Magnificent Creatures | The Every Thursday Free Online Comic

Dan Wickline is a DWAP Productions convention-friend. We see him at shows and other comic book professional events. The last time I saw him, at the Long Beach Comic Con, we got into a great conversation about writing and self-publishing and paying the bills. I was a bit inspired by what he had to say and asked him to put it to 1’s and 0’s for MagnificentCreatures.com so here it is.

-dale
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No Short Cuts: The Pros and Cons of Digital Publishing for New Authors
By Dan Wickline

We’ve entered a new age for writers, a digital age. With the advent of e-readers and tablets, society as a whole is starting to accept reading books electronically. The transition is slow but steady. As Amazon pushes the Kindle, Barnes & Noble the Nook and Apple the iPad we get closer to the day where a book won’t be looked down upon if there isn’t a printed version. Even though it’s a small industry at this point, now is definitely the time to jump in and figure out how to swim.

Right now authors look at the digital field in one of three ways: an additional revenue source, a way to try out new material different than their normal work or for new authors they see it as a way to get attention that will lead to getting a publishing deal. I see it differently. As a comic book writer, I’m not looking for the home run or the Great American Novel. I’m looking for a book I can put out and sell enough copies to cover my bills for a few months while I write the next one. The truth is, if you are a fast writer and can come up with a concept that you can create a good number of novels off of (think Nero Wolfe, Sherlock Holmes, etc) you can make a living just doing digital books.

I’ll demonstrate using my own Lucius Fogg e-novels. Fogg is an occult detective/horror series roughly seventy-five thousand words each and they take me about six to eight weeks to create. Now with Amazon and Barnes & Noble they have it set up that you get thirty-five percent of cover. But, if you are priced between $2.99 and $9.99 then you get seventy percent of cover. I picked $2.99 figuring my comic readers will be my most likely costumers and they are used to that price point. Each sale nets me $2.09. If I want to make roughly $40K off of writing that would mean I’d need to sell just under 20K books. That sounds rather daunting. Unless you are able to put out more than one book a year. My plan is to put out a new book every three months. In one year I will put out four books meaning that 20K gets broken down and each book only needs to sell 5K. That seems more plausible. Also keeping in mind that you will retain a certain number of your readers from the previous book and readers jumping on board with the new release could then go back to previous releases. Also, unlike with a single comic issue, each new book would be a jumping on point and self-contained, like having a new trade paperback to sell every three months.

It’s a very different business model than one that most comic writers are used to. But it has two massive advantages to the standard comic model. All of the work falls on the writer, there is no need for anyone else other than an editor and someone to do a cover. And if you can come up with a good series of covers you can do yourself, that’s even better. The second advantage is that there is no overhead cost. It’s just your time and effort. Also, in the literary world, if you are lucky to get a shot and have a book published your career rides on that book. If it fails then you’re not likely to get a second chance. With this, if you make a series that doesn’t sell the only thing you lose is the time and effort you put into it. You can start again.

With the good though there is always the bad. When I put out my first e-novel, LUCIUS FOGG: DEADLY CREATURES, I was one of 1500 horror titles that came out for the kindle that week. Read that again, 1500 books in one week and only three of them were from the established publishers. That means the other 1496 were just like me, self-published. I was just one tiny voice in a massive choir of people trying to get attention for their work. So as important as putting together a good book is, you need to take the time and figure out how you are going to get the word out to readers that you book exists. You can’t count on social media alone. You post something on Twitter or Facebook and you make get a few hits, but a minute later your post has scrolled off into the ether and everyone is looking at a picture of a cat doing something cute. And you can’t post about it constantly or you just become a
“spammer”. You have to really put some thought into your marketing plan.

Also, how many of those 1496 other books were written by someone with actual writing experience and edited by a professional editor/proof-reader? Not nearly as many as you’d hope. Just because your book isn’t being printed doesn’t mean it can be crap or filled with typos. If you put out an unprofessional looking book it’s just as detrimental as putting out a bad one. The idea is to build your name and your audience. Take the time to make sure the product you are putting out there is of the highest quality. Have other people read it and take their criticisms then look at your book again. Bring in someone with editing experience to go over it. Find people who are hyper-critical that will read it and let you know of any typos you missed. Even with multiple reads, typos can still slip through. This is your first impression to your audience, make it a good one.

E-novels can be the way new writers can make a living doing their craft if it’s done right. And with any luck, the ones who are just flooding the market with garbage will soon fall away. If you want to be with the survivors then remember, no short cuts.

