Posts Tagged ‘promoting’

9 results.

Webcomic Top List Sites

by Jason Brubaker on February 25, 2010 at 6:00 am
Posted In: Making Graphic Novels

Advertising on Top List Sites. Which ones work?

Updated – April,14 2010

Since I started posting reMIND online I’ve been scouring the internet to find ways to promote my site. One of the ways I’ve seen are “Top List Sites” or “Webcomic Directories” where hundreds or thousands of webcomic creators come to list their online comics in hopes they can get more followers. These are websites designed to organize lists of webcomics by popularity. Each site decodes popularity based on a different algorithm of their own. For some it’s a combination of your hits, page views, etc. Others are based solely on voting while others are a complete mystery to me. I joined a bunch of these when I first started but most of these top-list’s seem to be gimcrack sites. It makes me question if it’s even worth it to list my comic there.

Before I go into details I want to mention the “Pareto’s Law” or more popularly called the “80/20 Principle“. I’ve read about this rule in many motivation books and it goes something like this:

80% of outputs result from 20% of the inputs.

or..

80% of my time at work produces 20% of my finished work.

or in this case…

80% of all websites are 20% effective.

Some push it even further…

90% of all websites are 10% effective.

You can even flip it like this…

10% of all websites are 90% effective.

If you look into this rule more you will see that it can be applied to almost everything in life. If you can figure out what 10% of your life is 90% effective and just focus on that 10%, you can save lots of wasted time.  With all this said. I think it’s a complete waste of time to add your webcomic to every list out there especially if it’s in this 90% that is 10% effective or less. So lets move forward.

As I mentioned, most of these sites have the ability to advertise on their homepage in which I have tried 4 so far and have no reason to try any others yet. So here is…

The 80/20 Principle applied to Top List Sites.

I structured it this way because once you get past the top four on the list it’s just a complete waste of time to try to figure out which one is better.

Top Web Comics seems pretty relevant to todays online communities for one. I joined and listed reMIND about 3 months ago and was ranked around #1500 on their list finding it hard to move up because the top comics were getting thousands of votes a week. I tried to remember to log on each day to vote for reMIND, I know I’m cheating, but it hardly moved me up the ranks anyway. I let it go for a while but one day noticed the ads on the top of the page were prime placement so I looked into it more. Turns out you can buy an ad there for as little as $10. (which is a discount for webcomics!) I bought an ad for $35 (300,000 impressions) and waited about a month for it to make it’s way up the queue. So far this ad has brought in an average of 100+ unique viewers a day since it started displaying. It looks like my ad will run for about 3 weeks. From what I can tell I am averaging about 100,000 impressions a week on their site. This could mean over  2100 highly targeted unique viewers by the time my ad expires. Not to mention lots of new subscribers.

But the biggest advantage to advertising at TopWebComics is people start voting for your comic (if they like it). Since my advertisement started, I’ve moved from around #1300 on the list to #320 (as I write this) in just about a week. Because I’m moving up the list, I’m now getting more people to recognize my site. When people goto the site to vote for other comics they might see my ad at the top and decide to vote for me too. So your not just paying for a little advertising, your also putting yourself on the map so people can find you to vote for you which will continue to drive traffic to your site long after the ad expires.

[Edit] When I first wrote this article I blow this one off thinking it was useless. The nest month I had some traffic from the site so I went there to check it out. What I found was a pleasant surprise. Someone had listed my comic and it was being displayed on the front page as a new comic. Being on this list alone was sending an average of 60 unique visitors to my site. Wow. Then I got another surprise when so many people subscribed to my comic there that I was added to the Most-New Subscriptions list. This shot more people to my site for a few weeks.

I started advertising on the Belfry lately and it’s been a wonderful return on investment, as far as getting new people to notice my graphic novel. So my end conclusion is that the Belfry is the second best Top List site I’ve found so far. Go there and sign up and list your comic if it’s not there yet!

This site is kinda clunky, but hey, they all are. The Webcomic List is sometimes very slow to load a page and I find it frustrating to navigate. The stats don’t really work on my comic too because it’s a blog but I don’t really need stats. I use Google Analytics. Overall, since I’ve listed my comic here I get about 4 unique viewers a day who somehow find me in the infinite list of burnt out comics. I think they add your page views to their algorithm and since 80% of the comics don’t get updated anymore, you automatically move up the list. As of writing this I’m ranked at 1,839 out of 15,310. That’s allot of comics to dig through!

One thing I’d suggest is to buy a spot in the featured list for $15 a month. This was my first advertising attempt being cheap enough for me to risk. They have other banner advertising but it seems really expensive at about $100 for 150,000 impressions. I’ll let you know when I tap into my Home Equity Line of Credit for this.

When I bought the $15 featured spot, I was sent about 5 to 16 unique visitors a day from the ad. Not bad for about 50 cents a day. Of corse it’s important to make a catchy button to attract people or your precious 15 duckets will float down the toilet. So in other words, this site is pretty good and seems up to date. I’m not sure if I will keep advertising there though. All together it has brought in a little over 300 unique viewers in about 3 months, mostly when I was featured.

