I’ve been creating comics most of my life, and doing web comics and self-publishing for a little over 10 years now.
I started off copying comic strips in the Sunday funnies and copying scenes from Spiderman comics. I then took to drawing my own comics, creating my own characters, and even having some comics printed in the school newsletter when I was in elementary school. I did cartoons for my high school newspaper, and submitted some of my work and creations to Marvel Comics. I got a much deserved rejection letter and kinda gave up on doing comics for a couple years.
I got back into doing comics by an offer of free pizza and beer (or Coca-Cola in my case) from Greg Cravens, a friend in the MSCA who was running behind on a deadline and needed help adding Zipatone to some comic pages he was inking. If you’re asking yourself what “Zipatone” is you probably didn’t read comics until after the black and white explosion and people quit listening to 8-track tapes. What “black and white explosion”, and what are “8-tracks”..? We’ll get to those some other time.
After the “zip” party, I volunteered to help some friends work on a comic. They asked me if I could airbrush in Photoshop and I said, “Sure!” Hey, I had airbrushed t-shirts in the local malls and I had a computer with Photoshop- how hard could it be, right? Well, I jumped into the deep end and had to learn how to swim inside the computer really fast! Lesson #1- just because it looks easy doesn’t mean it is.
That had a great run and lasted a couple issues- a few if you count a reprint of #1. Lesson #2- nothing lasts forever not matter how bright the future looks.
After that my friend Dave Beaty (who had worked on the previous comic venture with me) and I decided to create our own comic. If it failed it wouldn’t be because of things we couldn’t control. We would be our own bosses. Lesson #3- you can’t control everything. That led to lesson #4- just go for it. So we did and created “Bushi Tales”- which led to many other lessons. I’ll get to those. The important thing is we did it, and so far it’s lasted more issues than the previous comic we got our feet wet with. We worked hard, we stumbled from time to time, moved nearly 2000 miles away, but we kept moving forward, and had a lot of fun the whole way.
Lesson #5, have fun.
We wrote, drew, colored, and lettered our new comic. We decided to do a web comic and post new pages weekly (most of the time).
Lesson #6, if you set a schedule you should stick to it and get the book out on time or pages updated on time. If you don’t stick to a schedule why should your readers?
After setting up a website to host our new comic we went to comic shows to promote our new opus. We handed out postcards, gave away some buttons, sold some art prints and t-shirts, talked about how cool a story it was, but the one question we kept hearing over and over was, “So when are you going to print it as a comic book?” Good question, and as soon as we had enough pages finished to fill a comic that’s exactly what we did.
Lesson #7, don’t think comics are a get rich quick scheme or a good way to invest in your retirement, and don’t quit your day job- yet.
We did what you could call a “traditional” print run. We then shopped around for a good printer at a good price, found Morgan Printing, placed our order, and then dropped a couple grand on 5000 copies of our first issue. You really don’t realize just how many books that is until the FedEx guy drops them off at your doorstep! Another lesson learned.
Now what to do with all those books? Well, Diamond Comics Distribution would be happy to sell and deliver our great new comic book to comic shops all over the world. All we needed to do was send them a copy and they’d see just how great it was and we’d be the next Ninja Turtles! They passed. This lesson was not everybody is as excited about your book as you are- including Diamond. We ended up selling our comic to local comic shops and sometimes quite literally out of the back of our cars.
We decided to do a second issue and another print run (this time we ordered less). If we could show Diamond we were serious and could finish a second issue, surely they would pick up our book. Nope- they decided to pass again. We went back to selling them to our local shops and questioning if we wanted to go to print with a third issue or just go back to doing just a web comic and selling merchandise.
Of course we went with paying for another print run. This lesson- “A fool and his money are soon parted.”
Well, between issue #1 and #3 we had been doing well with our books locally and had even had some good shows under our belts. Some of the local comic shop owners here and out in Arizona where Dave lived asked their Diamond reps why they weren’t carrying “Bushi Tales”. It was selling well for them, and they’d order it from Diamond if they offered it. Diamond listened and picked up our comics. We now have sold three issues of Bushi Tales through Diamond and have had it on comic shops and in the hands of comic fans all over the world now. With Diamond behind us you would think that we had finally made it, right? Next lesson- being picked up by a distributor doesn’t guarantee success in the world of comics.
We decided to go quarterly with our comic series. We wanted to be able to hit our deadlines, make issue #3 bigger and better, and not go broke, insane, or lose our day jobs trying to keep up with a monthly publishing schedule. After all it was our day jobs that were helping fund our comic book, and provide some inexpensive promotional items (I worked for a screen printer at the time).
We hit our deadlines, didn’t go insane, completely broke, or become unemployed. But there were unforeseen problems. We did ok numbers for our first issue, but our numbers dropped with issue #2, and then again even more with #3. Now while drops from issue #1 to #2 and even #3 or more isn’t unusual and should be expected, we dropped a lot. Even a full color ad in Diamond’s Previews catalog, direct mailers to comic shops, or a special Bushi Tales site for retailers helped. We had offered a “buy 5 copies and get one free” incentive for retailers. We had gone to shows to promote it. We had built mailing lists and sent out promotional items. What went wrong? I don’t know. I do know that the economy had started to take a down turn, comic numbers across the board were dropping, and Diamond dropped our incentive with #3.
I’m not here to trash talk about Diamond. They are a business and as a business they make good and bad business decisions. Their decision to not offer the incentive of free comics didn’t make our numbers tank, it just didn’t help them not dropping. One thing I did hear from a few friends around the country was that when they saw #2 on the shelves and mentioned they knew us the owners replied, “I’ve just about given up on those guys- I haven’t seen anything new from them in months.” We were quarterly! The fact that we hit our deadlines (and even shipped a week early with #1) didn’t matter. They assumed that since they didn’t see a monthly book from us that we weren’t shipping on time or producing at all. I can’t blame them too much. How many times have we picked up a first or second issue of a new comic series and never saw any future issues? The problem was, if a few retailers felt that way then how many others felt that way?
After that we took a break from publishing Bushi Tales. We didn’t want to quit, but if we did another print run we would have negative numbers on our orders through Diamond. We needed to come up with a new strategy. Next lesson-we needed to work smarter, not harder.
We are currently working on the next installment of Bushi Tales and our game plan for getting it out to comic fans. I’ll keep you updated and let you know of any other lessons we learn this time. Wish us luck!
Lin
Tags:
airbrush,
Bushi Tales,
comic books,
Comic Whore,
Dave Beaty,
Diamond Distribution,
digital printing,
Greg Cravens,
Lin Workman,
Morgan Printing,
MSCA,
Photoshop,
print on demand,
self-publishing,
Zipatone
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