How Do You Gauge Interest in a Possible Kickstarter Campaign?

[kristintipping7]

I've never done a Kickstarter. I have a print version of my comic's first volume made through Createspace. I would like to Kickstart another edition of the book with some bonus content and hopefully higher quality printing than I can afford on my own. I'm not sure how much demand there would actually be for that, though, and just asking doesn't always give an accurate picture.

Any advice on how to gauge audience interest before starting a Kickstarter campaign? Any advice on Kickstarter generally?

[nikaalexandra]

i didnt do my first (small) kickstarter until i had an audience of 11k on tumblr and 2k people engaging with my comic weekly. even then, only like 60 people actually pledged to my cause. I think the best way to gauge your success with a kickstarter is looking at your following and asking yourself "if 5-10% of these people pledged to me, could i have a successful campaign?" if the answer is yes, go for it! if the answer is no, maybe roll the dice and still go for it! you don't gain or lose anything unless you actually get funded, so the only thing that could really take a hit is your ego

as for general advice, i put in my two cents on this thread

[Wishjacked]

I'd second what @nikaalexandra said— for mine, I estimated that 5-7% of my followers would back and I moved from there. However, I based that number on my Twitter followers INSTEAD of my Tapastic followers— I've heard that it's notoriously difficult to get people from Tapas to leave Tapas, and that was definitely my experience. I ended up with lots and lots of backers from Twitter and… maybe 2 from Tapas. I know I've seen you around on Twitter and some other social media, and those might be better places to gauge interest from. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[kristintipping7]

I don't have much of a social media presence. ;-; I only started using twitter seriously about a year ago, and I still don't have much of a following. Most of my readers are on Tapas and Webtoon.

[GoldenPlume]

Based on studies of other Tapas series doing Kickstarters, expect only 2.5 to 3% of your subscribers to actually financially support a print campaign. The most common giving level on Kickstarter is $20.

So if you have 10,000 subscribers, you may be able to sell about 300 printed books, for $20 or $6,000. After approximately $600 in Kickstarter and credit card fees you will have only $5,400 remaining to print and ship those books.

Publishing is notorious for thin margins.