Thursday 24 November 2016

The Cerebus-Ending Crisis: Can We Keep Going? - Part 10

CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER 6
A Portfolio of 10 Signed & Numbered Prints with Exclusive Commentary by Dave Sim
Raising Funds For The Restoration & Preservation Of The World's Longest Graphic Novel 


HI! DAVE SIM HERE! ANNOUNCING THAT KICKSTARTER CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER 6 (CAN6) HAS LAUNCHED! CLICK HERE TO LINK TO IT! AND PLEASE JOIN ME HERE EVERY DAY AS I DISCUSS, WITH CEREBUS FANS, THE "CEREBUS-ENDING CRISIS" WE'VE BEEN IN SINCE JULY OF THIS YEAR:

CAN WE KEEP GOING? THE TMI ANSWER!
PART TEN OF FOURTEEN

More responses to the survey question "Do you have any suggestions for future Kickstarter campaigns?":
Alan S UNITED KINGDOM:
Better plan of stretch goals/bonus prints.
We're definitely working on having a better plan of our stretch goals -- having the digital rewards as stretch goals REALLY didn't work and sincere apologies to everyone who thought they got "burned" on that -- and bonus prints, Alan. And Step One in that is keeping everything 100% simple for the next two or three Kickstarters before we attempt anything else. We have to learn to walk before we try running.

BONUS PRINT KICKSTARTER
Stephen L Newark DE:
Since the bonus prints have been retired, perhaps a "bonus print only" Kickstarter, so I can obtain some of the ones I missed and had hoped to get with future KS campaigns.

Jennifer D New York NY:
It would be nice to be able to get the handful of prints I wasn't able to get last time

Sandeep and I are definitely having a lot of conversations about how to deal with the situation. As I indicated to Alan (above) having "bare bones" as the TOP priority lets out having anything to do with the Bonus Prints for the foreseeable future. However:

I guess my biggest question for ALL of the Pledge Partners would be: how much of a problem is this?

1) are there Bonus Prints that you would have purchased if we had continued to make them available?
2) How many Bonus Prints are you "missing"?
3) Which ones are they?
4) Would you be willing to pay a premium price -- say $25-$40 each -- for the ones you're "missing"?

The reason that I pose it that way, Stephen and Jennifer, is that it would involve a substantial amount of labour and -- because of the microscopic quantities involved -- really drive up the production costs. At the same time, I can understand that it's a major "loose end" to the Bonus Prints program for…a lot?…some?…many?…most? Just you two? Pledge partners. And if there's a way to "wrap it up" that benefits both sides of the partnership and can be instituted with a minimum amount of fuss, we'll see what we can do.

The Bonus Prints were definitely Hot Topic #1 this time around:

BONUS PRINTS
Morten E NORWAY:
Can we include cover prints in the rewards?

John C Lake Charles LA:
I LOVE the Bonus Prints, and hope to see more of them in the future.

Cerdic G London UNITED KINGDOM:
Would like to see the bonus prints again some time!

MICHAEL HUNT Chicago IL:
I really do like the bonus prints but their absence won't keep me from continuing to support future CAs.

Simon C H UNITED KINGDOM:
Please reintroduce bonus prints if possible. Thanks

David R Margate UNITED KINGDOM:
Bonus Prints! Even if it's only a few per CAN

Richard P Coldfield UNITED KINGDOM:
If you reinstate the bonus prints I would like to see some selected colour covers of individual issues.

John D Overland Park KS:
I would love to see more bonus prints... Maybe, considering the possible complications of continuing them, just the option of 2 or 3 per campaign. I love the cover art. It would be neat to see a cover available each time, possibly one from the time period of the particular campaign?

Andrew L North Chelmsford MA:
The Return of the Bonus Print!

Lee T Birmingham UNITED KINGDOM:
Bring back the bonus prints!

Matthew Barber Edinburgh UNITED KINGDOM:
I know they are hard work but I do like the bonus prints.

This isn't really the BEST time to be discussing the Bonus Prints -- with "bare bones" as our Top priority for the foreseeable future -- but our best thinking at the moment is that if we DID do the Bonus Prints at some point, it would have to be a mandatory, rather than optional, part of the package.

As an example that we explored: What if we made four of the MELMOTH covers the stretch goals? If we hit the $$ thresholds, you could order this cover and that cover -- as John D says, just 2 or 3 per campaign.

The problem is, for someone who can BARELY AFFORD the Portfolio as is, suddenly finding out that they're "on the hook" for 2 or 3 covers they don't particularly want -- or not enough to pay another 20 or 30 dollars on top of what they're already paying… Well, that's isn't going to fly. Likewise someone who just wants ONE of the covers. As soon as you introduce any element of "have it your way" into the equation, you IMMEDIATELY make both the execution and the ordering more difficult.

