I am currently working towards an April 9th Kickstarter launch for Lump Dog™, the next instalment of The Lump Sum Saga. Long story short, it means that behind the scenes, there are a lot of small details that need to be finalized that often cascade into an avalanche of minutia that you don’t normally associate with being a comic writer - things I end up reteaching myself with each launch because I have the memory of a goldfish.
Today’s exercise in relearning involved barcodes. Yes, barcodes. Why? Well, to create a successful Kickstarter page, you want potential customers to know what items they can pre-order. Each item needs a description and an image. That means, among other things, you need accurate depictions of each variant cover. For each cover, you want the art. And the art should be coloured. And once that is done, you need the “trade dress,” including all of your logos and, in many cases - you guessed it - a bar code. But not just any barcode. Barcodes are different between graphic novels and floppy comics, for example. And with floppy comics, there is precise numbering involved for the series, issue, variant, and printing. And I forget the details. Every. Dang. Time.
That is why I am so grateful for an article by
of ComixLaunch and ComicsTribe fame. (If you plan to do any crowdfunding, you’d be wise to subscribe to Substack and podcast.) I could explain bar code schemas to you, but Tyler has already done all the heavy lifting here: UPDATED! Barcodes, ISBNs, UPCs, Oh My!Based on that article, I’ve created a spreadsheet to help me remember what the heck I am doing you create the various barcode content codes for all of your variants in your next campaign. Enjoy!