Dan Wickline

The Lucius Fogg series can be downloaded from http://www.Amazon.com, http://www.BarnesandNoble.com or from http://www.DanWickline.com.

As a comic book writer in the indie world, I need to read a lot of books to keep up with what the majors and my lesser-known but no less-talented fringe-friends are doing. I’m not opposed to this as one of the reasons I started writing comics was because I had trouble stopping reading them but it is a lot of books. I have, as many others do, several stacks of already read trades, boxes of used floppies in closets around the United States and 2 very tall stacks of books to read. This is of course, a good life to live.

Over the years, I’ve cut down the number of titles I work hard to keep up with and generally just stick to writers/artists/creators that I find talented - no matter what the subject or genre. When I was a kid, I liked the mainstream heroes by the majors: Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, and eventually moved on to the at-the-time-less-recognized Teen Titans, X-men, etc. but some of my more recognizable heroes of today are Warren Ellis, Brian Wood, Grant Morrison, Alan Moore and a string of other writers that I will hopefully name in later posts.

On top of reading and writing, I have to fund DWAP Productions, the small publishing company that I run via my work at The Search Agency, a well-respected online marketing company where I am a client-facing creative editor. I’m busy but I like it because all of the work that I do comes together pretty well. I get to be creative at my day job where I learn new marketing ideas that I can use for my publishing company at night and on the weekends.

So, when DC Comics said they were relaunching everything, I saw it from several angles - it’s one part marketing gimmick and one part chance to start fresh with a universe that has been building for a very long time and has gotten a little messy. I did have concerns that it would not last and that it would be this year’s big title crossover, that it would make all previous writers “liars” or that it would be their way of making the DCU more user friendly. I was not optimistic and even joked that I had gotten a personal loan to fund my purchase of all DC comics from 1 into infinity.

In association with my work in online marketing and to promote my own writing and publishing, I’m a voracious social media freak but I rarely do any reviews of writing by writers - other than maybe saying “I like this” or “I don’t like this”. However, as I started reading The New 52, there was such variety of style, topic, talent, and subject matter via the superhero genre, I felt the need to read them all and later, the want to write about them. So, here we are, several months since the publishing of the flagship title, Justice League 1 and I’m going to start giving my thoughts.

Justice League 1: OK. I am a fan of Johns, Lee and Williams and I’ve read a good amount of work by all of them. I was happy to see Williams inking Lee’s dynamism and layout again but my initial thoughts about the story was that it was too fast and written-down strictly for newbies and young audiences. Looking back after having read the entire New 52 first issue collection, I like the pace more but feel that some of the dialogue was still a little stiff and forced by the need to inform.

Please come back next week for my reviews of the first full week of The New 52. bye.

-dale

addendum:
for the second week of my reviews of The New 52 by DC Comics, go here.

Back for the second week of The New 52, several of my friends from work and I visited a comic book store local to our workplace and bought a bunch of the books. It was cool to see guys that normally buy a single trade a month actually excited about going to the comic book store every week; even if they were buying mainstream titles - it’s “good for the economy” and good for the industry. I had few expectations from this week’s titles but ended up buying more than I had anticipated. I was to some degree excited about comics again and it felt good - even if I was going to pick them apart from a writer’s perspective like I always do.

Action Comics 1: Big Red Surprise. I like the cocky, young Superman. It makes the character a lot more interesting - gives him realistic dimension. And it’s pretty cool to see Superman’s powers develop. All of these traits could be seen as a gimmick but it works. If mainstream comics is going to be about the same recurring circle of characters, it is nice to find new, interesting ways of seeing them. This one surprised me to have worked.

Animal Man 1: Left-over Vertigo Beauty. It was immediately a gripping story with superhero reference but creepy horror overtones - no, shadows. There was a surprising amount of talk about the book with acquaintances, on Facebook and around the stores but especially in our inner circle. This was probably the first book where I knew I’d buy the trade. Every so often, I read a book or watch a movie and say, “This is where the medium should be.” This was one of those times.

Batgirl 1: Wow. This book was really good. Generally smooth and well structured with action, suspense, and Batgirl-power; it was a fan-favorite among the 4 guys I read my books with. I had just a couple structural complaints where the right page was the transition between settings but otherwise, the book was really well put together. BTW - I made sure to tell Gail Simone on Facebook that I really liked her book and she seemed to appreciate that.