Which runs afoul of Hot Topic #2 -- people DEFINITELY liked the all-around simpler structure with CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER FIVE!:

KEEP IT SIMPLE!
Chris S Saint Cloud MN:
Keep it simple. Even this one is too complex.

Giorgio S High Wycombe UNITED KINGDOM:
No - you are doing great! I like the simplicity of this one.

Travis P Vestal NY:
I do like the bonus prints, but let's see what happens with this campaign! Otherwise, I dunno. Man, this was an easy survey!

Chris D Chicago IL:
I appreciated the simpler number of options and the digital rewards.

Scott L Gunnison CO:
No. I do like the simpler process this time.

Ari K Tampere FINLAND:
Keep it simple

William H Patterson CA:
This was better, more simplified. Keep it as simple as possible I feel.
If this was CEREBUS ARCHIVE NUMBER EIGHT (let's say), and we were past the "bare bones" phase, I think we would start with the simplest form of Bonus Print possible: One. "The price has gone up by [fill in the blank] but in addition to the first ten pages of MELMOTH in the CEREBUS ARCHIVE, you're also getting a print of CEREBUS COVER No. ??". And then we would make that a Survey question: 1) would you prefer we go back to "bare bones" 2) does one Bonus Cover still fit your budget? and 3) do you want us to "double down" and do two Bonus Covers next time?

Just letting you know where we're headed well ahead of time.

THANKS FOR JOINING US! MY DISCUSSION OF THE "CEREBUS-ENDING CRISIS" CONTINUES NEXT WEEK ON A MOMENT OF CEREBUS:


CAN WE KEEP GOING? THE TMI ANSWER!
PART ELEVEN

6 comments:

Eric Fennessey said...

I'm happy to continue with the bare bones campaigns. I always bought some of the bonus prints, and they're nice objects, but they've become yet another thing in my house that I've got squirrelled away, collected because I collect things. Unseen in the Big Envelope and occasionally causing guilt that I've not put any on display.

Unknown said...

Hi eric - I tend to be the same way. I should have an announcement next Friday about the 1 (one) POSSIBLE Bonus Print this time around that -- if things work out -- everyone should be getting for FREE!

Which means you'll -- QUITE POSSIBLY! -- have this one loose FREE Bonus Print compounding your guilt and keeping all the other guilt-inducing Bonus Prints company while gazing at you, balefully, and making snide "What is our CONCEPT here?" comments from wherever you're keeping them.

I think we can all agree that it's now a BIG PART of the Full, Hard Core CEREBUS Collecting Experience!

Anonymous said...

How about offering just 1 bonus print per campaign?
The previous campaigns became so confusing with so many different prints, gold stickers or no gold stickers, and tiered levels, etc...

D.H. Sayer said...

Why does everyone care about bonus prints so much? It's not like it's original art...it's essentially a giant poster, or am I missing something? I'd much rather have access to Dave's notebooks, letters, annotated pages of Cerebus, private conversations (whoops, overstepping a little there) than a big poster. I guess I'm approaching it from more the "literary" angle, where stuff like the former is customarily locked away in some university somewhere. The bonus prints are little more than blowing up the text "A screaming comes across the sky" to poster-size and asking everyone to pay a premium, at least to me.

That said, I'm willing to accept I'm in the minority and Dave should do what most of the people want.

Michael R. said...

Hi Dave!
I do like the bonus prints, but I think they should be a themed bonus print to the current archive we are pledging for. The past bonus prints were/are great, but when I started to put everything into my portfolios (I started my 3rd portfolio with CA5. The bonus prints are not in a chronological order. I just arranged them to have a flow to them after the 2 archives are placed in the beginning of the portfolio and however many inserts in the portfolio are left I would start the bonus prints.

I'm looking at the whole portfolio display aspect of all the archives. I'm thinking of the whole archive as a very, very large book.

Since we are pledging for the first 10 pages of Melmoth, maybe a Melmoth cover, maybe sketches related to the first 10 pages or maybe not having bonus prints but expanding 3 pages of notes to a few more.

I do believe by picking however many bonus prints by reaching certain pledge goals got to be a bit confusing. Especially, when you have 2 different sizes for the bonus prints. ...and then all the others bonus stuff. Streamlined is far much better and quicker.

Michael Ragiel

Unknown said...

Hi guys! Announcement on THE CAN6 BONUS PRINT coming up later in the week!