I bought a featured ad on this site too for 3 months because it was only $5 a month. I’ve had a total of 37 unique visitors since I joined. Advertising the WHOLE time. What? Is that possible? But I’m ranked # 210 on their list (as of this writing). It seems like this list is pretty rarely traveled. It seems like a well managed site though but it definitely falls into the 80 to 90% ineffective catagory. Unless this changes in the future, I wont be spending my time there anymore.

Below are more Top List Sites that I found but don’t see the point in listing my comic with yet. If you know anything about any of these then feel free to leave a message in the comments below.

My Conclusion.
So with all this said, there is only one reason I can find to list your comic on more then the top 3 here. If you are a brand new webcomic with no links back to you, this is a way to get a few. You see, the more links you have to your site the better search ranking you will get with google and other search engines.  I still don’t suggest it though. You might as well join forums, write good content or even buy a few ads with Project Wonderful before wasting your time on all of these.

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26 Comments

Graphic Novel / Literary Agents.

by Jason Brubaker on March 4, 2010 at 6:00 am
Posted In: Making Graphic Novels
Finding an agent may not be the first thing an artist like yourself may want to do. I mean, don't agents take a cut of your profits? Don't they push you around? Jim Lee or Todd McFarlane never had an agent, did they, and look at how big they got!
 
Those are the common thoughts about agents among artists I think.  But I have a few reasons why I want to find a good one for my graphic novel work. You see, I have a tiny history with art agents. One good and one bad.
 

A bad agency story:

 
In 1995 when I was 20 I went to conventions showing my comic art around to anyone who would give me the time. Any offer was a good offer I thought. One of the offers was with a comic agency called (Name withheld because I can't remember it). They seemed legit to a 20 year old from Idaho so I signed a contract.
 

(WARNING: VENTING SPREE)

 
They never got me any work. Wait, they got me work but never paid me. Let me explain.
 
They set up a gig with (a famous rock star, seriously) to do half an issue of one of his stupid comics. The rock star called me and gave me a sentence to describe each page he wanted me to draw. I spent the next 2 weeks working the best 11 pages I ever penciled (at the time) and returned copies to my agent by mail.
 
Never heard back from the agent. Never heard back from the rock star.
 
I called the rock star and he kept playing hard to get, I mean what is he, some famous rock star or something? I didn't care, I worked hard for him and wanted answers and money. I kept calling and finally he picked up. The conversation went something like this:
 
The Rock Star – Hmmm yeah. I got your pages.

Me – Oh good. What did you think?

The Rock Star - Well, they aren't dynamic enough. All my comics are really dynamic.

Me – Oh okay. Can you explain what panels might need to be more dynamic? And how I can make them more so.

The Rock Star – Have you ever seen one of my books?

Me - Yeah.

The Rock Star - They have blood and sex and, you know, their more DYNAMIC!

Me – So if I add more blood and sex then it's more DYNAMIC?

The Rock Star - Yeah.

Me - Okay I'll make the changes.

 
Obviously "dynamic" meant a different thing to me then it did to the rock star. But I tried to add more blood and chunks and whatever he was looking for. I sent the pages to my agent and never heard back. I was ignorant of what to do, trusting everyone was honest in the business world.  About a month later after hearing noting, I decided to call my agent again and get to the bottom of it all. When I called, my agent was long gone. He quit or got fired or something. Nobody knew I existed. Nobody knew I drew pages for a rock star either. I never got a call back from the agency.  I never got a new agent to take over the last looser. And I was still under contract with them to give them a percent of everything I made. The rock star never paid me or returned a phone call from that point on.
 
Months later I found the issue of the comic I worked on in the comic store and my art was nowhere to be seen. I don't think the art was more dynamic either, unless you count more blood and pointless shots of female anatomy dynamic. The rock star didn't even tell me he wanted a female in it. I guess I'm just suppose to assume I have to draw naked women hiding in the bushes to add to the story arc. Later I saw this (short) rock star in a comic book store in LA and I wanted to kick him.
 
The moral to this story is: A famous rock star still owes me $2200 dollars for 11 penciled pages and a pin-up. That's $3,184.02 with inflation.

(VENTING SPREE OVER)

 

A good agency story:

 
Later on in 1996, I ran into another agency called Famous Frames. I moved out to Los Angeles to become a storyboard artist represented by Famous Frames and let me tell you, they got me solid work for about 6 years. If anyone wants to be a storyboard artist for commercials, music videos, film or TV for directors or ad agencies then this agency is legit! It's pretty hard to get in though. I was just in the right place at the right time. If I'd let them, they would've had a new job for me every day of the week.  My main problem with storyboarding is how mentally demanding it is. I would be hired to go to a random company at 9AM to draw 50 frames for a taco bell commercial that was shooting the next day. I'd get home at 7 and have a message on my answering machine for the next job in the morning that was 2 hours away for an ad agency or something. My record for the amount of boards I did in one day was around 140. It was a draining job but a good start to a professional career as an artist.  To this day I'm still grateful to them for having faith in a 21 year old from Idaho. I'd probably still be a starving artist if it wasn't for Famous Frames.
 
