Cameron Davis
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
By the rush you get knowing that something you’re making will be out for everyone to see soon, and being pushed by the desire to make it happen.
It’s tough late at night, that’s for sure, but I just try and think about how good it will feel when the comic is up and people are reading it.
It’s like a muscle that gets stronger the more times you push yourself through the hard parts. After a while you can’t live without making comics.
Never say never, Rick. You’re a talented individual who shows great promise. Take the time to think about what went right and wrong with Winter Suns and see what you’d like to do next.
Done, thanks for the heads up, Frumph is the best.
Wow, thanks so much for the detailed response! This is exactly what I needed.
So I spent last night trying to figure out why I couldn’t get Step One working – after all, it looks like a pretty easy thing to set up, right?
Turns out the option to set up domestic and international shipping isn’t available to PayPal users outside of the US. All we can do is define a flat rate that everyone pays regardless of where they actually are in the world. Because uh…nobody can really figure out why.
It’s just another one of those things that internet users outside of America just have to get used to, like Amazon not allowing us to publish on Kindle, or Netflix not being available, or it being cheaper to fly to America to buy Adobe products than buying it locally)
Man, I hate living on the wrong side of the planet some times.
BUT – Brad, I love the idea of setting it up in Marketpress and making the personalization mandatory and selling prints through that system. Brilliant! I’m going to set that up today. Problem solved in a roundabout way! 🙂
Thanks so much!
I went through the archives and found a big batch of old episodes, including some missing from sbloyd’s archive: 43, 48, 50-64 and 67. Also the lost episode that was circa 49-50.
I use If This Then That to auto-post on Twitter, G+ and Tumblr links to my site when a new comic or blog post is made, and I think it’s a great service. You can customise the message that appears along with the link, too.
It’s a nice bit of convenience that people seem to like and it saves me a bit of time.
I’ll add Comic Books On Demand for my fellow Australian / NZ / PNG members.
I haven’t used them yet, but I know of several people who have and they were very happy with the results. I plan on trying them out for my next Blow The Cartridge comic. The print costs are comparable to Ka-Blam, BUT I will be saving a King’s ransom on postage!
Just wanted to say a HUGE thank you to everyone who replied to this post – it really helped. I guess I freaked out a bit because we have so few conventions here that not doing the one that is in my home town means going from doing 100% of nearby conventions to 0% 🙂
But now I feel really good about not doing it, and I’m going to be using the time and money on new ways to expand my readership and skills. And it’s one less source of stress 🙂
I actually used updating some of my old strips as a selling point of the new book collection, and it’s something that people liked. However, I very much believe that making new stuff is ALWAYS better than remaking old stuff, so I limited this re-work to a handful of strips that looked very out of date compared to the rest: black and white stick figure comics that were re-drawn to look like the full-colour, full body stuff that the rest of the book had.
I really only did it because including the old strips was such an obvious, garish change of style from the rest of the book it just would have looked rotten otherwise. It only took a few hours and I don’t plan on ever doing it again – because even though most of my old stuff looks terrible, it at least shows I’m making progression. And people like to see that most of all.
Just FYI Kindle Direct Publishing isn’t available to anyone outside the US.
And yeah, as someone who’s been doing this from the wrong side of the planet for years – there are options, but you’re best off doing as much as you can digitally and worrying about physical goods years and years from now.
And, uh, do more than one comic. 🙂
Thanks for the further feedback, guys. I feel like I’m learning a lot about the process and need to clarify some stuff.
OK first up I should have been clearer about how books are paid for. I’m paying for printing bills of the single issues myself out of my money. When I say that the Patreon money is being used to print books, I mean that if Bob has paid $8 a month for three months, he’s already well covered the costs for HIS copy of the next issue.
My big question is about how do I explain the frequency of books, when the frequency of them is directly related to how well the Patreon campaign is going? The next 32 page comic will, at my once-a-week rate, come out in October. If I go to twice-a-week, it’ll come out in…July or August. Three-a-week and I’m ready to go for May or June. What’s the best way to explain what is a constantly changing schedule? I feel like the whole Patreon page is about me increasing my output, but I feel like this message is getting lost.
OK. I have a follow up new question for anyone! When should I start doing things like the online jam sessions or desktop wallpapers – should I wait until the start of next month after the first round of pledges are charged or should I start basically now?
Opinions on everything gratefully received. I want to do what’s right by everyone. The campaign has been live 3 days and I’ve got 6 backers so it’s a constantly evolving process!
Cool, will do, thanks. I’ll have to be careful with the wording here – my goal with this campaign is to dramatically increase the number of strips I do every week, which in turn will increase my production of comics / TPBs. In my ideal world a new TPB comes out every six months instead of four years 🙂
Thanks for the feedback!
Regarding the books – it’s funny, because I thought I’d get flagged here for being too greedy, not too generous. I’ll be using the campaign money to make the books. The way I figure it is – at my current production rate of one strip a week I have new 32-page issues coming out every 16 months, and 120+ page trade paperback collections every 4 years, so if a backer wants to support me all that time they’ve already paid for their copy and then some, even taking into account print and international postage costs. Even if I ramped it up to seven comics a week I’m still ahead.
I’ll have a tinker with the layout too, thanks!
Perhaps one of the reasons you’re taking this approach is so you’ll have some kind of ‘plausible deniability’ if you ever get accused of copying someone else’s work?
Let me tell you, the internet doesn’t give any credence to that. The internet assumes you know everything that’s out there ever.
A couple of years back I put up a strip that, completely unbeknownst to me, was similar in theme to a popular comic that was already online (that I had never read). No amount of me protesting that I didn’t purposefully rip off anyone quietened the hordes of internet people with their internet pitchforks and torches ready to drive me out of town.
I actually wished I DID see the earlier strip, so I could have just come up with another idea instead and saved myself the bother. Ideas are easy. Making stuff is hard! I’m actually GRATEFUL when I see someone has already made something similar to what I had in mind – it means I can move onto the next thing on the infinite list of ‘things I want to see exist’.
Also – as an entertainer, you’re actually doing a disservice by not exposing yourself to as much as you can of modern pop culture. There’s so much stuff out there to inform, amuse and voice your opinion on – why wouldn’t you want to see it?
