Hi, I'm Deirdre. I've been doing my comic Wasted Epiphanies (http://wastedepiphanies.com) since 2006, when I put together a little 12-page photocopied minicomic to give away at Burning Man. It's a collection of strips about... polar bear temps, black holes in language, strange hovering artifacts, racing snails, festival dawns, selfish genes, a caveman who dreams of aeroplanes, why sex is like ice skating, why spaceships make me cry, and whatever is currently making my head explode. 

I have a new 40-page A5 collection ready to go. 

What's in it? All the web strips since last October, and several which will only appear in the print version. Some because they're the wrong format (landscape), some because they're TOO HOT FOR THE INTERNETS due to naked people and/or bad behaviour.

What does it look like? That's the cover up there. Inside it's in glorious colour.

Colour printing is really expensive. Yes, I know, and it'd be cheaper to do a print run in black and white, but I don't want the experience of reading the comic in print to be less good than it would be on the web; if possible, I want it to be better. It's great to be able to reach people through a website, but books as physical objects are still important. 

Even so, I'd been thinking doing a colour collection would be way out of my price range. Then I checked with my college printers, and the cost of a print run went from "don't even think about it" to "ouch, that's quite expensive, but... hmmm..."

But. I am astonishingly skint - I've just moved to London and started an MA. When I was doing little photocopied minicomics, I could just print off a batch of them myself and ignore the cost. This is not just a little photocopied minicomic, and stumping up the whole printing cost in advance and hoping to break even eventually would be... painful. There have to be better ways for starving artists to do these things. I believe that. Please help prove me right.

If I don't make my total, I'll still do the print run, so all contributors will get their copies. But if you help me cover the whole cost, you'll know that you helped me sleep at night. 

In the event that I go over the total (wouldn't that be cool?), I'll print more copies!

(Added later: I never thought I actually would go over the total, but now I have - thank you all so much. If this keeps going past the cost of a print run of 150, which I think is the most the small-press market will support, I'll put anything further towards my web hosting bills and make the site advertising-free.)

What are you paying for?

At the subsidised printers at my college, a print run of 100 books will cost about 300. (As I said, this is incredibly cheap as colour printing goes.) (And it turns out this is the minimum you can ask for on this site anyway.)

Everyone who contributes at least 5 (this is the equivalent of a pre-order - it'll cover comic cost and postage in the UK) gets a copy of the comic, signed to you, and a thank-you shout-out on the inside back cover and on the website. If you contribute more than that, you can get all sorts of extra stuff - from Tempin' Bear notebooks to original artwork, to cake and hanging-of-out, to custom paintings and murals and my eternal gratitude. See the VIP Perks for info.

Other Ways You Can Help

Signal amplification! I'd really appreciate if you could tell people about this if they're interested in comics or new ways of funding creativity. RTs are very welcome (@bluedevi and @epiphanytweet), or mentions anywhere else.

Thank you!

D x