I've moved on since then but I definitely learned the value of a good agent. I can't tell you how many posers I've been approached by claiming they could be my agent. Random people who never even worked in the film, animation, comics, or artist industries. Shoot, I could be THEIR agent!
 
"So why do I want to get an agent now?", you might be thinking.
 
Simple. I want to get a contract with a major book publisher like Scholastic or Random House. You need to have a literary agent to submit anything to them.
 
To sum up my thoughts, I want a good agent who will take a cut of everything I make so that they will want to get me the best contract they can. I want a good agent so I can approach big book publishers and not just comic publishers. I want a good agent because all the people who I respect in the comic world have a good agent backing them.
 
I'd really love tons of opinions and advice here. This is one of the parts to all this graphic novel stuff that I'm still having trouble with. Part of me thinks I just need to publish reMIND first before I worry about an agent. But wouldn't it be great if an agent could help make reMIND a homerun instead of a bunt? Oh, what to do!!!
 

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29 Comments

Pages 46 & 47 – blog

by Jason Brubaker on April 19, 2010 at 6:00 am
Posted In: Blog, Making Graphic Novels

Pages 47 & 48. Click to enlarge.

Help me get back into the top 100 at TopWebComics. VOTE HERE!

These pages were a blast to work on because… you guessed it, ACTION! But I can’t help but wonder if I should change the rating of this comic to PG-13 because of crab blood. I guess I’ll find out if angry mother’s comment. Also, let me know if you can think of a better way to write that 3rd narration box. It seems funny to me and I can’t figure it out. It will all be sent to my editor in the end so I guess I shouldn’t stress on it too much.

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This week has been good. I finally finished a lingering page that changed a million times right in the middle of Chapter 2. I also changed up the ending of Chapter 2 and I’m very happy with it now. It was one of those things that I knew I’d have to come back to later. Oh yeah, I also scrapped the first spread of Chapter 3 and sketched a new one adding a pile more work for myself. Yay, the joys of being your own worst critic.

I sent 9 spreads to my flatter, Aaron Daly, and he’s blowing through them like nothing. Do you know how much time that is saving me? Let me think… probably about 2 to 3 hours a spread (at my speed) which equals 18 to 27 hours of work! I can only work for about 2 to 3 hours a night on this stuff so that’s pure gold!

I just remembered, Aaron has an unpublished spread of reMIND on his blog from a while back. Go check it out if you want a look into the future of reMIND.
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I did some reading this weekend.

I read How to Make Webcomics and I must say that it was kinda useful. I might just be overly critical because I learned 99% of the stuff they talk about from just doing research online and taking an educated guess. But anyway, it’s geared more towards a daily webcomic which isn’t exactly what I am doing but I thought it might have some secrets to making one successful. There were a few good things that I’ve never heard before but all in all I can’t say it gave me any breakthroughs in what I should do differently. I’ll write a more thorough review later but for now the main things I learned from it are as follows:

  • Buy paid ads on networks and forum sites.
  • Make free wallpapers and down-loadable stuff.
  • Fliers for campuses, cons, and comic stores.
  • Look into a freelance distributor to handle my books.
  • Use shipping supply company for cheap shipping stuff.
  • Offer my books to a retailer at cons so they can sell my books and maybe get more orders later.
  • Make press kit online and hard copy for Cons. For people in the press.

I’m not sure if this bullet point list makes any sense to anyone but me. I’m also not sure I’d recommend buying this book unless you were brand new to everything. If you are brand spanking new and want to make webcomics then, YES, by all means, it’s going to be helpful.

But honestly, I’ve been getting more out of the book called Tribes by Seth Godin. Thanks for the suggestion Kelly!

One last thing. I updated my Top-List Sites article. I added a few more I found and moved the Belfry up on the list.

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21 Comments

Rock Stars and Comic Books

by Jason Brubaker on May 3, 2010 at 6:00 am
Posted In: Blog, Making Graphic Novels

Here are pages 50 and 51. Click to enlarge. Right click to see it full size in a new window.

These pages went through several changes before I finally figure ‘em out. For example, the first panel used to be Victuals at the doorway of his mom’s house and he was in peasant clothes. All the detail in the room was added after the fact and with a Wacom Cintiq. I think it blends pretty well with the pencil drawings. The beads are also all digital. The third panel use to be 2 frames. One with Victuals giving her a ring and the second with them kissing. The ring idea was bad from the start. I mean why would lizards be giving each other rings like humans? Then the kissing panel just looked silly so it got cut. When I think about it, most of the time when I can’t figure out how to draw a story point, I just cut it out and let the narration speak for itself. What a cheap trick. Anyway, I hope this conveys the story I was intending.

If you want to see thumbnails, sketches, pencils and the first coloring pass of these pages then vote HERE!

