DEC 3

I just got word that the books have been printed and they’re on the way. They will definitely make the Dec. 3 street date. I cut it pretty close though.

See, I originally asked my printer for a quote on 2000 copies of a 20-page book, which is what Tiny Life was supposed to be…

Hold on. Let me back up.

My original intention for Tiny Life was to print monthly comics (or bi-monthly, probably) at cost and at print run. This means that if it cost $1.50 per book and there were 1000 books ordered, I would sell 1000 copies at $1.50 a piece. My plan was to simply have this as a sort of “free advertising” type of thing. People read the individual issues, wet their appetite a little, buy the big book (which I would charge the usual amount), and I would, therefore, sell more books without actually spending any more money. However, that was not to be. Diamond said – and I can’t blame them for this; I’m sure they’ve done the math – that they can’t sell an item unless they expect to make a certain amount of money on it. So they said that Tiny Life – because there really isn’t a market for an independent-black-and-white-stick-figure-based series in today’s saturated semi-adult-themed-superhero market – wouldn’t be sold as a monthly series.

During this time, I got quotes from a lot of printers and asked for 2000 copies of a 24-page book. When I got word that Diamond didn’t want a monthly book, I just changed my quote request from “24 pages” to “120 pages.” Of course, it costs a lot less per book to print 2000 copies versus 500 copies.

So when Diamond asked for their orders – MUCH less than the 2000 I had quoted – I had to rerequest a quote for 500. Of course, the price per book went up and I was apprehensive. I then asked many other print houses for quotes. Lebonfon was still the best.

Unfortunately, that took some time and I was afraid that by asking all those people (and asking the very nice people at Lebonfon to “hold on for a few more days”) for another, lower quote meant that I would have to push back the street date.

But it didn’t.

Tiny Life: l(a is debuting in more than 200 comic shops around the country on December 3, 2008.

Numbers are in. Almost.

Well, the numbers are in.  I can’t say I’m super happy about it, but it’s about what I was expecting.

The first printing of Tiny Life: l(a will be 500 copies.  It’s disappointing to me because I was hoping to completely break even with this first sale.  I didn’t.  I still have about a year (or so I’m told from other professionals) before I start making some real money on it.

 

Maybe BWS will do a cover for me too?

I’ve been told that these numbers are actually quite high for a first-time author, self-publishing his own black-and-white graphic novel in a direct-sales market.  Most of the people I’ve talked to said their initial sales were much lower (one individual said he sold 26 copies of his first project) than mine.  I guess it makes me feel a bit better.

 

It’s still a little disappointing.

On the bright side, maybe these’ll be worth something someday.  Tiny Life will be the MiracleMan of independent, black-and-white, stick-figure-based comics.

It’s a niche market.

Next Book Designs

I’m still not sure how well this is going to sell.  I’ve done pretty much everything I can short of actually buying advertising space in Previews, but I don’t know if I’ll be losing money, making money, or breaking even.

Hopefully, I’ll make enough to justify making another book.  I’m already talking to Colacitti about it.

Check out some of his designs:

 

I said "Make 'em younger!" This is what Colacitti came up with.

 

A few more examples of younger characters

 

 

Some more clarified head-shots

 

 

 

Nervous About Numbers

I’ve just had the oddest conversation.

A (sort of) agent contacted me about Tiny Life. He said that he can talk to book stores that Diamond can’t touch. I thought that it would be a good opportunity to sell the book to a few other stores that wouldn’t normally see a book like Tiny Life. He gave me all the specs of his business and it seemed pretty reasonable, so I took him up on it (or, I guess, will take him up on it; I haven’t signed anything yet).

The thing that’s freaking me out is the numbers he’s talking about. He said he can probably sell about 30 books for me. That’s pretty good considering my Assistant to the Traveling Secretary can barely get a half-dozen sold. He also said that Diamond probably wouldn’t be able to push more than about 300 copies.

On the left are my expected orders. On the right will be my actual orders.

This puts me in a bit of a tough spot because Diamond is expecting something like 1500 copies (at least that is what was inferred).

