From Canceling Kickstarter to Launching on Alice’s Birthday

Not knowing much, I thought Kickstarter was the way to go for launching my new project, The Alice Journal. I thought it would give The Alice Journal a special start, in contrast to my other comic books, which launched quietly.

I crash-coursed on Kickstarter, pre-launched, and implemented what I learned. But after two weeks, I couldn’t see the traction I was hoping for. Needless to say, I was so disappointed. However, in the process of preparing for Kickstarter, we came up with a solution that made doing it less important. So we decided to pivot to launch directly on my website instead!

But I still wanted to make it special, so I looked for a launch date related to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Then, I was thrilled to discover the PERFECT date!

It is May 4th! The very day Alice went to Wonderland!

It is also the birthday of the real Alice—Alice Liddell—whom Lewis Carroll modeled Alice after. (She was born on May 4, 1852.)

I think this must be an example of synchronicity. Making this pivot gave me less than 2 weeks to prepare, but I couldn’t miss the opportunity to launch The Alice Journal on this special day.

So even though I was sad about giving up my big goal of the last few months, I feel okay. My Kickstarter failure wasn’t necessarily a failure. And this is exactly the kind of thing I can write about in The Alice Journal :)