6 Month Milestone

Today is a special date for me and reMIND.  Six months ago I published the first 2 pages of reMIND. I had no idea what would happen when I started this blog and I had no idea what I was doing either. But now after six months, I can’t imagine trying to finish reMIND without it. I had concerns and doubts when I started but now I can’t stress the benefits enough. I’ll talk much more about this in the future because it’s a fairly new and misunderstood path for publishing. I also hit a few milestones that I want to share real quick:

  • I just hit 200 RSS subscribers about a week ago. For some reason I had 200 as a goal for myself. Not sure why but I’m pumped that I hit it!
  • According to ComicBlogElite, reMINDblog has had over 50,000 unique visitors in the last 6 months. That’s cool!!!
  • I colored a complete spread in an hour and a half yesterday.  This is really fast for me. When I started reMIND (4 years ago) it took me about 3 days to color a spread because I had no idea how to even start. I’ve refined my coloring over the years and started using a flatter and in turn, whittled down the process to a reasonable time. I’m not saying every spread takes me 1.5 hours now, some may take a good 6 hours until I’m happy but the fact that I don’t have to kill myself to get this done is very relieving.

T-Shirt Update

I just talked to my brother-n-law who is also the one making my T-shirts and he told me that I should have my first batch of shirts this Saturday. So it looks like I will be packing up all the Gorilla Packs next weekend to ship out.(assuming all goes according to plan). I still have a few left to move. I have 3 small, 10 medium, 10 large left. So jump on it if you want it for $10. Once I finish selling these I think I’m going to raise the prices to $15 (plus shipping this time). I’m basically selling them for no profit this first batch just to get the word out there. It also leaves me with the bill unless I sell them all. So yeah, buy a shirt so I can pay my brother-n-law. haha

Click here to order shirts.

Also, thanks to all who donated a little extra to help me cover the shipping outside the US. I’m really excited to know that reMIND shirts will be seen around the UK, Netherlands, Germany and Belgium! In fact, I’ve almost sold as many shirts in Europe as I have in the US. Maybe it’s because I like European comics better than most US comics. Interesting.

Rock Stars and Comic books

In my career as an artist I’ve noticed some strange things. One thing that keeps surfacing is famous musicians making comics. In my article about Agents, I talked about an unnamed famous rock star who hired me to draw his stupid comic and never paid me. Yeah, talk about a looser.

I have a good rock start story though. It’s about Rikki Rockett. You know, the drummer of Poison. He’s pretty much the coolest rock star I ever met. When I was at the San Diego Con back in the 90′s I showed him my portfolio and he immediately wanted to hire me. I was invited to Rikki’s private party that night for his new comic company called “No Mercy Comics”. That was cool.

Later that year my friend, Brian Brethauer and I planned a road trip to LA from Idaho to see Rikki and show him some more work. Needless to say, nothing ever panned out. Rikki was awesome but it just wasn’t the right timing. Talk about a surreal moment seeing Rikki Rockett color one of my comic pages in Photoshop. I’ve never seen Photoshop before that day either. Remember, this was 1996.

Rikki coloring one of my pages.

Here’s another picture of Rikki Rockett and Brian Brethauer. I’m not in the picture because I was the one behind the camera. Rikki was eating a giant sandwich.

Since I have no pictures of myself and Rikki to prove that I actually met him. Here is a picture that has Brian and I so you can at least see that I know the guy sitting next to Rikki.

From left to right: Jeremy Barlow, Me, Jon Barlow, Brian Brethauer. Brian’s face is half covered but it’s really the same guy. Seriously. Brian, help me out here! This proof would never hold up in court. Brian?

I bet Rikki and Brian are off somewhere playing golf right now, laughing.

Anyway, so the point of this rock star memorabilia is this.

Last week, I was contacted by someone who works for the singer VV Brown. I guess VV is really into graphic novels and is making her own called The City of Abacus. I was asked to do a feature review of her book but instead I just want to say how fascinating it is that everyone is in the same boat when it comes to making a graphic novel. They might have more fame or money but in the end, they are the same as you and me, just trying to make a cool comic. It’s kinda encouraging when I think about it, I mean the fact that someone famous is asking me to plug their book? Me? I just have a blog and a comic that’s not even published.

I wish VV Brown all the best in her new venture as a graphic novel creator. When I cut my first thrash-metal-country-opera album I’ll know where to go for some press.

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11 Comments

T-shirts and Postcards

by Jason Brubaker on May 10, 2010 at 6:00 am
Posted In: Blog

Here are pages 52 and 53 of reMIND. Click to enlarge. Right-click to open full size in a new window.

This was a fun spread not only to show off the crazy ideas in my head but also because it has a interesting composition. I really wanted to push the way the panels were laid out in an open book. If you divide the two pages exactly in half you will notice that the fold is going to be cutting through the large left image. I’m not sure if this is done a lot in comics or graphic novels but I’ve been consciously doing it every now and then in reMIND just to make an interesting looking book. There’s also something about all that empty space in the bottom of the last frame that really makes me happy.  I wish I could give a more in depth analysis of these pages but its Mother’s Day (the day I wrote this) and my wife needs more attention then this blog so I gotta get to the point and cut this short.

I’ve got some cool tutorials in the works on how I color this graphic novel. I’ll have more info soon once I get it all together but from the looks of it, it will be a 7 week set of tutorials to cover the whole process.

