The Devil Went Down To Georgia then Back To NYC

I'm back from visiting with my family in Georgia. This blog is supposed to be "business related", so I won't tell you about how cute my niece is or how I hung out with baby goats. I can mention two comic-related anecdotes, though.

Chris Staros of Top Shelf was kind enough to interrupt his busy schedule (including a visit from his dad!) to have lunch with me. He gave me all kinds of good advice and even a couple of important contacts (a printer in Canada, Lebonfon Printing, who may have better prices than Brenner Printing and an indie-friendly contact at Diamond Comic Distributors) as well as a delicious meal at a Thai place in the Marietta town square. While we were talking in his home/office James Kochalka (a huge inspiration for me) called, which had me nerding out in my head. This photo I've lifted from an article in Atlanta's Creative Loafing shows the view I had from the couch, although Chris wasn't looming over me.

An important bit of advice that he gave me, something I was struggling with, was in regards to sending out books for review before publication. It seems to be a Catch-22 that a publisher is supposed to send out copies for review before they've been printed. For a self-publisher like me that means going to a copy-shop and running off copies at about $9 per book (keeping in mind that the cost of professional printing will be around $2.50 or less!). The bigger publishers can afford to print galley prints (although they're still expensive), but I can't. So, Chris suggests just printing them up, sending them to my house and using actual copies stamped 'Review Copy' to send out. This is what I'll undoubtedly end up doing, although it will be inconvenient to have all these boxes in my already ridiculously crowded apartment. Also, I'll have to do all the shipping for all orders rather than having Diamond or whoever is distributing send them out from their warehouse. I plan on seeing how much it will cost for Diamond to store some of the books at their warehouse should they agree to distribute me.

Chris also told me that many of the bigger review publications won't review a book if it appears to have already been published, so most publishers put blank covers that say 'review copy' on their galley copies. I don't have the option to do this, so I'll just stamp them and hope for the best.

Another quandary is Diamond's new policy regarding minimum orders. They now require $2500 worth of orders, which ain't easy for a small independent publisher like myself. Fortunately, according to Chris, Diamond is more likely to work with a Xeric award winner and make an exception. We'll see!

The other comic-related episode in Georgia was that I got to hang out with all three of my childhood friends featured in the "Logging Sanjay" comic (Sanjay, Matt & Dewey). It was great to see them all again.

Bon Voyage!

Amidst the chaos of getting my comic book ready for publication, we're going to visit my family in Georgia. We were supposed to go right after Xmas, but my brother busted up his foot snowboarding (he lives in Colorado), so we postponed it until this Friday.

I have to admit that I'm pretty confused with the submission process for getting distribution for my book, so I'm really glad to be meeting up with Chris Staros from Top Shelf Comics in Georgia. Even if they don't want to sub-distribute (saving me a lot of hassle), I'm sure he can point me in the right direction.

It seems that you are supposed to send out lots of review copies way before your book is supposed to come out. Plus, you are supposed to send a submissions package to Diamond (the big distributor in comics) many months before the book drops so that they can advertise and collect orders from retail shops before the publication date.

The catch-22 here is that you don't have any books printed yet, so how are you supposed to send them out for review?? I printed up some black & white mock-ups at Kinkos (well, actually Kinko's pissed me off, so I printed them at Staples), but they ended up costing me about $9 per book since they had to be trimmed & stapled! I didn't know it would cost that much until they'd already done it, unfortunately (would've done it myself). I'm going to use these mock-ups as a guide for the printer, to send to a few companies in hopes of getting sub-distribution (if Top Shelf isn't interested), and to send out to a couple of cartoonists that might give me some quotes for my press release.

I feel stressed about being away from this project for a week, but I suppose I can try to write my press release and do more research on what the hell I'm supposed to be doing. I'm reading Dan Poynter's Self Publishing Manual, which is helpful but geared to non-fiction writers rather than comics publishers.

We may be leaving our Chihuahua (Pony) with his grandma while we're gone. This tidbit of information was just a flimsy excuse to post an amazing photo of him. Enjoy!

Birdcage Bottom Books is Born!

Winning the Xeric self-publishing award has got me scrambling to get this book published. In order to get distribution, you've got to be thinking (at least) four months in advance! Diamond is the biggest distribution company in comics, but if you're a small fish like me, you've got to convince them that you're worth distributing. They prefer established publishing companies that put out books constantly, but hey, everyone's gotta start somewhere, right?

So, as part of the ruse to appear that I'm not just one harried individual I've created a publishing company...Birdcage Bottom Books ("The best pages for your cages!"). That also meant quickly putting together a logo & website. It's not the best work I've ever done, but it'll have to do for now.

In addition, I've been reading any self-publishing guides I can get my hands on (thanks so much, Tompkins Square Library). In my research, I came across a former Xeric grant winner, Lars Martinson, who was nice enough to put a series of posts dealing with his self-publishing experiences on his website. He ended up using Top Shelf comics, an established alternative comic publisher, to sub-distribute his book. The good side is that Top Shelf knows what they're doing and Lars gets risidual advertisement through them. The bad side is that they take an additional cut of the already paltry sum the self-publisher ends up making off of his books (should they sell).

Top Shelf happens to be based in Marietta, GA which is where I grew up. We're going to visit my family in about two weeks, so I've set up a meeting with Chris Staros at Top Shelf to see if he might sub-distribute my book as well. He warned me that they've already got too much on their plates for 2009, but I figure it can't hurt to try.

In other publishing news, Jeffrey Brown was nice enough to give me a flattering quote for the back cover of my book (he's a Top Shelf artist, too!). Kevin Huizenga gave me some good advice and Chris Ware wrote me an unexpected letter apologizing for his policy of no longer giving out quotes. Honestly, it was just a treat to get ANY correspondence from my all-time favorite cartoonist, and it was as charming and self-depricating as you might expect. Julia Wertz also responded kindly to my call for advice/criticism/quotes, and she let me know that the anthology she's editing should be out any day (I've got a piece in it...Adam Kidder, too). I'm still waiting to hear from several others.