About this project
Oh Joy, Sex Toy, The Book
$69,270
1,850
What IS Oh Joy Sex Toy?
Oh Joy, Sex Toy (OJST) is a weekly webcomic by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan that debuted April 2013 and has updated every Tuesday since, bringing you reviews of everything that relates to sex, sexuality and the sex industry. From sex toy reviews to sex education to interviews with sex industry professionals and more! With the aid of curated guest reviewers, OJST strives to be relevant to all different genders, body types, and sexualities.
What’s This About a Book?
It’s been one year since Oh Joy, Sex Toy started and we’ve collected a mighty 52 strips coming to 220+ book sized pages, all of which you can find and read online here! The purpose of this Kickstarter is to collect these hundreds of pages into a lovely soft cover book that will include everything that appeared online, as well as dozens of pages of brand new comics, essays, and behind-the-scenes peeks at the process of creating OJST. We want to make a beautiful book to give back to our supporters and fans for them to use, share, and love.
Alongside all the work Erika has made for Oh Joy, Sex Toy, we’ve hired different guest artists to help give us alternative comics, bringing a regular splash of fresh humor and a new perspective on the sex world. Finding and paying great artists to showcase their work on OJST is something we’re super proud of. In addition to helping us raise the funds to create the book, we’ll also be raising funds to pay our former guest artists a retroactive bonus per page and afford a greater page rate to our upcoming artists.
In addition to all the great comics already available online, Erika has also made a handful of exclusive behind-the-scenes content for the book- so even if you're an OJST pro, there’s something new in there for you too.
We also have our favorite book designer Allyson Haller putting together this book. We were introduced to her work through Dark Horse Comics, when she designed the Bucko hardcover (Erika’s last graphic novel, written by Jeff Parker and published in 2012). Her work is stunning and perfectly reflects the flirty, funny feeling of Erika’s comics.
We like to keep things simple: by supporting us at any level, you’ll be helping us take our comic from the web, fill it with additional content and turn it all into a awesome sex education book worthy of your bookshelf AND you’ll be ensuring our guest artists, both old and new, get more for their great contributions.
If you're into humorous comics all about sex and sex positivity, and want to support Oh Joy, Sex Toy, now’s your chance!
Talk About the Rewards!
Ready to lend us a helping hand? Awesome, here’s what we’re offering you!
$2 - Kickster Exclusive Digital Desktop Wallpaper
$10 - OJST Book PDF & Kickstarter Exclusive Digital Desktop Wallpaper
$35 - OJST Book & PDF & Kickstarter Exclusive Digital Desktop Wallpaper (+$20 for international shipping)
$45 - OJST Book, signed Book Plate & PDF & Kickstarter Exclusive Digital Desktop Wallpaper (+$20 for international shipping)
$55 - OJST Book, signed AND doodled Book Plate & PDF & Kickstarter Exclusive Digital Desktop Wallpaper (+$20 for international shipping)
$70 - TWO OJST Books (one for you and one to share!) & Kickstarter Exclusive Digital Desktop Wallpaper (+$25 for international shipping)
$85 - OJST Book, signed Book Plate with a Custom Unique Drawing & PDF & Kickstarter Exclusive Digital Desktop Wallpaper (+$20 for international shipping)
$250 - OJST Book, signed AND doodled Book Plate & PDF & Kickstarter Exclusive Digital Desktop Wallpaper, AND ‘Be a Masturbateer for a Day’: You provide photos and agree to be drawn into a future OJST strip as one of the Masturbateers. (By pledging at this reward, you’re consenting to let us use your likeness in a future sex related comic. You may be depicted nude and having sex: you have been warned!) (+$20 for international shipping)
$600-$1000 - OJST Book, signed and doodled Book Plate, & PDF & Kickstarter Exclusive Digital Desktop Wallpaper AND original OJST inked pages to hang on your wall or add to your art collection. (+$30 for international shipping)
Since we’re expecting a fair few orders we’re bringing Amplifier on board with this project, so all the initial fulfillment and shipping will be handled by those great folks.