T-Shirts and Post Cards

The T-shirts are in and looking sweet. Here are some pics of my personal collection after they were washed. The second picture is the back which says “reMIND a graphic novel”.

One thing I realized while printing up this first batch is how much I don’t know about T-shirt sizes. For instance, I only printed a few sizes in XL and this is about the second most popular size request. That’s what I get for assuming everyone is a weak little wimp like me. From now on the shirts will go for the fairly standard price of $15 plus shipping($4.00 for US residence). So the new total is $19 for a shirt. No more gorilla packs for $10. Sorry. That was just a pre-order deal but I might offer something like that again for the next shirt whenever I get around to making another.

I also printed up 100 high quality postcards to hand out at comic stores and pin up on bulletin boards. I’m putting a few in each gorilla pack too. The cards are getting here on Wednesday so it looks like the Gorilla Packs will be sent a few days later then I thought. Sorry about that. Here’s what they look like.

Only a few more shirts are in stock which are:

Small – Sold Out

Medium – 6

Large – 5

[EDIT] My paypal button isn’t working again so instead just use the donation box to the left. Make sure to make it for $19 (this includes shipping) and include your address and shirt size. If you want a shirt sent outside of the US then add whatever amount you think will cover the extra shipping costs. ONLY MEDIUM AND LARGE SHIRTS LEFT.

I’m going to be selling some of these to friends at work so grab them while you can. I’m not sure when I’m going to print more but I guarantee I will make some XL and XXL next time. Thanks for all your support in buying the Gorilla Pack pre-orders and being willing to hang up fliers and cards for reMIND in your little hubs.

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12 Comments

And Then I Blacked Out

by Jason Brubaker on June 7, 2010 at 6:00 am
Posted In: Blog

To my relief, we are finally at the end of our flashback. Talk about a burden off my shoulders. You see, now that it’s out there for everyone to see, I can’t trick myself into rethinking it anymore than I should. When I write stories, (not saying I’m a writer or anything) I always get hung up on what needs to happen at what time and how much is too much information. As you can see, I like stories that keep you guessing. I just hope that after 3 months of flashbacks, you can forgive me for not exactly explaining how Victuals became a cat.

Last week I said I’d start posting page specific info under the pages but I decided to change my mind again. I’ll keep all my long winded jabbering here on the blog so I don’t have to write two posts. Just trying to keep you on your toes. Click the image below to see the new pages then swing back here for more info below.

This page was one of the last pages I colored before I took a long break from reMIND back in 2009. I made some minor adjustments to it before posting it and was tempted to dial every color around resulting in a completely new piece. I saw myself opening a massive can of worms so I quickly deleted all the new color tests to stick with the original. It’s hard because I feel like I’ve learned so much about color in the last year that some of my older pages feel flat. I used to enjoy making the colors really flat because it was the only way I knew how. Not saying I’m way better now, just more daring I think.

Well, hope your ready to move forward with the story now. I know I am, and trust me, it gets crazy. More stuff will be revealed soon, so bare with me.

This week I finally finessed 6 pages that have been giving me a run for my money. I finally cracked the color pallet and I’m very relieved. To celebrate, I whipped open my sketchbook and frantically scribbled thumbnails for book 2 of reMIND knowing that it still needed lots of figuring out. I can’t do thumbnails very long because they drain on my brain. I’m happy to say I figured out some of the stranger pages.

On the other hand, I’ve been a bit antsy this week because I should be hearing from the Xeric Foundation soon regarding their decision to give me $5000 in grant money to help print reMIND. If they decide to give me the cash, it will relieve sooooooo much financial pressure on this project. Wow.

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The Phoenix Requiem

So last week I decided to be really bold and email two of the top notch webcomics out there to introduce myself. These guys get hounded by webcomics all the time, trying to share links or get free promotion so I knew I could easily just be ignored. To my surprise, both of them responded right away with kind words about my comic. Sarah Ellerton of The Phoenix Requiem tweeted a link to reMIND the next morning sending over 100 visits alone.

Later that day she plugged my comic on the front page of her site sending a massive throng to devour and savor tender Victuals. I’m super grateful for how willing talented people are to support this project in it’s early stages. If any of you are not already coming from Phoenix Requiem, then you’ve really gotta see what an amazing graphic novel she is doing. It’s massive and very professional unlike 99% of the webcomics out there.

I’ll talk about who the other top notch webcomic is next week.

Oh yeah, since Sarah showered kindness on reMIND I’ve gotten so much traffic that I’ve moved up to number 3 on the ComicBlogElite! I took a screen capture just to prove it.

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T-shirt Update

Last week I was emailed to see if any more shirts were left. I still have about 5 medium and 5 large left. If anyone wants one just donate at least $19 and let me know the size and your address. This pays for shipping and handling too. If you are in Europe (as many of my last buyer were) then please add an additional $9 to your donation to cover the shipping charges.

Recap: $19 for US. $28 for Europe. Only Medium and Large in stock. Here is a picture incase you missed it last time. Front and back.

[EDIT]   Only 1 medium and 2 large shirts left now.