Batwing 1: Good. Smooth and has great intent but came off a little flat and missing of presentation. For a book with this much action, I did not feel compelled by it and I would not have read issue 2 if I had not borrowed someone else’s. The in-story location and time transitions were handled correctly and the art is a nice change from the majority of other books but the verbal tone and storytelling through images left me not really caring.

Detective Comics 1: Feels Like Batman. Admittedly, I’m not a Batman follower so I probably could not tell you if they had done something new in this book but at the same time, it did not feel like they had done anything particularly new with the character. It did, however, feel like they were doing something a little new with the world and of course, Joker. He seemed a little more crazy. Well, his crazy seemed a little more focused or specific. The book was definitely dark and this surprised me a little. It made me wonder just how dark, The Dark Knight was going to be.

Green Arrow 1: Just Alright. He kinda just seems like Batman with a bow and arrow and green clothes that would really stick out in a hunt. The book is essentially a big fight that showcases what he can do and in the end, it sets up what will probably be his villains. The writing and art work well enough and in the end, it just kind of seems like a book serving a purpose, keeping a character around for the sake of keeping him around and servicing his fans. I felt pretty uninspired.

Hawk and Dove 1: Rob Leifeld. The man, the myth doing what he does best - draw in his unmistakably-his style. Say what you like about his talent or ability to finish drawing feet, he was comics in the 90s. And that’s pretty much what he does here, in the book that if I remember correctly is where he started to cut his teeth before heading over to Marvel where he would make a name for himself. If you are a fan of the characters, you might dig this book but I did not feel particularly driven to find out whether or not the characters survived the cliffhanger.

Justice League International 1: Quirky OK. In-story location and time transitions were jarring but it was nice that they generally kept the perspective to one person so that it was not confusing. There’s a lot going on in this book but it’s funnier than most of the other 52 so the weight of having a lot of characters does not get overwhelming. My big question in the end: could this book stand alone without Batman? He shows up in a lot of books and it makes him feel a little busy. Maybe it should not have been Bruce but one of the guys from his Bat-Company.

Men of War 1: War-torn. I’ve been a fan of Ivan Brandon since NYC Mech - if you have not read his early work on this title, do him a favor and buy/read it. Good stuff. As for MoW, I’m not generally a war story kind of reader but again, I am not devoted to superheroes for the sake of superheroes; if a book is good, a book is good. I liked the gruff realism of war with some superhero background in this book. The transitions were a little weak and usually jarring with the right page overwhelming the left. The art was necessarily graphic but a little stark at times.

O.M.A.C. 1: Meh. I’m not really into legend worship so I have a tough time with books that present new stories in old ways without some kind of inherent need - I don’t see the point. This is probably just me but I like to see progress and I prefer when the medium pushes into the future from where other have already stood. This book feels like it could have been a limited run gimmick title and no one would have been better or worse off for it. That having been said, transitions were poor and I get that some of them were intentional because that’s how they did it back in the day but again, we’ve progressed. It’s kind of neat to see Giffen warp his style to look like an older book but it’s not something I really want to keep seeing.

Static Shock 1: Sad. I knew the co-creator, Dwayne McDuffie. I would not say that he was a friend but he signed at our booth a few years in a row and I was a fan of his work from Damage Control until his untimely death this year. That having been said, I was excited to see his legacy continue on with Static getting a title in The New 52. But it was way overwritten and felt like their version of Spider-Man with quips and a kid trying to deal with his relatively new found powers. I also feel like Dwayne and other writers who touched the book had created a very interesting character and they could have continued with much of that as they did with several of the other New 52.

Stormwatch 1: Failure of Character. I was a fan of Stormwatch when it was an Image/Wildstorm title and was glad to see it continue in The New 52 with some interesting twists and turns with the inclusion of Martian Manhunter, etc. But what was probably this book’s failure was that it seemed to have lost all of its history - although, one could argue that this version of the team is just one of the alternate universes that can be found through The Bleed…. The transitions in the book were hit and miss but there seemed to be too much going on. If they had focused on a single aspect of the team and slowly worked their way through the rest of the group, we’d have been better for it.

Swamp Thing 1: Out-Supered. It’s interesting that this book is called Swamp Thing as he is generally upstaged by Superman and his own villains until the very end. I get that this is a way of building suspense but other than setting up some interesting villains and getting Superman fans to read a book that otherwise will probably not have Superheroes, it does not serve the book very well. The transitions are hit and miss, the art is serviceable and the writing is alright but this is another book where we seem to have lost some strong history that could have been built on rather than forgotten.