Where’s the Money Going?
Here’s a brief overview of what you’ll be helping us fund, so you know where the money is going!
With this Kickstarter we’ll be:
-Buying 2,000 soft cover 220+ paged books for about $10,000 from Shanghai Offset Printing.
-Hiring book designer Allyson Haller, for $5,500 (we've already paid for this out of pocket!)
-Buying Book Plates for about $400 from Book Plate Inc.
-Using Amplifier for fulfillment for roughly $2,000 as a minimum (how much we owe them will go up according to the number of orders we get, but this is a good starter number)
-Paying for a kickass Kickstarter video by Anne Moloney for $500
When all is done and dusted, we’re expecting to need $13,000 to make this book. Slap in a cautionary +30% for income tax, AND an additional 10% after that for Kickstarter/credit card fees and faulty cards, and we’ll need a smidge more than $18,000. That might seem like some excessive math, but we want to make sure there’s plenty of wiggle room in case we get hit with unforeseen charges. But it ought to cover our basic needs for the books and secure our ability to get them to you safe and sound!
Want to help boost how much makes it into our pockets? The Signed and Doodled book-plated books are the best way to go!
Goals
We love having guest artists on OJST, but we hate not being able to afford to pay the top tier rates that these professional artists deserve. Currently we pay our artists $50 per page of comic (each comic is about 3-5 pages), but we would love to start paying them more!
- ACHIEVED! If we hit $30,000-awesome! You guys are covering all our basic expenses! We’ll retroactively bump our guests artists (old and new) page rate up to $60 per page (each OJST comic is roughly 3-5 pages).
- ACHIEVED! At $40,000 we’ll retroactively bump our guest artists (old and new) page rate up to $70 per page.
- ACHIEVED! At $50,000 we’ll retroactively bump our guest artists (old and new) page rate up to $80 per page.
- At $60,000 we’ll retroactively bump our guest artists (old and new) page rate up to $90 per page.
- At $70,000 we’ll retroactively bump our guest artists (old and new) page rate up to a good professional $100 per page.
As of this writing, the guest artists we’ve featured so far are:
- Lucy Bellwood
- Lucy Knisley
- Sam Orchard
- Amy T. Falcone
- Valerie
- Rich Stevens
- Leslie Ortego
- Amanda Lafrenais
- Keovi
- Erika Greco
- Emi Gennis
- Allison “Mu” Jones
Who is This Erika Moen?
Erika Moen is a queer cartoonist who focuses on sex, sexuality, and gender in her work. She is a 15 year comics veteran and is a full-time, professional cartoonist and comic book creator at Periscope Studio in Portland, OR. Her work has been published by Dark Horse Comics, Image Comics, Villard, BOOM! Studios, Penny Arcade and Scholastic, among many others. She appears as one of twelve contestants on Penny Arcade’s reality competition show about cartoonists, Strip Search.
Some thanks: we wanted to thank a few people for helping make this kickstarter possible.
- Anne Maloney for a fantastic kickstarter video
- ProleteR for allowing us to use their music in our Kickstarter
- Allyson Haller for her book design work
- Amplifier for their help and service.
- George Rohac for being an enabler
- Corry Cassoni and Robert Khoo for both their help in pushing us in the right direction
- Katie Lane for her legal know-how.
Risks and challenges
We’re fortunate to be surrounded by experts in the field of comics. Erika works at Periscope Studio, surrounded by industry veterans who have made successful Kickstarters. Erika’s also had hands on experience doing product fulfillment for her popular online store for years. Throw in her husband who will be helping run the Kickstarter, some Breadpig professional advice, and the fact that we’re hiring expert company Amplifier to help with the initial run, and we’re feeling pretty confident. Check em both out here:
http://breadpig.com/
http://amplifier.com/
Having said that, we’re aware of how quickly things can go wrong with Kickstarters. But we’re pessimists and always prepare for the worst. The only thing that could really truly wreck this Kickstarter is an accidental boat shipment from our China printer going missing with our books aboard it. Fingers crossed that doesn’t happen!
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Funding period
- (30 days)