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One of reMIND’s true fans, Andy Bailey, sent me an email saying he got his t-shirt. He attached a cool picture of his placement of reMIND postcards at his restaurant in the U.K. Check it out! Thanks for the pic Andy! In case your interested, Andy has a wordpress plugin called CommentLuv. Download it at comluv.com.

If anyone is brave enough, I’d love to see some pics of you wearing your reMIND shirts. I’ll post them here so my 20 fans can appreciate it as well. Come on, you know you want to be internet famous.

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Last but not least, please vote for reMIND at TopWebComics. If you do, I’ll show you a panel of the next page. Here’s a link:

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22 Comments

Email Answers: Publishing Online vs Print

by Jason Brubaker on June 10, 2010 at 5:00 am
Posted In: Blog, Email Answers, Making Graphic Novels

Will Publishing Online First, Ruin my Chances of Print?

I got this question a few months back from a talented artist.

Question: I was just curious to hear your thoughts about whether or not publishing your pages online first, might burn any bridges when looking for a literary agent/book publisher in the future?

Just curious.  I’m pursuing the whole graphic novel thing too, and really want into get into bookstores.  My worry is that if I start posting the book online first, I might mess up the chance to get it picked up by a major publisher.  Y’know, first publication rights or something.  I may have no idea what I’m taking about though.  Anyhow, just thought I’d get your take on it!

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Over the last 8 months I’ve talked to many people about this, read books on it and studied what other industries have and have not done successfully.  I’ve come to a few conclusions which may be right or may be wrong, but here they are and I’m not just talking the talk. As you can see I’ve risked my entire project on this train of thought:

The markets are changing. With the internet changing how everyone does business, it’s anyone’s guess if publishers are even a better bet these days. Sure the major publishers can rake in the money on best sellers and established authors, but we aren’t talking about that. We’re talking about you and me, right now.

But before we move on, take a look at this quote I recently heard from Jon Meacham, the longtime Editor of Newsweek, which is now being sold because they aren’t making enough money I guess. It’s been around since 1933.

“We live in an era where all print based media are not exactly rolling in cash.” - Jon Meacham

Did you hear that? So is a big publisher really the way to go? I know this isn’t exactly the same as Random House publishers but it’s still print based. Here is more from the interview:

“Here’s what I suspect the future is. We have had it backwards, which is that we produce a magazine all week. We close it Friday and Saturday and it begins to go out online(to the printers) where the heart of the operation has been. We have Newsweek.com (internet version) every day but for 77 years the imphasis has been on the print. It’s probably time to flop that, in which you are solely focused on the digital and by the end of the week you take the best of, and for people who want to hold a magazine in their hands,(they will buy the printed version) and there are people who can still do that.”

I quoted that from The Daily Show. Did you get what he was saying? They had it backwards by focusing on print. The print should be the ‘best of’ the online content. That’s huge! Learn from this. You and I are small compared to Newsweek and can adapt easily to change. Take advantage of it.

I work in animation and this whole thing really reminds me of all the traditional animators who were laid off because they couldn’t accept the changing industry. Hand drawn animation was being replaced by 3D animation and nobody wanted to adapt. I felt for them but at the same time, it’s was a great opportunity for small animation studios to make their own feature films because the technology was making it possible. Why do we think we need Disney to produce a 2D animation when we have people like Sylvain Chomet making films like “Triplettes of Belleville” and his new one “The Illusionist”. That wasn’t possible before. I think it’s the same thing with graphic novels and book publishers. Now days anyone who is motivated enough can make a beautiful graphic novel and have it printed and get it to an audience.

From what I’ve read, a really good selling graphic novel might have a print run of 15,000. An Indy graphic novel might have 5000. Okay, now take a step back and instead of focusing on how many books that is to us little guys, think about how few people are actually seeing it. If you only print 5000 copies, only 5000 people max are going to be able to read it unless they all share but when I buy a book it pretty much always goes on my book shelf never to be seen again. There are webcomic graphic novels out there that generate 50,000 to 100,000 unique visits a DAY. There are badly drawn webcomics that have a bigger following than the beautifully printed and drawn Indy comic that sold a whopping 5000 copies at conventions. You know why? Becasue nobody knows the printed comics exist. How many people go to Indy Comic conventions and dig through all the clutter to find the one rare golden nugget? Maybe a few people out there. But how many people have access to the internet and can type in http://mystupidcomic.com? Nearly the entire world. Which brings me to another point.

You need to have fans before you can sell books. The internet is where to find your niche fans now days, not door to door with a case of books. You don’t spend all your hard earned money printing your first book and then start looking for fans. Also, an agent or publisher wants to see that you’re committed before they commit to you. Unless the agent or publisher is also a no name, but that’s another story.

I read a great quote from Seth Godin, “The only people who should plan on making money from writing a book are people who made money on their last book. Everyone else should either be in it for passion, trust, referrals, speaking, consulting, change-making, tenure, connections or joy.”

So, If your goal is to make a living with a newly started graphic novel career, then stop. Just quit while you’re ahead. Stop before you’ve wasted a month of your life laboring over it only to realize that it’s going to take a lot more work than you are passionate enough to spend. If you’re not in it for one of the reasons above then please, PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING HOLY, JUST STOP NOW. I DON”T WANT TO READ YOUR HEARTLESS COMIC EVEN IF YOU FINISH IT.