At 300 copies, I’ll be making something like $600 on this project. I was hoping to make at least enough to break even with Colacitti.

Damn you (sort of) agent. Now I’m all nervous.

Bandwidth

This iTunes thing is starting to get on my nerves. Hopefully, it’ll be worth it in the end.

I wasn't stealing it, but I should've used my own site.

See, if you’ve been reading this stuff at all, you’ll notice that I’ve uploaded several items to iTunes (five chapter previews without commentary and five chapter previews with commentary). Well, I guess they’re popular because they closed down the site I saved them on three times last month. The people who use that site for their needs are pissed.

Normally, I wouldn’t mind. I’d pay the $5 – or whatever – and keep it going. Normally, I’d just move them to another site, maybe change up the xml file that iTunes reads, and start again.

But I can’t. I live in the middle of nowhere (actually, I’d have to drive for about an hour to get to the middle of nowhere). I have dial-up and these files are huge. Plus, my hosting site won’t allow anything bigger than seven megs to be uploaded without using a ftp program.

On top of that, I forgot to mention this website on each of the podcasts. So now I’ve re-uploaded the commentaries with a little 20-second commercial for sliverltd.com on to this website. Hopefully no site will close down and people will no longer be mad at me.

Review Copies

I’ve sent out a bunch of review copies today.  I’m hoping I get a few good responses.  I have one interview just about lined up.  I’ll let you know when and where.

Podcasting and Publishing

I already did a podcast about this in the chapter 2 commentary, but let me ask you, if you’re not a podcasting kinda person: why does it take so damn long to get a comic book on shelves?

The very simple way a comic gets from me to you.

The way comics work (or any book really) is that I make it, then I 1) submit it to distributors who then tell me whether or not they would carry it.  After that I have to 2) find a printer who might be able handle my request; it can’t be too big of a printing house, because it would cost too much, nor can it be too small because it would cost too much.  Then, the distributor 3) puts out a catalogue where the stores are able to what they want.  Then, the stores 4) let customers look at the catalogue, as well as do research based on various factors to determine how many copies to order.  After that, 5) the stores order so many copies and the distributor lets me know how many to print.  Then, I 6) tell the printer how many copies to ship to the distributor so I can get paid and have enough money to start the process all over again.

Each one of those steps takes 30 days.

So at any given time, when I write or draw anything, the best-case scenario is that you will see that word or picture no less than six months after it’s done.  I don’t receive any feedback for at least six months, ether.

In this era of instant information, where I can see instant replays of Phelps winning a gold metal from a dozen different angles in practically real time (I could watch a replay on the internet faster than NBC could present one), doesn’t it make sense that something as simple as ordering comic books would be a lot quicker?  There’s got to be a way for the distributor to set up a database of all the comics they’re carrying for any given month – with various ways of presenting similar material, much like Amazon does – and have anyone who wants to, order what they want.  The biggest problem I can see (and it’s not much of one) is that distributors only ship to stores, not to houses; therefore, instead of entering your address as the shipping destination, you could have it shipped to your local store and pick it up (and pay) there.  You could even receive emails of when it will arrive and if the product is going to be late.  I’m sure they could even set it up so you could track it on its way to your store.

I can’t be the only one who’s thought of this; I’m not that smart.

Anyway, to try and offset this six-month lag-time, I’ll try to put up pages and panels and scripts and whatnot as often as I can so I’m able to hear what you have to say about it.  Hopefully you’ll be able to tell me what’s good, what’s bad, and what you don’t understand (because, after all, I’ve been writing this series for about 15 years.  There are some things that are crystal clear to me, but may confuse you).  This way, you might be able to guide (somewhat) the direction of Tiny Life.

Well, maybe not the direction, but you could say “That picture of Jed sucks” and I might redo it.

Lulu vs. Ka-Blam

Before I get too far into this, let me first explain a few things about how I do drafts of Tiny Life.

