So I rocked myself a table at MoCCA this weekend grudgingly debuting a mini-comic entitled Kevin Analog, as some of you may already know. I found it to be a learning experience on several levels. Allow me to explain.
Rule #1: BORING IS ALL YOU CAN AFFORD
Alot of what happened with Kevin Analog, a book which some of you may now be familiar with, had to do with the siren call of this fairly new development in self-publishing: digital printing. What it promises is incredibly appealing. For a surprisingly low fee, say 50 cents a book, you can get a color cover on your mini-comic. Now for someone like myself, who is heavily into cover design and logo design, this is all too appealing. I designed my first mini to look like a 7" single with a label depicting the comic inside. I remember when I first got the box of books, my first reaction was that the printing wasn't all that bad, but it wasn't that great either. The saving grace was that it was surrounded by a white background, which rendered any print deficiencies pretty moot, as you could barely notice them. But it did plant that teensy voice in my head, saying, "Benjamin, you realize this is not offset printing. This is digital. If you look for even a few seconds too long, you will see the flaws inherent in this process." I didn't listen to it. Instead, several months later, I designed, drew and colored a cover I fell absolutely in love with. With the promise of digital printing in my mind, I had visions of sellouts and raves, of several cries of "Oh, the book of MoCCA 2005? Are you fucking kidding? Kevin Analog. No question." Having a cover in your PhotoShop window that you literally can't go fifteen minutes without pulling up, even when you're drawing something unrelated or watching Scrubs Season One with your girlfriend, can do that to you. So, the day before the convention, the box arrives on my doorstep. And my friends, I had no clue what I was looking at. There are a zillion reasons why the gap between what the cover looked like on my iMac looked so very and ghastlily different from the one I stared at that morning, and most of them are my own fault. There are obviously differences between print colors and screen colors. Had I given the printer more time to work, I would've gotten a proof (See: Rule #2). But the resounding lesson was clear: A Book You Spent 1/3rd The Money On And Printed At Kinko's Would Look 175% More Professional This. So, Rule #1: Boring Is All You Can Afford. Until you can raise enough money to go Offset, don't waste your time calibrating a beautiful balance of color and design nuance. Here's the perfect example of why. The back of the Kevin Analog book was the simple monochrome image of a Cassette Tape with lightning bolts around it, surrounded by white and balanced by my admittedly gorgeous Interstate ! logo. A bold design that had the pin it was also on pretty much flying off the table. On Saturday, I displayed the book with the front cover facing up right next to a copy of the book with the back cover facing up. Literally, EVERY SINGLE PERSON who picked up the book went straight to the back cover version, even in some cases PUTTING THE BOOK DOWN when they flipped it over and saw the other side. Obviously, Sunday, I only displayed the book back cover up with a gorgeous glossy mounted print out of the cover behind it. So, the copies that didn't sell (and, friends, it is miraculous that I sold even one) are never ever leaving the box that they're in right now. Kevin is going back to press with a completely bare bones black and white cover, featuring the logo and nothing else. Because a good logo, which I tend to come up with occasionally, can move a book on its own, if you just get the fuck out of its way.
Rule #2: MAKE MINI-COMICS WHEN YOU HAVE THE MATERIAL, NOT THE TABLE.
This should have been obvious from the get go, but the self-publisher can easily delude him or herself into thinking that, even in this day and age of teeming internet commerce, that you only really sell books four or five times a year, from behind a table. This is bullshit. And the only thing it gets you is a table with two books and a hard drive at home with another 60 to 70 pages that the thousands upon tens of thousands of people who actually don't have a Modern Tales subscription have never seen, but after marvelling at that legitimately bitching Mix Tape button you made and then dropping fifty cents for the priviledge of putting it on their backpack, probably might have had a legitimate interest in. If you had been smarter and put out cheap mini-comics whenever you had eight pages of comics to stuff them with, you would have been behind a table just flat out teeming with content. And that means diversification. And that means, inevitably, $$$. (See Also: Rule #4)
Rule #3: CARROT TOP WAS RIGHT
So, the table is set up , you've got your comics, you've got your buttons, you've even got a showstopper of a banner behind you that is easily the most professional looking thing you've ever had printed. But, for those first few hours, the interest is sort of minimal. So, it dawns on you that you're hocking a comic about a guy who, ostensibly, uses mix tapes to fight crime. You run to the new Best Buy which opened a mere two blocks away from The Puck and you buy ten blank tapes. A few brilliantly conceived labels later (BANK ROBBERY 4.02.03, PRISON BREAK Vol. 2), and you're now running a table with a visual representation of what your book is all about. I sold my first copy of Kevin Analog not ten minutes after the mix tapes appeared and spent the rest of the weekend explaining to people why there were blank tapes on my table of comics.
Rule #4: DIVERSIFY YOUR BONDS
Apparently there's this guy who walks around comic festivals, berating the exhibitors for not having more stuff. He's, obviously, right. The obvious change one first arrives at when considering Rule #1, is that, still, America loves beauty and color and zazz in her comic artwork. But paying out the nose for it is just cold not worth it unless your going to do it right. Scratch that, unless you CAN do it right. And most self-publishers who don't have their day jobs at a Professional Printer can't. But one thing most self-publishers DO have is a halfway decent printer. So imagine this table, a good selection of mini-comics, that are now a bit cheaper since you didn't have to drop so much on them, with really sharp, simple, and eye catching covers. And what's that behind them? Glossy prints that you printed out yourself, full color and exactly as gorgeous as you envisioned them. Hell, print five and sell them for ten, they are 13x17 after all (yeah, I happen to have access to pretty incredible printer). Not everyone is going to buy them, of course, but all you need is that one person. The person that actually reads Genre City every week, the person that actually knows who you are and loves your work. On June 10th, 2005, you would've only allowed him to give you six dollars TOPS. June 11th, 2006? You could be looking at forty bucks easy. Also, if you've got a sneaking suspicion that something you designed is cool enough to be on a button, for God's sake, throw that shit on a t-shirt. I could have sold at least a dozen of those this weekend if I'd had the foresight to make them.
Rule #5: FREEDOM ISN'T FREE
I just don't get people who give away their comics to their friends and their family. These are the only people on the PLANET who you can count on for sales. That's it. That's the rule. Charge your friends, they should be over the moon to buy your shit anyway. Otherwise they're just hanging out with you to up their street cred and they officially suck. If your family won't buy your comics? I don't know, man, that's some Dr. Phil shit.
Rule #6: AMERICA LOVES CONTESTS
It took me about two hours to take the Kevin Analog Mix Tape Competition from wild idea to almost fully designed flyer and press release. Two days and one gorgeous illustration later, it's getting press on Fanboy Rampage. MoCCA weekend, it's wowing passersby right and left. It's the easiest thing in the fucking world to cook up and it will cost you next to nothing.
So, thanks so much, MoCCA, for the sales and for the lovely new friends I made and old friends I saw again, but more than that, thanks for the things I'll take with me to SDCC. And APE. And MoCCA 2006. Etcetera, etcetera.
I meant to ask you... I need you to sign my copy of Kevin Analog so when you blow up, I can ebay the crap out of it. And if I blow up too, that's gonna be like DAMN!
Posted by: Alex | June 13, 2005 at 05:06 PM