So the next logical question is; Can we get from point A(no name artist) to point B(successfully published author making a living) if we are in it for the right reasons? I believe so. So how do we get there? I believe you can get from point A to B by building a fan base one person at a time through the internet. In the book The Economics of Webcomics, the author repeatedly compares indy publishers to webcomics. In every case, the artist who gave away content for free on the internet and later sold the same content as a book would outperform any no-name indy comic who printed first. In fact, the websites that were really popular would start competing with the same sales figures as Marvel’s most popular titles. Even the popular indy titles never hit that number. Even small companies who released books online a few weeks prior to the printed books would make more sales. The idea that the online release is just one big marketing campaign kinda starts making sense when you look at the figures.

There’s a term in the big movie marketing world called “Market Saturation” (I think that’s what they call it). It’s when a company like Disney goes out and asks a random group of people on the streets if they’ve ever heard of the next movie they have coming out. If a studio, through advertising, can get a high percentage of the population to (at least) hear of their next movie then they have done an excellent job marketing it. The idea is that the more people who know about it, the more sales they will make on movie tickets and related products. If nobody knows a movie (or graphic novel) exists then it doesn’t matter how good it is, it will never make any money.

That’s why the big publishers are so powerful, because they know how to saturate the bookstores with advertising to help sell their books. But like I said before, why would they commit to selling your books if you’re not committed to your books. Publishers don’t want a one hit wonder or fluke. They want someone who can make book after book of high quality content. Someone they can rely on.

So to sum up this point; You need fans to sell books. The internet is one big free marketing campaign pre-release for your book. People wont blindly buy stuff anymore. If you have no fans, good luck selling a book. Good luck getting a book deal and good luck impressing a GOOD agent. People need to know you exist. You need at least some market saturation. The real fact here is this; if you can’t get a few hundred or thousand fans on your own then is your art or story really good enough to impress a publisher or agent? You only get one chance to make the first impression on the best agent or publisher, why not refine your skill first and work out some of the kinks before running for president.

Another thing I’ve thought; People who read comics online are never going to buy a book and people who buy books are never going to read them online.

I used to think this was true, but now I think it’s mostly false. And even if it was true, the internet is probably 90% of my audience so I don’t want to ignore it. There is a group who likes reading comics online now days and they may never buy a book in print. But you will always have the faithful readers online who will line up to buy a book in print as proven by all the webcomics doing this now. I also think there’s a middle sized group who will find comics online and just skim through it waiting to buy the books when they hit print. But the fact is, the amount of online viewers dwarf the book collectors. This might seem like bad news for us if we want to make money, but think of it this way, every extra person who sees your work and remembers it, grows your fan base and grows your market saturation. The bigger the fan base, the more people talk about it, the more chances you have at finally making money on a book. Once you make money on one book, you have a better chance of making money on the next book. Plus, don’t forget, if you get a huge following not only can you sell books, you can sell prints, shirts and countless other things.

ONLY THEN can you start thinking about quitting your day job. Notice I said START thinking. I didn’t say to just quit. And don’t use this as an excuse to make stupid irrational financial decisions.

If a publisher sees that you have 2000 followers, I’m sure they’ll respect you more than a no name artist with no followers. If I can get a million hits on my webcomic, I’m sure it’s worth something to an agent or publisher. If I have an entire book online that has sold out of hard copies a few times and major followers then I’m sure a book publisher will be interested to see why. But at that point, do I care? We will see when we cross that bridge.

reMIND is the first book in my career of graphic novels. Maybe by the time I have a second one, the internet will have matured enough to start selling digital comics online somehow like through the iPad. That’s not going to kill the idea of printing books either. It’s just going to be another way to get more fans and potentially another stream of income and more market saturation. Plus, when I have a second book, I still have the following from my first one to build on. It all adds up the longer you do it assuming you have good content.

I think it’s good to shoot for the stars. But I wouldn’t worry as much about what a publisher might want of you when you’re on page 20 of your first graphic novel. I’d just focus on building an audience slowly and keep moving forward on your project. If you have a beautiful completed graphic novel ready to sell a few years from now and a nice following, you are already ahead of the curve.

(I’m sure there are many thoughts on this subject so feel free to chime in.)

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Reserve a copy of reMIND @ Kickstarter.com

by Jason Brubaker on July 8, 2010 at 5:00 am
Posted In: Blog

Do you want to reserve a copy of reMIND?

Do you want to get a discount?

Do you want to get your name printed in the book itself?

Do you want to see some spoilers?

Do you want to be my BFF?

Well, I’ve officially launched a Kickstarter.com campaign to do all the above and then some! If you’ve never heard of Kickstarter, it’s a website for creative people to post their projects to help raise funds. I mentioned a while back that I got some quotes for the printing and it comes out to at least $7500 for 2000 hard bound copies if I print in China. I also mentioned that I won the Xeric Grant last month giving me $5000 towards this cost. This leaves me at $2500 plus whatever setup fees and I think there’s a chance that I could get the rest funded through you and kickstarter.

