At least I assume he’ll print more books than just the ones to reward his patrons and I note that he’s also working to monetize his web site. This is like fronting someone the money to put an addition on their restaurant or to add a new product line to their store.

I’ll be supporting Kal for the same reason — I like his work, I want the book, I don’t mind paying a little extra, particularly if he’s going to use it to establish a new income source.

The Day campaign was a little different and probably wouldn’t have been approved by Kickstarter, who has stricter standards. As someone who has never had the privilege of being employed, I don’t see anything inherently wrong with relying on readers for support. It’s in how you approach it. Syndication rates decimated as they are, I may have to turn to readers again, and if I can make a living that way I see no shame in it. In fact, I take pride in having a supportive readership.

I also take pride in my work.

Unless my memory is correct, Matt Bors wrote that he
had made enough that he could put out a second book and
for the first time, could give full time to his editorial cartoons
because of the money he raised. That sure sounds like
funding a book and salary for a year. I have no problem
with that. And I don’t think the people who contributed
to his campaign would either.

Is it begging or providing a product for contribution? Wether
it’s an online book,printed book, print or signed original?

In Day’s case you’ll have multiple elephant behind originals
to choose from when you order :)

I think there’s a big difference between what Kal and Bors are doing and what Day did. Kickstarter and Indiegogo have a lot of great uses. Anyone interested in making and selling a product can test the demand and raise money in the form of pre-orders. Bors and Kal both set out to publish books and both met their goals with the vast majority of pledges going toward at least buying the book. Basically kickstarter/indiegogo can act as a pre-order for products you want down the road, except that buying now ensures that the product actually exists. What Bill Day’s campaign was about was basically just begging. The emphasis was that Day needs money to save his house and that editorial cartooning (at least for Day) was not enough to live on. The funds would act as a salary for Day and he would draw 4 cartoons a week for a year, but he was already drawing 3 a week. You’re basically paying him to continue doing almost exactly what he was doing before. With the recent plagiarism and self-plagiarism scandal surrounding him, that promise might be worthless. Sure you get a book from Day too, but the purpose of the kickstarter isn’t to find funds to produce and sell a book. The money is Day’s going to be Day’s salary. It’s not a business opportunity like Bors’ or Kal’s kickstarters, it’s a charity case. Kickstarter and Indiegogo should be used for bringing ideas directly to the people and having them directly fund the project in exchange for the finished product. It shouldn’t be used for shameless ebegging and certainly shouldn’t be used for furthering plagiarism.

2. With all due respect to Bill Day, whose work I like, the idea of Kickstarter/Indie-go-go campaigns for basic funding is insupportable. I want to see “give me the money for my living expenses” followed by “… because this is how I plan to monetize it in future.” And it occurs to me that, if being syndicated on Cagle were the answer to Part Two of that, the campaign would have been unnecessary.

As to such fundraisers in general, if I support your campaign, you’re morally obligated to support mine, so we end up just passing the same $20 bill around in a circle. This is not a sustainable revenue model.

For example, Sparky “recycled/reworked” a number of his Li’l Folks gags for Peanuts. Admittedly, he at least redrew them, though one could argue he HAD to because the cast of characters and image format were different. Still, even if Photoshop was available in the 1950′s, I believe Sparky would have redrew the art regardless.

But it’s often argued that good writing saves bad art, more than great art saves bad writing…

If we look at Bill Day’s work from an evolutionary point of view, each “new” variation of one of his own cartoons represents a further exploration of an idea — which, in itself, is a creative process. Of course, not every evolutionary step is successful. Otherwise, we’d all be Neanderthals :)

But seriously, regardless of how many times Bill Day may use the exact same elephant drawing, can each editorial cartoon be appreciated as a single piece of work that expresses a thoughtful point of view on an issue?