OK, I have officially gone mad

[Ron Edwards]

Because I wrote a bunch of comics.

I am thinking ... of collecting a month's worth of blog posts, and packaging them with a comics story, as a paperback book. I could run the story on-line as a webcomic in half-page posts in black-and-white, and offer the whole thing in color in the book.

Sean Howe was really nice in helping me understand how the "use licensed comics images" thing works for print publications, so I made some decisions about that.

Sue me, but I think my blogging is turning out pretty good actually. If I were to start the comics posting for a while, then get an ongoing library of these little books available in print and PDF, then it might even make money.

[Eero Tuovinen]

I agree that your blog seems like a creative success, and I'm glad it's working so well for you. It is an entertaining read. I wouldn't mind seeing its readership grow over the coming months, and do in fact expect that - it's not an overnight occurrence, but I think it's a pretty given that a blog of this quality will enjoy steady growth in prominence as discovery propagates over the 'net, as long as you feel like continuing writing it.

Would you publish the web version of the comic in the blog, or would you set up a separate outlet? There are minor advantages either way, I suppose.

I like the idea of your own monthly comic book journal consisting of comics blogging and some comics; it manages to reframe already written blogging material effectively while also offering added value. Sort of European in style, the closest that I've seen to something like that in American comics affairs are the highly personal indie diary comics that were in the vogue at some point. A modern low-profile publishing plan with pdfs and POD to keep the series available a long time could make for a pretty attractive web presence after a while. I perversely like the fact that something of this sort would more naturally be a perfect-bound volume than the flimsy pamphlet format of the traditional American comic book :D

Aside from color, other things you could do to improve the value add on the volumes (as opposed to the raw blog) would be editing, a fresh editorial column written at the time of volumization (the blog material would presumably run with like a half year delay in the volumes), and perhaps some bonus guest stuff (columns or comics or Doctor Xaos AP reports or whatever) on occasion for variety. You'd probably want to play the publication pretty fast and loose anyway, in terms of getting into an editorial rut with it; seems to me that the best of this sort of anthology periodicals are pretty responsive to creator moods and such.

Tell us more about the comics you wrote, if you would. Are they Doctor Xaos comics, or something more specific? Are you thinking in terms of stand-alone stories, or are you building that grand ambition of geekery, the comics 'verse? How long would a story accompanying a month's worth of blogging be?

[glandis]

Ron,

I'm with Eero in wanting to know a bit more about the comics, especially about their relationship to particular (sets of?) blog entries.

And "sets of" ... speaking strictly as a possible-consumer (that is, I'm ignoring your creative and business concerns - though not deliberately subverting them), what appeals the most is if the books were to collect thematically-connected sets of posts (as the primary grouping - chronological could be a secondary, though larger time periods - a year? - would be nice). E.g., a book that collects RPG-related posts from a time period, a book that collects blatantly political posts from a time period, etc. Which maybe is why the nature of the comics matters, in how connected/independent of the posts they are - some types of relationship would make this organization a bad idea.

Of course, it could be a bad idea just because you don't like it, too.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi guys, thanks for the encouragement! If James and I do this, it's a big time and creative commitment, so I'm still figuring out a lot of things you're asking about.

My current thoughts on logistics:

• Post a half-page per week, ongoing, of almost-finished pages in black and white - probably on its own subpage, not as blog posts proper ... or maybe at the blog after all, for maximum exposure, I'm not sure.
• Each story is ten pages, so that's twenty weeks each - quite a lot. Depending on how much we get done and how fast the work goes, maybe twice a week would be OK.
• It's really important to stay ahead of the game, though, so this is all subject to the test of how much is feasible relative to everything else James and I do, both together and separately. We still have yet to discover just how well we do as writer-artist team for this purpose anyway.
• Money is a problem. You cannot ask an artist to pump out finished comics work for free to "see what happens." We both prefer mutual ownership over work-for-hire, so some combination of seed money + profit-sharing seems like the best bet.
• The idea would be to put out a book, a perfect-bound just like Eero says, with the full ten-page story in the back.
• I'd prefer to keep the collections completely chronological relative to the blog, as I develop ideas through multiple venues - the scattering of category is actually deliberate, to help people develop the ideas from multiple angles. One book per month of blogging seems about right, with an average of 11 posts per book (volume is perhaps the best term).

Content - you'll forgive me for being a little bit vague, it's not just to be coy, but because I know my own writing process very well, and this isn't the right time to go talking about all the details, in terms of me genuinely doing the work.

• It's a completely unironic, straight-ahead superhero/supervillain comic book.
• It's a supervillain-centric series that deliberately avoids idiot plots and kicking the dog.
• It's not really Doctor Xaos oriented, but may or may not refer to such a character or an equivalent in the future.
• It begins with a strong set of aesthetics and ideas but not with a worked-out 'Verse; the setting is supposed to develop organically based on simply retaining and building on the better ideas as we go.
• At present we have one series concept ("title") that can sustain multiple stories. In time the project may include more than one series.

