From launching incredibly successful Kickstarters and developing Dreamworks feature films, to writing a “how-to” book on self-publishing comics, Making Comics Dot Com’s very own Jason Brubaker is one busy, busy fellow. Recently, he’s turned his attention towards a project that has piqued plenty of curiosity: the creation of an audiobook. With the help of a new Kickstarter campaign, Jason hopes to pull in enough funding to allow him to record his highly-praised book, Unnatural Talent, as an audiobook! An interesting endeavor, to be sure. Recently, I caught up with Jason to ask him about audiobooks, as well as the dangers (and benefits) of Kickstarter! Read on — especially if you foresee a Kickstarter campaign of your own in the future!
Kevin Cullen: To kick things off, I just want to say that audiobooks are awesome. When I’m coloring or inking pages, I love to have some background stimulation like books on tape or the Making Comics Dot Com Podcasts (*cough* shameless self promotion *cough*). Having this awesome resource in a format that allows me to multitask effectively is an awesome idea. Was this why you decided to suddenly record the audiobook? So that folks who were strapped for time could fire up Unnatural Talent while they’re doing busy work?
Jason Brubaker: Yeah, pretty much. I always try to focus on releasing things the way I like to consume them and I love audiobooks while I work. Even though I suddenly announced the audiobook version, it has been something I wanted to do with this book since the start. In a perfect world I would have released the audio version alongside the physical book but then I realized that it would take me forever to record in my free time.
Shortly after the book was released I nearly scrapped the idea of making the audiobook version because of time restraints — and I just wanted to focus on my next graphic novel. But then I went to ECCC [Emerald City Comic Con — ed.] a few weekends ago and got totally inspired, came back to work and got totally depressed and then said, “You know what?! I’m gonna just record a little section of the audio every week and release it on my Youtube channel.” So I went home that night and stayed up until 1AM recording the first chapter and uploaded it to Youtube that night. Now, normally, I have problems recording at night because you can hear all the crickets in the background of my garage (my studio), so I rarely can get clean audio at that time. But for some reason there were no crickets that night and I think it turned out really nice. The next night I tried it again and sure enough, there were crickets chirping away in the background.
The next day at work, I was trying to think of a way to take off work long enough to record the whole thing in the day (without crickets) and I suddenly came to the realization that I should launch a Kickstarter. I assembled the rewards that day and that night I recorded the video, crickets and all.
Kevin: You’ve had some pretty rocking success with Kickstarter in the past. However, Unnatural Talent skipped the crowdfunding stage and went straight to the Amazon bookstore shelves. Why the return to Kickstarter for this project?
Jason: Well, the reason I skipped Kickstarter for the book version of Unnatural Talent is because I still had so much unfinished business to do with my last Kickstarter and I just felt like it would be kinda greedy to launch a new campaign before tying up the loose ends. Plus, that last campaign was so hard on me with all the shipping and management, at a huge scale, that I didn’t want to just pile on a bunch of new things to worry about and ship. But now I’m finally printing the final stretch goal for reMIND and so I feel like I can breathe again and start to think about the next project. It’s an exciting place to be.
Kevin: Despite the resounding success of reMind’s Kickstarter — you’ve mentioned how you were struggling to stay afloat once you had to start shipping out those thousands of coffee-table comic books. Having an audiobook means less S&H worries. Are there other things that you learned from your past Kickstarter campaigns that you’ll be applying to this project — to make the whole process move along with less stress?
Jason: YES! There are so many things I’ve learned that I’m applying. For one, I have to be careful to not over-promise anymore. If I accidentally over-promise on a small scale, I can dig into my personal bank account to make up for it and still deliver. But as soon as something gets as big as the reMIND Kickstarter got, those little costs become so magnified that it can really break you. My final stretch goal is a good example of breaking my bank. I had to sell a bunch of books, go to shows, wait for months of royalty checks to collect and take money out of savings in order to pay for it. But I finally have most of the money in place and so I’ve been able to pull the trigger to start the printing. We all keep hearing about campaigns that were super successful that imploded because of over-promises. The hardest part for an artist is managing the scalability of a project.
The other thing for me is making a campaign enjoyable to fulfill. The most draining part of reMIND 2 was the shipping. I kept telling everyone that my next graphic novel campaign will be super limited. Like only 500 to 1000 slots and when it’s gone, it’s gone. I’m still considering that for when I finally have my next graphic novel ready, but the only real reason I am saying that is because the shipping was the hardest part for me and I don’t want to go through it again at that scale. But an interesting thing happened while I was at ECCC. My brother came to help me at that show and he kept telling me that his wife was really interested in doing all my shipping for my online store. We have been talking about it ever since and I’m happy to say that she will be shipping all the physical products for this audio book campaign. The future is bright now that I know that shipping won’t dominate my nights and weekends for another 6 months if I have another successful campaign. Haha!
Delegation is such a big thing that I’ve been learning these days.
Kevin: One thing that I’ve never really thought about is how much work goes into an audiobook. It’s not just “sit down, read the book into a microphone, post to Kickstarter.” Can you talk about the process of creating the Unnatural Talent audiobook? Is there much post-work that goes into the recording or is a majority of the work in the actual recording itself? Do you have any strategies to stay hydrated while you read your 276 page book?
Jason: I’m gonna strap on a Hydration Backpack and hit record. Haha!
Over the years of recording podcasts and videos, I have noticed that for every hour of recording there is 2 to 3 hours of editing. That’s how it is for me anyway. After you record, you have to listen to it all to hear what needs to be cut or trimmed. So you automatically have doubled the time it takes to record. Then — if you are like me and want to really get in there with multiple takes and sound effects and cutting out every “Um” and sniff — then you are looking at hours. Don’t get me wrong though — I REALLY enjoy it, but not when I have to stay up till 1AM killing crickets and still go to work the next morning.
Check out Jason’s Kickstarter for the Unnatural Talent audiobook here or click on this nifty little link if you’re looking to purchase a physical copy of the book. Also, stay up-to-date with his latest comic, Sithrah, which you can find right here!
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“I have noticed that for every hour of recording there is 2 to 3 hours of editing. That’s how it is for me anyway. After you record, you have to listen to it all to hear what needs to be cut or trimmed. So you automatically have doubled the time it takes to record.”
These are the same calculations for me. A one hour podcast requires at least two hours of editing time. And like Jason also said, putting in the bells and cutting out the whistles only prolongs it.
But it’s totally worth it. There’s nothing like a great sounding piece of audio that took time and effort to make that way. Literal music to your ears.
Great interview, Kevin and Jason!
Thanks, man!