“There are a lot of similarities between the two, and tabletop is growing at such a great rate. “There should be more crossover between tabletops and comics,” Akel said. Akel is designing the game and cocreating its 200 characters with Ryan Benjamin, an Eisner-nominated artist perhaps best known for his DC and Marvel work. Its tabletop debut is a board game called Stan Lee’s Genesis, made in partnership with Stan Lee’s Pow Entertainment, with a crowdfunding campaign set for this summer and a planned fall 2023 release. The company is also moving into tabletop gaming, an area that has long been one of Akel’s passions. Our second largest is what you’d consider action-adventure, more traditional comics stuff. “Our largest and strongest category is romance. “The majority of what we publish is targeted more toward women,” Akel said. Other top titles include The Croaking by Megan Gray and Lars the Awkward Yeti by Nick Seluk.
Rocketship’s biggest hit to date is the Eisner-nominated Let’s Play It, a romance drama by Leeanne Krecic.
#Rocketship comedy tv
Though Akel declined to provide specific revenue figures, he said titles and revenue are “growing year over year.” Foreign rights sales are handled by the JABberwocky Agency, and the company is represented by the Gotham Group for TV and film media rights. Otherwise it works directly with creators, such as those who use Webtoon, where creators retain their print rights. Rocketship works directly with many platforms, such as Tapas Media, because the platforms own their creators’ print rights. It’s not common, and it’s becoming less so.” “Everybody gets the same deal,” Akel said. This means not taking a single percentage point from the IP and splitting net profits 50-50 with the creator. Rocketship strives to be as fair as possible to creators. It puts a lot more money in our creators’ pockets.” So you’re talking about a below 50% margin instead of 95%. “The crowdfunding platforms take 5% of the funds raised, while the margins in traditional publishing are that products go to retailers generally at 50% off the MSRP.
That is very difficult to do in a traditional publishing model, but with crowdfunding, you can make the fans part of the experience.”Īnd from a business perspective, “the margins are much better in crowdfunding,” Akel said. “As a fan, you have direct access to a creator, whether it’s through a comment section on an app or through social media.
“We crowdfund because we wanted to replicate the relationship that webcomic creators have with their audiences as much as possible in the publishing experience,” Akel said. This year, Rocketship will add to that line and also start a horror imprint, to be expanded on later in 2023 and in 2024. Last November, Rocketship launched Bottlerocket, a new imprint for young readers.
All of Rocketship’s books are supported by crowdfunding campaigns on Backerkit, Kickstarter, or Zoop. Rocketship publishes both paperback and hardcover (though Akel said hardcover tends to outperform paperback), with print runs ranging from 4,000 to 40,000 copies, but usually in the 5,000–10,000 range. All Rocketship titles are graphic novels, with the exceptions of its first art book and first prose novel, both coming this year. Based in Doylestown, Pa., and distributed globally through Simon & Schuster, the publisher released 19 titles in 2022 and has 24 projects lined up for 2023. So in 2019, Akel left Webtoon and, along with Rob Feldman, cofounded Rocketship, which is now a 10-person operation entirely devoted to turning mobile webcomics into print books.
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