Here’s the deal. If you pledge at least $20 to reMIND then I’ll send you a copy of the book when it’s printed. So if I end up with a cover price of $25 then you’re already saving $5. Plus I’ll pay for the shipping…unless it’s outside of the US, in which case I’ll just ask you to pledge $5 more to help me with that too.

There are other bells and whistles too. If you pledge more than $39 then you’ll get your name printed in the book. Check out the video at kickstarter.com to get all the juicy details.

Kickstarter.com – reMIND

So there you go. If you watch the video you can see some major spoilers at the end in the form of ANIMATION! Don’t worry if you don’t want to see the spoilers. I give you plenty of notice before I show anything so please watch it even if you don’t want anything given away and just stop it when I say so. The video also has a cool announcement about who will be doing a pin-up in reMIND. I’m not telling here though, so go watch the video to find out. I’m really excited about it even though I sound bored in the video. I was just trying to be quiet because my kid was sleeping in the next room.

This will only be live for 45 days and it ends on August 22nd so, PLEASE! PLEASE!!! Help me out, now, if anytime! I hate begging but I am willing to do it for this.

So, if you really want to support reMIND but you don’t have any money, then all you have to do is tweet this link a million times a day. Talk about it on Facebook. Email your friends and family and tell them to pledge. Post it on your webcomic or blog. Write about it on your Tumblr or link to it on Reddit or something. It’s all up to me and you to get the word out enough to make this thing a success. Thanks for all your support so far!

- Jason

_______________________________

P.S. I just talked to another printer today who is telling me that my cloth bound cover can be made! Now I just need to raise above and beyond to afford the higher cost.

P.P.S. Sorry I couldn’t get a new tutorial up this week. As you can see, I was busy making this kickstarter video. Hopefully next Thursday it can happen.

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Does it Work?

by Jason Brubaker on July 12, 2010 at 5:00 am
Posted In: Blog

New Monday pages here.

I hope you’re not saddened that some of the mystery is gone. In fact, next week a few more secrets are revealed which change the course of Victuals’ future like nothing before.

I might be, ever so slightly, updating the reMIND font/logo after next weeks spread. It occurred to me that I might want to do more than use a common font like Impact for my logo. I did widen it a bit and trace over it so it had a more unique feel but it’s still just the Impact font.

I know there are many of you who just visit on Monday’s when a new spread is up, which is totally fine and I appreciate anyone spending any amount of time here at all, but some things have happened since last Monday that you might want to know about before it’s too late.

On Thursday I announced a Kickstarter.com pledge campaign for reMIND with a goal of $3000 to cover the rest of the printing costs. Less than 48 hours after the pledge drive launched, we exceeded the goal! I was completely blown away with all the support and still can hardly believe so many of you are willing to throw down money so far in advance to help this project out.

Even though we reached the 3k goal, there is still a second goal that I think is obtainable. If we can reach $6000, I can print reMIND with a nice cloth binding hardcover like in the image below. Anything over $6000 will allow me to print more books too. Most of the big rewards are already taken but upon this writing, there is still one $99 pledge that allows you to claim an original Victuals painting. I’m sure it will go fast so jump on it if you really want it.  [EDIT] The last $99 pledge is taken, sorry. You can even get your name printed in the book itself for a pledge of $39 or more, but only a limited number of slots are available. I still need someone to contact Bill Gates to take me up on my $500 pledge incentive.

Anyway, here’s a link to the site that has a video I made explaining everything as well as all the pledge incentives.

Kickstarter has been a real eye opener for me. I plan on writing an article about what I think works best and what I think doesn’t. Although there are lots of pieces to the puzzle, I have a few ideas, many of which I’ve implemented into my own campaign.

One more quick announcement. I’ll be at Comic Con this year walking around aimlessly wearing my reMIND t-shirt. If you see me, please stop me and say hi. I’m just going to be handing out free reMIND fliers and visiting all the friends I’ve made here over the last 8 months. It’s great to see so many webcomic artists attending with booths of their own. Next year, 2011, will be my big booth year. Hopefully if all goes well, I will be able to actually make a convention schedule to peddle reMIND merchandise.

Oh yeah, if anyone is going to the Con and has a reMIND T-shirt, please wear it!!! In fact, if you wear it and snap a picture of yourself wearing it while at the con and email it to me, I’ll send you a free original drawing of Victuals as a big THANK YOU!

That reMINDs me, for those of you on my mailing list, I usually try to give away free stuff every now and then. I promised that I’d randomly pick two names from the list and send them a free drawing of Victuals. So here are the two lucky subscribers:

  • Ivan Murillo
  • Christopher Wrann

If you two could email me your address, I’ll send off your drawings as soon as I get them finished. Thanks for being apart of reMIND guys!

If anyone wants to join the reMIND monthly mailing list to get your name added to the random drawings, receive email updates, special offers and news, then opt in by clicking below and filling out the form. This is the best way for me to keep in contact with you so please take a moment to join. No spam. I promise! Unsubscribe at any time.

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