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Via Twitter, confirmation that @Womanthology is the #25th Most Successful @Kickstarter of ALL TIME! Incredible.

WOMANTHOLOGY, the huge collection of comics by women succeeded in meeting its Kickstarter goals. In fact, it exceeded them by some bit, raising $109,301 in 30 days. The original goal was $25,000.

WOMANTHOLOGY had some fantastic premiums to get people to pledge — including contributions from Kevin Smith, Neil Gaiman, Jim Lee, and tons more. But thats still a crazy amount of money. Over 2000 people pledged, 433 of them between $65 and $100.

It hasn’t been entirely clear what the organizers are going to do with the extra money, but some ideas have been advanced:

– Up to 50,000 will mean MORE books printed. See our site at http://womanthology.blogspot.com for more information on this! We may even be able to afford a special Womanthology table at a big upcoming con! – 50,000

– 70,000 I will put toward funding the printing of ANOTHER book that will bring more opportunity to creators that just need that chance! Not just women this time! :)

– Over 70,000 …. if there was a miracle in the universe that would allow us to earn more, my ultimate goal would be an expanded version of what this book is about. To create an organization that supports new creators and their creator-owned comics, helps fund them to complete their works, and get them out to major publishers for their chance to shine. The comics industry NEEDS this right now! This would really be a great way to support comics, and help move the industry and all the fantastic creators in it, to a brighter, more awesome future!


These are all noble goals, but I’ll throw this in there, too: hopefully the CONTRIBUTORS are getting paid along the way, because anthologies are notorious for not paying contributors.

1 COMMENT

  1. If you paid an average of $150 to the 140 contributors — still a pretty slight payment — that would come to $21,000, leaving $81,000 for printing the book and whatever extra costs. Double that and you still have over $60,000 to print the book.

    I think the stated — although somewhat nebulous — goal of starting imprints or organizations to promote independent creators sounds ducky, but PAYING creators for their work is going to do a lot more for the industry over the long term than any imprint will. Especially here, with a chance to pay 140 female creators of varying experience levels for their work–for a lot of people, getting that first freelance check is what makes the idea of a career viable to them, and pushes them to make more and better work. Here is a chance to generate goodwill for an obviously popular project, but more importantly to create dozens of new female creators with checks in their hands.

  2. Agreed, I think the best thing to do would be to split it among the contributors. I’m part of a group that puts out anthologies (shameless plug: http://www.inkanddrinkcomics.com) and I wish there was money to pass around to make everyone’s hard work worthwhile. “Womanthology” has a rare opportunity to properly compensate the work of all these talented cartoonists, which is great…I hope they take it.

  3. I have to agree. Their first priority should be paying their contributors. And I bet a lot of the bigger contributors would be happy to contribute their payment back so that the lower profile names or the people who are just starting out get a bigger check.

    It’ll never be more than a few hundred dollars for each contributor, but any check means a lot, especially if you’re not rolling around in giant piles of royalty loot already.

  4. I am a contributor to the Womanthology. Even more than that, I am a never-been-published writer. As far as I know, none of us are going to be getting paid, and none of us have brought it up before. The way this is going to work is that any extra funds from the Kickstarter basically helping creators get paid work. The book itself is our “foot in the door” to the paying jobs, and so will the other books. The actual profits from people buying the book are going to the Global Giving charity. That was something that was brought up from the start and we all agreed upon it. I don’t think making an actual profit crossed anyone’s mind at any point. We’re all more concerned with changing the whole dynamic of comics, not just for women but for all creators.
    Anyway, that’s my two cents.

  5. Despite all bases being covered, I guess I’m worried that $109,000 is almost too much money–that’s a ton of money when you’re printing a book, especially when you already have a publisher/marketer/distributor. But when you start creating organizations, it doesn’t seem like much money at all.

    I guess my worry is that at the end of the day, there will be two stories: 1) that a bunch of people came together and did a really awesome thing and made a great point about women working in comics (albeit under a terrible name); and 2) what did all that money get spent on? If the answer to 2 drowns out the goodwill and benefit of 1, that would be the worst.

    I say this as someone hoping that’s not the case — in the world of online and self-publishing, women are everywhere, and in many cases represent the state of the art. I think increased diversity — including gender, race, sexuality, whatever — can only help “mainstream” comics mature. Not to mention bring in some new ideas, which we sorely sorely sorely need.

  6. I can’t argue your point. It’s a good one. But I assure you that it’s all in good hands. We know that it’s not really enough to do much of what we want with but we’re hoping it’s enough for a good start. And also, I never liked the name either :)

  7. John, the book is apparently going to be solicited in Previews either in Nov or Dec in the via IDW so it still has a lot of markets it can potentially reach.

    I know I’m looking forward to it showing up there so I can order a copy myself.

  8. Wow, I need to do more of my own work. I’ve been coloring for 15 years & had a co-created trade put out w/ Image (Dark Ivory). 140 women creators, some with no prior experience, & somehow I missed out contributing to Womanthology. I’m not even on that list of “women in comics” going ’round. Dang!

    I’ve seen printer bills from big glossy oversize trades which my former work partner & I had published w/ Image. So I’ve a rough idea of percentages in mind. There’s gonna be a PILE of cash left over, especially if the organizers are smart about what printer is used.

    Since I’m not involved in any way – though yes, a woman in comics, whatever that may mean today – take this with a grain of salt. This project can afford to do more than it set out to do. I sincerely hope that even if it’s a nominal amount, & there’s also lots of comps copies, that the creators receive some form of compensation if possible.

    ‘K, gonna go retreat to my corner, where I am a Person In Comics.

  9. Eva- seriously, we are not getting paid. And I for one (and I do speak for many of us) don’t want to. It’s all going to starting a new venture for new creator owned books to get a chance at the big companies. The details are on the kickstarter.
    However some of that will also be going to doing another anthology (for everyone this time) and if you go on the Womanthology message board you can sign up to be in it. It’s in the secondary creators list thread. And good luck with your work, it sounds like you work very hard and deserve more than you’ve gotten!

  10. Like Heather I am also a contributor to the book and we all knew what we were getting into beforehand, we knew that we were contributing for free and any profits were being donated to charity.
    This book is far more about letting creators experience the World of comics, getting some exposure and learning a bit about that the industry that you can only really learn first-hand. While I know there are many people out there that are being scammed by being promised ‘exposure’ I hate to think that this book is being lumped in with those ones.
    Renae has been entirely honest all through-out the process and I’d personally prefer any money I would be paid either
    a.) Going to charity
    b.) or being used to start an imprint so other creators will get the same opportunities that I’ve had.

  11. I really don’t think that being published in an anthology is a foot in the door, or even exposure. You really have to do something crazy to stand out among all these other creators. What it gives you is some published credits, and that is all. You would probably get as much exposure by putting your creation on the web and doing a bit of promotion for it. After all this book is only going to have 5000 copies printed, that means not many more than that number of people seeing your creation.

  12. Again, a very good point that can’t be argued. But another thing that can’t be argued is the publicity this thing has gotten. Renae has already been contacted by several publishers willing to hire directly off the book, before or after publication. So already there’s been good things happening. I think we have gotten very lucky with all that’s happend and it seems to be holding out so far.