Webcomics artist John Campbell raised more than $50,000 on Kickstarter to fund a book project based on his online comic strip, Pictures for Sad Children. In an unusual turn of events, Campbell has burned the books that the donors funded, because he claims that he ran out of money to ship them.
Campbell posted a video on his Kickstarter page called, “It’s Over” which documents the burning of 127 copies of his book. “For every message I receive about this book, I will burn another book,” explains the video. Campbell apparently received 127 inquiries from backers looking for their copies of the book.
While many Kickstarter projects have had difficulty meeting their commitments, Campbell took things to a new level.
Along with the video, Campbell posted a long tirade against capitalism. In a very long tirade, Campbell outlines his financial woes and in his inability to complete his Kickstarter commitments he passes judgement on the crowdfunding model as too capitalistic. “The backers who gave me the most money received the least ‘reward’ from me,” he writes. “After shipping costs, I ‘lost money’ on most of the books I sold at the $25 level so, backers at the higher levels, you could perceive of yourselves as having ‘paid for’ the books that the ‘lower’ backers currently have, and you could try to get those books that you ‘paid for’ somehow.”
DNAInfo points out that not only did Campbell pull the Kickstarter campaign, but he has removed his 10 years of comics from his website, picturesforsadchildren.com.