Why did you feel you need Kickstarters help to launch your project and will your goal if reached cover all the creative costs?
Without Kickstarter, it would be very difficult to get the word out about Superscript early on. I have 54 backers as of this writing, and most of them will be receiving an app license. Kickstarter’s all-or-nothing policy pushes people to fund a project even if they don’t need it right away. Once this is released, I’m sure many writers won’t get it right away simply because they’re not writing at the moment. I realize how time consuming marketing, conventions, etc. are. And I need as much money up front as I can get because I need to pay for QA testing. Superscript is nearly complete and I would be able to release it even sooner without doing the Kickstarter, but it would certainly be full of bugs that I wouldn’t be able to find myself. Just like writing without an editor, coding without QA is generally a bad idea.
How did the creative team behind this Kickstarter Come together?
I’m the only one designing and writing code. But I’m really thankful for the contributions others have made. My cousin Josh Valliere and his cowriter Fred Packard have been helping me test the app and giving me input on it for quite a while. Since the Kickstarter began, a couple more people have reached out to me to offer their time to test it as well as contribute their own work as rewards, Josh Dahl and Roger Beckett.
What do you believe separates your Kickstarter from the thousands of other Kickstartes out there?
There was a Kickstarter 5 years ago that was meant to build a very similar piece of software. But even though it got funded, nothing came of it. So I understand when people are concerned about the legitimacy of a Kickstarter project. That’s why I’m showing screenshots and videos of the actual product, and even giving people a link to download the free trial. I want people to feel secure knowing that this project will definitely be released very soon. Other than that one project, which promised many of the features that I’ve now built, I haven’t seen anything like Superscript.
Is the Kickstarter the Start of something Bigger or is this a must have One Shot?
This is software, not a physical product, so it’s never really complete. As long as people keep finding Superscript useful, I want to keep improving it.
Are Stretch Goals something important to your project or just your way to give back to the Backers?
I have two stretch goals right now. If we reach the first goal, I will extend the license of all the backers. Those who got the 6-month license will get 1 year. 1-year license backers will get 2 years. And lifetime backers will get a second seat to share their license. With every additional user, my costs go up a little bit, but nothing compared to the upfront costs of building and releasing Superscript. So I’d like to pass the savings on to the backers who have helped me spread the word.
The second stretch goal is to implement live collaboration so two users can view and edit the same document at the same time over the internet. I plan on implementing this eventually anyway, but again, getting funding up front will allow me to spend more time working on Superscript and pay for QA testing. Testing the live collaboration will be more intensive and time consuming than anything else in the app because it involves at least 2 people testing several features of the app at the same time.
If you saw this project, pretending it wasn’t yours what would do you think of it and how you would react to it and Why?
This is the app I wish I had two years ago when I first thought about writing comic books. If someone else had made this available then, I would definitely have backed it. If this already existed I’d probably have at least one comic out by now, since I wouldn’t be spending all my time building an app to save myself time.
What is the inspiration behind this project?
Like I said, this is the app I wanted to use myself. There are some halfway decent apps that can be used for writing comics: Word, Final Draft, Scrivener, CeltX (probably the best option yet available), but they all fell short for me. For one thing, I hate to repeat myself, and writing comics currently involves far too much repetition (formatting, numbering, counting, then doing it all over again with each edit). Having been a web and app developer for the past 15 years, I’ve been spoiled by the great tools available to me, which style me code to make it easier to read, autocomplete as I’m typing and find errors before they occur. I wanted something that easy for writing comic books as well. But nothing was available, so I made my own.
Ok those are 7 Great REASONS so Give em that Elevator Pitch, Creator:
• automatically formats your script as you type
• automatically numbers page and panel headings
• tallies up dialog words
• checks your spelling and autocompletes your custom fictional words and character names
• lets you embed images and comments
• exports to a variety of file formats
