Greg Rucka Talks Lady Sabre and the Ineffable Aether's Kickstarter Triumph

Best-selling comics and prose author Greg Rucka's webcomic Lady Sabre and the Pirates of the Ineffable Aether is finally coming to print--as the result of a Kickstarter campaign to fund its publication. The steampunk adventure series, co-created with Rick Burchett and edited/coded by Eric Newsom, launched a Kickstarter campaign just over a week ago and was funded within a day or so for its initial $27,500 goal. Having generated nearly $80,000 at this point, Rucka and his collaborators have added a number of stretch goals, including the production of a companion book and an annotated scriptbook--all of which they've already surpassed. So...now what? The writer says that the campaign is far from over, and that he won't be able to relax until the books are in the readers' hands. Rucka joined ComicBook.com to discuss the ins and outs of their successful Kickstarter campaign and where he hopes to go from here. You can check out the campaign video below, and pre-order your copy of the Lady Sabre trade here. Check back tomorrow for the rest of our interview with Greg Rucka, in which we talk more about the process and characters of Lady Sabre and the Pirates of the Ineffable Aether.

ComicBook.com: It's always weird talking to somebody whose Kickstarter has already been funded, since you lose a little bit of the urgency. Greg Rucka: [Laughs] Well, I don't know. It's still plenty urgent. We have somewhat overextended ourselves in our excitement. It's funny because we spent so very long putting the campaign together and beign so careful with everything and the one mistake that I know we've made thus far is on postage, which is the perennial Kickstarter beginner mistake apparently. And now we're offering three books--you get three books now. You get the Lady Sabre trade, which was the purpose of the Kickstarter--and now you're getting the Pocket Guide which is going to be this little ephemera book...and you're going to get the annotated scriptbook. So even if we had been right about our postage just for the trade alone, and I don't think we were, we have now blown that way, immeasurably out of the water. So it's going to be interesting. I was talking to somebody yesterday about how you look at that number when you see what a Kickstarter has raised and it's deceptive because it looks like all that cash is going to go to the people behind the Kickstarter. And yes, but that money is all spoken for, you know? Right now I think we're going to stay in the black but we're certainly not going to see a lot of profit. Now, I say that knowing we're five days into this campaign and we don't know where we're going to end up. And we've been remarkably blessed--really, I'm not complaining! We have performed so far and above anything that Rick or Erik or I expected and honestly everything after this is gravy but I do think that in the giddy panic of "My gosh, we passed our goal and we have these other stretch goals, let's unveil them," we didn't slow down enough to really consider what those stretch goals were going to require and consequently I think we set the levels for the stretches a little low. The first stretch goal, the paper dolls, we had worked that out and that was fine but the Pocket Guide and in particular the scriptbook/process book--we maybe should have set the stretch just a little bit higher.

ComicBook.com: Or maybe gone the Greg Pak route and made all the extras digital-only? Rucka: Well, you know, I'm not a fan of that. Everything we're doing you can get digitally. I think that that's a gratis, I don't think that that's a bonus. I think that if you're going to create something, especially in this format where you're crowdsourcing on the Internet, almost by definition you're required to provide an electronic version. I can see absolutely why you would do that--it certainly would save on your shipping--but why would you want to create an ephemera book that is only digital? That makes no sense to me. If I'm going to give you a book that's supposed to be a replica of something that exists in the world...well, it's not an electronic book in the world. How it looks and how it feels is as important as what it contains. You're going to be able to get the digital version of it--that's gratis--but to be able to actually hold it in your hand is what makes it a unique object. This has been a crazy week and I've talked to a lot of people and you're catching me after the first beer I've had all week and I'm really sort of coming down off of what really has been a roller coaster. And looking back over it and going "I think we did these things right, I think these things are mistakes, I think we'll be able to self-correct here." I'm going to have anxieties about this until everybody has the books in their hands. We started the week going, "I don't know if we're going to get to do this" and here we are on Friday and the answer is not only are we going to be able to do it but we're going to do more than that. So now it comes down to the fulfillment. Once everybody's got what they've contributed for, then and only then am I going to be able to sit down and say "Okay, it's over now." It would be the worst thing in the world to have gotten such an overwhelming response and then to let down our backers. That would be shameful. People really came out for this in a way that none of us expected. We came to the community asking for the community's help to make this book happen. And the community responded eagerly and generously. At the least we have to make sure that what they've contributed to has been worth every penny. This was never meant to be a profit-making venture. Anything extra is going to get rolled over into the comic in one form or another whether it's going to go to our maintenance costs, it's going to go to--I would really in all sincerity and I know we joke about it on the Kickstarter page, but I would like to get Rick a new computer. I would like to get him a Cintiq. I think what he could do with the right equipment... You know, he didn't have a Wacom tablet until we were three months into this, into Lady Sabre. I sent him mine and I had a little one, I didn't have a pro one. Just giving him the right tools...never mind the desire to, you know, I'd love to see everybody paid for their time and effort but again the money has been given to us, there's a responsibility to how it's used.

ComicBook.com: And you had the distinct pleasure of rolling out a Kickstarter campaign this week, when every crackpot on the planet has an opinion as to whether established professionals should be using Kickstarter or not. Rucka: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'm not sure what the question there is! [Laughs] ComicBook.com: I just figure that you've got that extra scrutiny on top of the campaign itself and most people have no idea how difficult it is to run a successful Kickstarter campaign. Rucka: I had no idea. This is my new job. I've written for all of about three hours this week, actual scripting work. Every other moment has been somehow related ot the Kickstarter campaign. It becomes a full-time job. And there is a certain element of...this is promotion. And I won't alter anything I'm going to say to you because of that, but by God I hope you've got a link to the Kickstarter campaign when this goes live.

ComicBook.com: It's also...you know, comic book professionals aren't generally independently wealthy. I don't have a problem with you or Jamal Igle or Bryan Q. Miller going to Kickstarter. Rucka: I actually have some very strong feelings about that. I think that there is a world of difference between the Kickstarter campaign that comes ot the community and says "This is what we want to do and we need funding to do it, and this is what you get as a result," and the campaign that says "This is a thing that we want to do and we want your funding to do it and then we'll sell it to you. And I think there's also a gross misconception of what a "successful professional" qualifies as financially. I will be perfectly blunt with you and say that if Erik, Rick and myself could have funded the printing of this ourselves, we would have done that. This is not an issue of me not wanting to spend my own money. This is an issue of me not having the money to spend.  I did not have it. Rick does not have it, Erik does not have it. We would not be able to do this the way we wanted to do this unless we went to Kickstarter or unless we went to an Oni or a Dark Horse or an Image and asked them to put it out for us. This isn't about me being miserly; this is about us saying that this is an expensive project and we don't have that cash on hand. I don't have that discretionary income. I will also add something else that people I don't think are considering, which is these are pre-sales for us and if we didn't do this, our ability to promote the book would have been severely impaired because while we do have an audience at the website, that audience at the websit eis a consistent community that is slowly growing. This allows us to put our work out in front of a lot more people and in so doing hopefully grow that website community hopefully as one of the effects.