[Eero Tuovinen]

It might take a while to make this feasible, but the Patreon project seems like a pretty natural way to monetize something like this, and gauge demand while at it - just add a new commitment level that includes a copy of the magazine when you're ready to start publishing. Patreon's pretty much made for selling periodicals, anyway. Doesn't help much with the seed money admittedly, but the more-or-less committed pre-orders at least ease the uncertainty a bit compared to just putting it out and hoping that people will buy. This probably won't be a significant factor this year, looking at the slow and steady growth of the scale of Patreon financing, of course.

The logical way to make seed money, on the other hand, would be Kickstarter - start-up financing for a comic book project is definitely their kind of thing. A clear pitch for it, some concept art, maybe sell early access and art originals for the first issue as perks, and give backers the first issues in digital format (maybe first three issues for big backers, etc.). Should make enough to lessen the commitment risk for the artist without being much of a hassle, as long as you don't try to sell subscriptions or paper copies of the book at the same time - the Patreon would be for that, ideally.

[glandis]

That bit on the content is plenty for me - a little creative insight, and tells me you can associate the blog posts and the comics any way you want to. The scattering of categories in the blog has always seemed appropriate, and your "develop from multiple angles" reason makes sense. In the (potential) comic publications? Eh, your decision. Maybe way down the line there's a "collected & reorganized by category" edition.

[Ron Edwards]

Frankly, I think I've done my last Kickstarter, at least until I come to a project for which it is completely, A-100 percent perfect, and when I'm not doing anything else. I've also decided that crowdfunding isn't well-suited to my sort of publishing, especially for product. People want to pre-order, and pre-order is absurd in an era of POD. I got into crowdfunding to put myself back on the pop culture map, and that's succeeded very well. Now I'm going to let blogging and the associated social media take over, and put out product the only sensible and sane way to do it. One can order the book-and-PDF, or just PDF, via buttons at the blog and the Adept site, and that'll be it.

I'll work something out with James, as I think more about it.

[glandis]

Ron,

Well, I'm hardly an RPG publishing model expert, but it isn't hard to imagine a situation where pre-order (via Kickstarter or whatever) seems to make sense (though I guess it is expressly NOT really POD). That is, if you're using the pre-order to achieve a print run size that really does give you a meaningful discount (and a corresponding increase in profit margin over POD).

I have no clue how common/difficult that is nowadays. And maybe I'm just concerned about someone mis-characterizing your position as "Kickstarter sucks!" But if you have a more in-depth reasoning/analysis/opinion about where Kickstarter does and doesn't make sense, I'll bet plenty of people are interested (in your copious free time, of course).

[Ron Edwards]

I've written a fair amount on Kickstarter financing when I was doing it; should be a few pages back in the posts in this section.

It all boils down to this: there are no more print runs, and need not be. No one should printing books in bulk. The cost of doing so, the cost of warehousing, the postage cost (twice per book at least), and the packaging cost are all unnecessary.

Currently, Circle of Hands costs me nothing in terms of print. The Sorcerer books cost me nothing in terms of print. Now that I've added new files for all my books into the printer's system, none of my books costs me anything in terms of print. This is not a standing cost that has to be met in order to publish a game. Anyone who wants the book buys it and gets it. If a retailer or other reduced-cost client wants one, I have buttons to authorize those too, the same ones I use when I need a couple of copies for something.

I only incur print costs because of crowdfunding. It's completely retrograde.

I am also horrified to see anyone - and you're not alone in recent readings - invoke the whole "well, if you print more, they're cheaper" concept. That very thing is the biggest falsehood and the biggest danger of all small press publishing.

1. The total cost is what matters in the moment, concerning the all-important availability of funds in the bank account.

2. The profit margin per book only counts if they all sell now. And if you aren't selling the entire print run off to some distributor, then until the print run is completely sold at full price each, every book sold is bearing the cost of every book not sold so far. Therefore more books in hand is worse.

3. Remember that if you don't sell out that run by the end of the year, the remaining books are taxed as an asset. That means your little "it was cheaper!" mantra vanishes into the ether.

The pre-order crowdfunding model would seem to overcome #2 and #3 except that the real profit margin per book per pledge is very tight. Few people are going to want to pledge for a copy for more than they'd pay for it in the store. And they simply cannot understand that their pledge is also paying for posting and shipping, or even if they click appropriately, for what those costs really are. Also, publishing is full of hidden costs, for which you need a nice buffer in that bank account, and without it, you won't be able to get those books out at all, or at least not for another yearly cycle.

There are a number of other secondary factors like the unambiguously negative role of deadlines and the uncritical excitement over what are blatantly inferior products. Some crowdfunding has goals that I can understand - in my case, the artwork, so I could throw money at a specific task in a short period of time. But "help me publish my game" is a completely unnecessary goal; such projects are merely using crowdfunding as a promotional device and as a way to dodge the critical eye that would fall upon their work otherwise prior to release.