Crowdfunding site Kickstarter is effectively the 3rd largest funder of Indie comics in the US

"In May, Kickstarter funded ten books and five additional projects in single-issue format. Vertigo solicited 7 books and 10 single issues for May. Kickstarter has the edge in books (10-7), Vertigo has the edge in overall items (17-15). There’s not a lot difference in output volume.
The comparison highlights the way that Kickstarter has become a much larger source of funding for comic book projects—larger than some established indie publishers. Even with a slow January, Kickstarter averaged just over $81,000 per month in funding for various comics-related projects. In May, the funding broke six figures with $102,110 split over 15 projects.
What gets funded on Kickstarter? In 2011, an average of 13.8 projects per month. Projects are split fairly evenly between books (graphic novels, reprint collections, hardcovers, etc) and the monthly issue format (including multiple issue mini-series and newspaper formats) with 7 books per month to 6.8 issue projects per month. Add in a comics app for tablets and a newspaper comic strip archival project and you have over $400,000 worth of funding in the first 5 months of 2011.
Charitable and not-for-profit works seem to have particular success with projects like “Girls Making Comics: A Midsummer Night’s Dream” taking in $7,292 from 196 backers for a print edition of work from a comics workshop for teenage girls and “The TRANSMETROPOLITAN Art Book” taking in $46,690 from 638 backers for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and the Heroes Initiative.
Where would Kickstarter fall in terms of content production when compared to the independent publishers of the Direct Market? Not that high up for single issue projects, but higher than you might think for books.
If you make a list of how many books were solicited for May by the top direct market publishers that follow DC and Marvel on the sale charts and insert Kickerstarter into that list, this is what you get:
Dark Horse: 15 Books
IDW: 15 Books
Kickstarter: 10 Books
Image: 6 Books
Boom: 5 Books
Dynamite: 5 Books.
The number of projects funded by Kickstarter in a given month does vary quite a bit, as does the format of the projects. And some of those same funded projects are eventually published someplace else, often at a publisher like Image."
Source:  Publishers Weekly, 7th June 2011