It occurs to me, as the deadline for the !Pass launch looms ever closer, that I might want to think about blogging regularly about the process, about the enormous amount of stuff that needs to get done before the launch, about my priorities as they figure between print publishing and web publishing, and, in the case of The Kings Of Pop, taking advantage of the rare opportunity to chronicle the progression of an idea from the very instant it's thought up to its eventual dissemination into the ether.
Well, the idea interests me, anyway.
So, with only a little over a week to go before I launch !Pass, here was a list of must-do's I scrawled into my notebook yesterday:
- Subscription Message
- !Pass Gold ($24.95)
- T-Shirt Club ($14.95)
- Buttons
- Street Team (?)
- Iron-On Ad (Single)
- Kevin Analog Cover
- Postcard
- New !Pass Ad
Now, the Subscription Message is a little stop-gap I want to have before people feel like I'm forcing them to pay only for the privilege of reading my comics on the web. That "only" is incredibly important and you'll see why in greater detail on September 5th. Suffice it to say, though, getting that message across takes some doing. First, I had to pencil and ink myself in an urging frame of mind. I was pleased to discover that this sort of thing doesn't take nearly as long as it used to. Lately I've been breezing through penciling and inking both in promotional material and in actual sequential work. This, however, only occurs when I actually sit down to do it. Second, I had to letter a rather enormous screed of dialogue that outlines my approach to subscriptions on !Pass. Basically, I've decided that Genre City: Plan B is staying with Modern Tales and, thus, will require subscriptions to be read on my site as well. However, effective Spetember 5, every single thing that anyone purchases from me, at all, whether its in person or online, comes with at least a month's subscription to Plan B on !Pass and in a few cases, an entire year's subscription. More on that momentarily.
!Pass Gold is something I've had in mind since I got my WCN account. A catch-all, one time payment that will allow readers access to everything I do, whether it is in print or online or, in the case of Iron-On Club, wearable. With the amount of content I'll be bringing to the site, that basically shakes out to quarterly mini-comics and one new Iron-On every month. The good thing about it, for those who choose to hop on the plan, is that if I decide to do more, and there's a very good chance that I will now that I've pretty much abandoned the POD solution for comics production, they will be coming out severely ahead. The reason it's on that list, though, is I need to iron out a brand identity for it so I can post it on Small Press Swapmeet.
"T-Shirt Club" is the potentially misleading shorthand for the cumulation of almost two years of consideration. Along with the !Pass Gold-type scenario, I've also long desired to have some kind of "Of-The-Month" club for my Interstate ! universe. I toyed with the idea of posters, postcards, monthly calendar one sheets; all sorts of things. This dovetailed nicely into the frustrations I've had with the costs of flexible (read: Not Cafe Press) T-Shirt production, especially when sitting on such a potentially hot design, the Lightning Bolt Kevin Analog Mix Tape. I don't know at what point I realized I could print out Iron-Ons ridiculously easily, but once I did, it was instantly obvious that this was not only the solution to my T-Shirt problem but also the perfect thing to offer as a monthly club. So, for $14.95, you'll get the 12 Iron-Ons that will be sold individually on !Pass every month (for about $2.50) plus a bonus Iron-On only for club members. And, also, a year's worth of access to the Plan B archives on !Pass. The aforementioned Kevin Analog design will be the first entry in September, and I'm confident in my quite lovely logo designs that there will be no shortage of material over the course of the year.
As far as the buttons go, I need to get in gear and just take some quick pictures of the two buttons I currently have available so I can put them up on SwapMeet.
I've also toyed with putting together a Street Team package of the buttons, maybe some stickers and possibly an exclusive iron on design, but the moment I wrote it down on my to-do list I quickly realized that it wasn't a high priority. All of those things are available seperately and they'll be doing their job on an individual basis.
"Iron On Ad Single" is just another tiny bit of busy-work, putting together a design for a SwapMeet entry for the first Iron-On, and it has to be ready on September 1st. Now that I think about it, Anything Iron-On related is really a higher priority, because I'd like to launch that stuff on the 1st and not the 5th.
The Kevin Analog cover. Right. Well, basically I'm reprinting the Kevin Analog mini in a much lower-fi fashion, Copy Shop & Self-Cut/Stapled basically, and this will require a new cover design. It doesn't need to be finished by the 5th, though. Just needs to be ready for SPX.
I also want to have !Pass Postcards ready for SPX, to pimp the site in The Real World. Again, not due on the 5th, but they do need to be considered. Also, lastly, I wanted to make a slightly more involved ad for !Pass than the one that currently resides in the back of the Kevin Analog mini.
So, how did I do last night? Well, The Subscription Message is fully pencilled, inked, and lettered. And that was really the hardest bit on the entire list, except maybe the Postcard design. All I've got to do is color it and slap it online.
As I looked down the barrel of this work pile, I started to wonder why exactly I was going through all this trouble? There are tons of webcomics and print comics that are promoted and put out much more shoddily and have a much wider audience and level of exposure. You'll note that nothing on that list is any kind of serious attempt at marketing my product or getting the word out. Well, maybe the postcard. There are several ways to do this and if I wanted to, I could divert this energy into designing more banners and contacting sites about ad rates, etcetera. So why am I putting the energy into creating clubs and subscription packages that, potentially, no one will be interested in?
The first thing I thought of? Leo McGarry. Chief Of Staff (whoops, EX-Chief of Staff) to West Wing's president Bartlett, he was instrumental in getting the President through the tough transition from Governor to Presidential Candidate. At one point, a frankly terrified Bartlett tells Leo that he is simply not ready to go out there and act like someone who should be president. He doesn't have it in him. Leo tells him succinctly, "Fake it till you make it." And that, my friends, is exactly what I'm doing. I'm not kidding myself by thinking that !Pass' launch is going to be met, press releases or no press releases, with anything more than passing interest at best. But those five or ten people a day that are already browsing through the site are going to find something that looks like and offers just as professional an experience as anything else on the web. And that stuff will be there whether or not anyone takes advantage of it.
Because, honestly, I have spent far too much time trying to get the word out and far too little time producing stuff that's worth generating word. So I'm done. I've set up a structure that will allow me to simply produce and if people start noticing, fine. If they don't, well, they're going to feel pretty out of the loop when I drop down on APE 2006 like a goddamned atomic bomb with, what, nine Iron-On deisgns, like five kick ass mini-comics and a website with a fairly blinding amount of content.
So that's what I've been working on. Oh, and a little other thing, I mapped out pretty much all of Lonely Information on the train ride to work this morning, which is a massive development and one I'm ecstatic over. I have a huge chunk of the first chapter written, enough for at least a month's worth of updates, but I did hit a bit of a wall until I realized I had overlooked an enormous opportunity to link the novel concretely with the Plan B storyline. Once I introduced that key element, which you're batshit crazy if you think I'll be spoiling here, the rest of the novel fell into place pretty easily this morning. At least as far as the broad strokes go. Now, I'll let you in on a little secret, I've never had that happen before with a longform work. Sure, I've got the beginning and end of Plan B in my head, and I've also got the very last Genre City story in my head and have for some time. But this is a new and very comforting achievement for me and one that, frankly, was a critical step if I had any real interest in crafting a working Detective Novel. Well, now I've got one. I'll tell you, folks, it is working overtime. September 5th. Be ready to fall in love.
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