLOPPIES" vs GRAPHIC NOVELS: I think we all stress over this, but my Indie/KS experience has been very similar to the main publishers: "floppies" (a term retailers hate, I'm told) nearly pay for themselves (cost of talent, printing, etc.), while Graphic Novels are where you make the money you can, y'know, live on.
Since I can't afford to produce a hundred pages of a comic without getting paid by someone (be it a publishing company or Backers) the "floppy" lets me get new work out there in smaller, more affordable chunks (for both Backers and myself)— which (Big Bonus!) keeps my comic in the public eye more regularly (as opposed to only doing Graphic Novels, which have a much longer "dead zone" between publications).
As you said, you need to give the people who supported those "floppies" something extra in the Graphic Novel. You not only need to make it worth their time, you have to make it (to my mind) almost IMPOSSIBLE (Ha! My main character is called IMPOSSIBLE JONES; see what I did there?) for them to NOT get the collection/Graphic Novel.
Personally, I do that by collecting the floppies into an oversized (7.5 x 11) hardcover with a ribbon bookmark, extra/new story pages and— in the next IMP KS (launching 2-15-24) a fold-out of the characters in the IMP-verse drawn by Arthur Adams! (Something I have been working towards for YEARS, in order to get on Arthur's dance card!)
How can a fan of IMP *NOT* get that?
Of course, this could all still crash and burn. Maybe that'll be the month no one supports Kickstarters because Elon Musk suddenly decides to buy the company. But I'd like to think I've stacked the deck in my favor as much as possible.
Which, in the end, is all any of us can really do.
Karl Kesel
Great words of wisdom here!