After everything is written and drawn and inked and scanned and toned and lettered, I try to print a proof for myself to see how well it looks on paper versus how well it looks on screen.  I’ve tried doing it at Kinko’s, but it costs a shitload of money (literally.  I asked the guy how much it would cost to print a 20-page black and white pamphlet with color covers and he said, “Take a poop in your pants.  That’s how much”).  I’ve also tried calling around to various printing houses and it either costs about $100 or it’s free as long as you’re also printing a few thousand copies for distribution.  At that point, I turned to the internet and found on-demand printing houses.

The best two I’ve found are Lulu and Ka-Blam; others, like Comicxpress have limited options and poor service.  Instead of a long diatribe on each company, I figured I’d give you a point-by-point breakdown on the important issues:

1) Lulu’s interface is simple to use.  Basically, after you’re done making a page (using Photoshop, Manga Studio, or simply scanning your originals as-is), you just upload it to their service.  After you’re done, you can switch around pages, save the files to their servers for later use (which is awesome is you’re looking to make a TPB later), or reload a page if you’ve found a mistake. 

Ka-Blam’s interface is simple once you’re used to it, but it takes a while to understand it.  What you have to do is save all your files, then name them as pages in the comic (meaning, “cover.tif”, insidefrontcover.tif”, “page1.tif”, “page2.tif”, etc.)  Then you have to save them as a zip file.  Then you have to save them somewhere on the internet so that the Ka-Blam people can get to them.  If you want to change just one thing – for instance, I spelled “parents” as “parants” in one issue – you have to do the whole process over again.

2) Turnaround time for Lulu is fairly quick.  Usually, after I upload the comic to their servers, I can get a copy in my hands in a little over a week.

Turnaround time for Ka-Blam depends on how much you’re willing to pay.  If you pay a premium, they say you can get it in just a few days.  I paid the basic fee and got mine in about three weeks.  This is perfect it you’re planning on completing five issues before publishing anything.

3) The cost for Lulu is outrageous.  It costs more than $5.00 to print a 20-page comic.  If you order several hundred, the cost moves down to just under $5.00 per book.  They do, however, have a pretty good deal if you’re making a huge book.  Tiny Life Demos, which includes pretty much all Tiny Life work until the 2008 publication, is more than 400 pages.  It costs like twelve bucks to print.

The cost for Ka-Blam is amazing.  It only costs like $1.40 per issue.  This is awesome compared to pretty much any other printing house in North America (I’ve found cheaper in Hong Kong, but it’ll cost you another $20 to ship it over) – if you’re only looking to print a handful of issues, that is.  This isn’t the best place to go if you’re looking for anything more than about 500 copies.  Once you hit bulk like that, it’s time to make some phone calls.  If you send out comp copies or multiple proofs, Ka-Blam is the place to go.

4)  I only do black and white, so I can only speak for grayscale and grayscale users.  In Lulu, black is BLACK and white is WHITE.  This means that there are often bleeds on some of the lines (meaning that the line is thicker in some areas than I had intended) and the crosshatching can often bleed together making the page look a bit murky.  The tones (the “dots”), however, look pretty good.  I was very afraid that you might see a pattern instead of the tones (i.e.: it looks like a plaid sweater as opposed to a gray sweater that is in a dark room), but Lulu is very good about keeping their inks fresh.

In Ka-Blam, the lines do not bleed.  Every thickness of every line is intact.  However, I think because they use gray tones instead of strictly black (just a hypothesis), some of the dots interact at odd angles and a pattern sometimes emerges (the plaid sweater thing). 

Ka-Blam Print	Lulu Print

5) Lulu prints a product that feels like a magazine.  It has a heavy paper (both on the cover and on the internal pages) and you can actually feel the ink impressions on the inside. 

Ka-Blam feels like a comic.  It has a comic-stock cover (70 lb., I think) and the internal pages are slightly better than newsprint (which is what I designed Tiny Life to be printed on).

