About
Hi, my name is April Pierce and I am the artist and writer of The Prince and the Swan, an LGBT fairytale webcomic about 2 princes, a mystical curse and the adventures, friendships and growing romance weaving them together. I work together with my co-writer, Gareth Cj. Wee, along with Dennis Yip and Paul Brokenshire, to bring you this epic comic fantasy! After 5 years, 2 collected volumes, and hundreds of pages we are finally ready to print volume 3 and we would like to invite you all to join us and help make this book a reality!
Once upon a Time…
The Prince and the Swan is the story of Prince Siegfried, soon to be crowned King of Validen, a kind and practical prince who has some recent reservations about his change in role.
Conflicted about his impending coronation and desperate to escape the growing storm of potential suitors, Siegfried follows a mysterious rumor of dangerous beasts in the nearby forest where he truly finds beasts a plenty! But what he didn’t expect was a magical lake and a volatile cursed prince Odet, who will save his life, but seems to need saving in return.
Who is Odet? Why is he trapped at the lake? How can Siegfried break the curse, and even more importantly, should he? If you’re looking for a fairy tale with more than enough excitement, intrigue, and romance, The Prince and the the Swan will take you on a new adventure with princes, curses, and true love as you’ve never seen it before!
Their story and their relationship has been developing throughout the past 9 chapters, the first 6 of which have been collected into 2 printed volumes available at conventions across the US and Canada. And now it’s time to collect chapters 7 through 9 in a third printed volume. And this time, through Kickstarter, we hope to bring the volumes - new and old - to a wider audience.
About the Books
The Prince and the Swan Volume 3 will collect chapters 7, 8 and 9 in a single soft-cover full-color printed book. The book will be printed by Toronto’s Sure Print & Design, who were responsible for the printing of Volume 1 and 2 in past years. Due to our ever growing ambitions and page counts volume 3 is nearly as large as volumes 1 and 2 combined coming in at 168 pages!
In addition to our newest book, this is a chance to pick up the previous two volumes and really get into the story!
Rewards
Not only will you be able to enjoy the comics themselves, but we will have a variety of other ways to support and be rewarded! Check out some of the cool rewards we're offering!
Stretch Goals!
As we get closer to covering the full print run we wanted to make some small extras as a thank you to you all for the support!
Why Kickstarter?
Primarily, using Kickstarter is a chance to get in touch with our readers in a new way and finally take the plunge in getting the printed volumes of our comic to people who may not have been able to do so in the past.
For prior volumes we were focused on small comic expos and conventions and the only fans who were able to support out work were those lucky enough to live nearby.
With this kickstarter campaign we can finally connect with our more far flung fans and supporters and get their help in making this book a reality.
Where is the money going?
The initial $2000 goal is focused entirely on the cost of printing and shipping and covers about a third of the cost of our planned print run. We chose this number because its the line where printing the books becomes viable for us (as larger, full colour comics are more economical to print in larger batches) and, as this is our first kickstarter, it allows our community to help us get the books made. Any funding in excess of this goal would initially go towards making up the rest of the print costs.
In the event that the project funds beyond the cost of the print run we will at first be overwhelmed by the outpouring of support! After we recovered we would put that money towards our team's continued work on the comic and the steady progress towards making the best comic story we possibly can. Depending on how amazingly we do (hopefully!), we can include some other rewards in the future.
Risks and challenges
While this is our first time using Kickstarter to help fund the printing of our books we are not new to making and printing a comic project! We have printed runs of 2 volumes of comics in the past and we already have a printer lined up and a quote for the books. All is ready to go as long as our funding targets are met!
We also have all pages already fully drawn, colored and typeset (even if much of chapter 9 has yet to be released on the website! Yay for getting ahead!) and so the content is ready and waiting to be in your hands!
It’s worth noting, we are still new to shipping product and the price and speed of shipping is something we are still learning how to manage. Depending on where you live compared to us (Vancouver, Canada) the price of shipping the printed books will be a factor in the cost to you and you should take this into account when weighing the full cost of backing the project.
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