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I'm in a comics group that's put out a couple dozen anthologies. Back when we first built up the courage to print big, perfect bound anthologies we made a serious effort to have launch parties and what not. It turns out it's very hard to attract people who don't already have your book. For us those events have basically degenerated into methods to beg for free stuff from restaurants, brewers and vinters for our Halloween party. We did also create our own convention which is a much easier sell to otherwise interested parties. This year we're trying to set up a few events around Boston the week of our convention. I'm gonna bet the events anchored by big stars we've already invited to our con will attract some folks, otherwise we won't move jack poo poo. One thing I can suggest is craft fairs. There have been a few in Boston for a long time (especially around Christmas), but a bunch have cropped up in the last couple years. Craft fairs have always been the second best venues for our books, behind indie comics shows. Getting a table is usually pretty cheap and the crowd is looking for local poo poo.
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Jun 22, 2015 02:44
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For my current project I've started hand lettering on 10 boxes to an inch graph paper. Since the art is intentionally a little rough it fits a lot better than any digital lettering I can think of. But on my superhero pastiche things unless I went all in with a Ames lettering guide it would look super weird. I'll post some pages when I get home if anyone's interested. I'm phone posting at the moment.
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Jul 7, 2015 19:48
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What program do you work in? In Photoshop you can apply the screen tone filter as a smart filter and that applies the filter automatically to the layer it's applied to without altering the underlying data. Any changes (page size changes, updated art) will automatically carry over. I'm not familiar with Manga Studio but I think screen tones are baked into the program in a similar manner. If you're using gimp or an ancient version of Photoshop then keep a layer of your tones and apply the halftone effect at whatever size you're exporting your pages at. That's the easiest way to be sure.
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Aug 5, 2015 04:09
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I think I might be able to pull off SPX this year. I've got several friends in DC so I can probably find crash space, and I've got two graphic novels and by September I'll probably be done with the one I'm working on. Ironically the biggest problem would be travel. Trains and flights from Boston would be about the same price as a half table and a bus would only be marginally cheaper. Might be able to bum a ride with one of my friends, though.
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Feb 12, 2016 14:58
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Okay, first you have to figure out what size you're printing them at. The standard is an 8.5x11 sheet but who knows. Maybe your art won't be readable at that size. And the print shops in Boston are all pretty familiar with minicomics and zines. You might be able to skip most of this and just hand them your files. I suggest doing the hands on method at least once, to give you a better understanding of every level of the process. Once you're sure about that then take a few sheets of scrap paper equal to the amount of pages divided by four plus another page for the cover (so a twenty page mini would have 6 pages, a twenty four page mini would have 7 pages etc). Fold them up into the shape of the book and write "cover" on the cover, "inside cover" on the inside cover, and then page 1, page 2 and so on. After you're done with that then disassemble the mockup and use it when you're laying out your book for printing. When I was a youngling I just slapped the pages down in Open Office and exported a PDF. Nowadays I use Scribus for the same effect. Then do a test print. Fold it together, make sure it's laid out right. If not figure out how to fix it. Otherwise, print more. Print shops usually have trimmers and long arm staplers. You'll save money doing it yourself so that's what I'd go with. As for price, it's pretty much whatever you can get away with. Most of the minis I see tend to be around $5 these days. Generally that's for rather long black and white minis or short full color minis. My rule of thumb is 3x the print cost, and I'll end up trading or giving away a chunk of books.
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Feb 25, 2016 16:36
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I'm not sure crowdfunding is getting less and less viable. I don't think it was as viable as you think to begin with. If you're doing a solo thing it was always very tough and you really needed a built in audience. The ones that made big money were always the anthologies (so the contributors could beg their friends to help), especially ones made for demographics underserved by the traditional comics industry. Or they were made by internet marketing master monsters. I've got a Kickstarter that's winding down. I had hoped if I kept the goal modest and I could secure some coverage on Comics Beat or Comics Alliance I could pull it off. I suspect they get ridiculous amounts of requests for coverage and unless you have something to catch their attention real good they're never even going to look at your thing. The only coverage of any note I managed was on Comics Reporter but even that only brought about 70 viewers to it (though Tom Spurgeon did repost the link again a second time so I guess I caught his attention at least). I ran it as a singular thing to market and it did pretty poorly in that regard. I've had about 600 people look at it, probably 350 of those came from the Reddit account I made in April and posted on r/comicbooks and a couple other subs so as to not be an overt spammer. No pledges as far as I can tell. 70 hits came from Comics Reporter, as I said. A couple dozen came from the $2 I had in my Project Wonderful account. Almost all of the rest came from Facebook and my friends. The way Google Analytics works made it hard for me to tell how many people found it through Kickstarter itself. Of the pledges 3/4ths are from my friends. That leaves like 5 that I have no relation to. Two of those were spammers from other comics Kickstarters trying to get me to cross pledge to their projects (the only situation I could imagine doing that would be if I were just slightly below my goal and I needed the push. Yeah. Not happening.) So this strongly correlates with the advice that you need your own fan base to make a solo Kickstarter work. I got my fans to retweet/reblog or whatever my links but none of them contributed. I think most them found me by buying my stuff on Comixology so I guess it's not so surprising they wouldn't double dip. The other thing is that the first week of the Kickstarter was one of the most stressful of my life. It was basically a week long panic attack as I sent out dozens and dozens of emails and only got like one or two responses. Marketing is hell on Earth terrible. I slept like two hours a night for a week straight. Out of all those emails, the first ones were very corporate adverting and got no responses whatsoever. After a few days I shifted over to a more personable crazy person press release (which fits with the comic) and I got a few responses, but I can't be sure if it was because of the content of the email or because I was emailing Bob's Discount Comics Blog and not Comics Alliance. I've learned a lot and I think my next attempt will come off better. Generally I suggest contributing to anthologies (there's a lot going around, now) and keep trying to build an audience. gently caress if I know anything about that but it has to be the first step.
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Jul 9, 2016 18:41
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It's been a while since I updated but the way I posted multiple comics on my WordPress was I made them separate categories and modified a single page template to show navigation inside that category.
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Sep 12, 2017 16:42
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