Overall, here’s what I recommend:

Use Lulu to print proof copies.  If you’re just printing one in order to find mistakes or to “see what it looks like,” then Lulu is your best shot.  It’s quick, it’s efficient, but you have to keep in mind that your inking my look a little worse through this company and you have to keep in mind that if you order more than one or two copies, it’s just gonna piss you off (I ordered 10 copies one time and it cost like $60).

Use Ka-Blam if you’re all done with your drafts and you want to show other people.  If you’re going to a small show (like SPX or SPACE) and want to sell a few copies, then Ka-Blam is your best shot.  I think I’ll also be using it for back issue stock as well (that way I don’t have to order another “recommended” 20% of each issue and then store them forever).

What to do…

I finally got my order from lulu and have sent it in to Diamond.  It’s been about a week and a half and still no word on whether or not they’ll carry Tiny Life.

It’s a bit scary.  I mean, I think the writing is good enough, and I think the art is good enough, and I think I’ve done just about everything I can do to promote the book; there’s not really a whole left for me to do except wait.

My plan for Tiny Life involves making a few books simultaneously so that I can get it out as fast as possible.  I don’t want to start that until I know it will be easily distributed and available.  I also plan on making supplemental material for the website to help enhance everyone’s understanding and enjoyment of the basic concepts of Tiny Life (it also permits me to be a little more creative and abstract than the book allows). However, I also don’t want to start that until I know it will be easily distributed and available. 

So what can I do? 

I’ve been working on this book in some capacity for about 15 years.  I’ve been working on it daily for the past three years (or is it four?).  I don’t know what to do with myself.  I suppose I could work on the rewrite of the first five issues of the next book.  Or maybe look into the legality of including ee cummings “l(a” poem on the website and in the trade paperback.  I suppose I could even work on my inking just in case I hire some more pencilers and I have to trace everything to make it look “Nick Jones cartoony.”

But, like I said in my first post, this is my Last Big Push.  If this doesn’t work, I’m hanging it up. 

So, instead, I’ve been fixing my driveway, finishing my basement and working on a website for my students. 

I’ve also been catching up on TV watching.  Did you know that The Drew Carey Show is fucking hilarious? 

Review the Fourth

I think this is the final day for preemptive reviews.  I have about 15 more sitting around, but they mostly say something along the lines of, “Wow!  Nice job!” or “I don’t git it.”  So, instead of saying, “Thank you” or “Suck it,” I figured I would just have a few that actually have something to say.

Like this one from Steve (I believe; he didn’t leave his name) from Clifton Comics in Cincinatti, OH:

I don’t know that the stick figure will be very appealing.  I mean, I still remember Stick Figure Theater on Liquid Television, which was great.  With Tiny Life, it feels like a Radiohead music video, but I can’t see people really throwing down money it.  It might be helpful if you produce a less than $1 preview, pointing out why it’s important to get on board, what makes the stick figure idea work.  But honestly, as it is now, I can’t say that I’m interested.

Clifton Comics and Games

  3234 Jefferson Ave Cincinnati, Ohio 45220

  (513) 861-5071

  www.cliftoncomics.com

  cliftoncomics@yahoo.com

Honestly, this is the one judgment I fear.  I dread the idea of people simply looking at Tiny Life, saying to themselves, “A stick figure?  What a load,” and putting it back down (to tell the truth, that’s one of the main reasons why I try so hard to make the backgrounds look so toned and crosshatched.  I don’t want it to look like a “stick figure comic.”  I want it to look like a comic with a stick figure in it). 

To explain “why a stick figure” would take quite a bit of time; it involves talking about the inception of the character, the progression of humorous stories to serious ones, and how I came to the conclusion of having Jed be the only stick figure in the book.  I’ll shorten it and say that I could’ve made the main character anything out of the ordinary; it’s a variation on the “funny animal” motif of Howard the Duck, Bone, and Cerebus.  So, I guess, instead of a stick figure, I could’ve made him a platypus; those are funny-lookin.’  However, I didn’t think anyone had ever done a sincere comic about a stick-figure before. 

And I honestly don’t think that there are more people who would put back a stick figure book than people who would put back a funny animal book.