Should I Go to Art School?

The question “should I go to art school” comes up and goes around every year. Usually asked by kids who are already making art and thinking about turning that into a career, whether that’s as an animator, illustrator, graphic designer, etc. Currently it seems like that question is asked most often by kids who are looking at animation, illustration, or comics.

I'm thinking about this on a personal level because my oldest kid is a high school senior. I got all ready with a list of schools she might want to visit or look at and consider. Even as a person who works at an art school there is still some hesitation on my part to recommend it. Maybe that's because I went to a "real" college myself. But in the time I've been here I've seen students learn, grow, and mature in the same ways I saw friends do that when I was in college.

I think the first question is really, “should I go to college?” I know when I was nearing the end of high school that wasn’t an option. I knew for certain I would go to college. That’s just what was next. I was a creative kid, I’d been making my own comics for years so I thought about pursuing that as a career. But I was also academically talented and very interested in the sciences. Since I wasn’t sure about either path I figured going to a liberal arts college where I would get a good broad-based education was a good idea.

More importantly, when I toured and visited schools I went by what felt "right." When I visited the college I ended up attending it was because it just felt like that was where I belonged. It would seem like my kid had that experience when they did the summer program at my school. They found their people!

Now these questions are asked by kids who have access to YouTube video tutorials and all kinds of other online resources to learn specific skills or techniques. And their most pressing question is one of value: is college “worth it?” especially if they think they can learn those things online. It’s a fair question to ask. But again think about the broader question of why go to college or school at all?

Yes, you can watch or read tutorials to learn specific things but a lot of learning is what you pick up from others, or what they decide to impart to you. A lot of school is socializing. It’s figuring out how to be a person, and also how to be a person in your field. What are the art students doing? What are they reading? What are they doing with their free time, etc.? Or just being able to lean over to a friend’s studio and ask, “Hey, does this look right?”

It’s still an expensive question to be sure. It’s not one you should answer lightly. But think about the broader sense of the value of that education and what it might include. It became very clear to me in the middle of my college years that a lot of what I was paying for was the time and privilege to live in a little bubble and indulge my interests and desires and explore and expand my talents without too much interruption or inconvenience by the “real world.” (Getting experience in the real world is important too of course, but having that time to be selfish can be immensely helpful.)

My Family is a Moldy Old Beach Blanket

 

It’s the summer of 2020. We’ve been taking the pandemic seriously and haven’t ventured much beyond our neighborhood. We’re expecting a long streak of very hot days and my wife is wishing she could take the kids to the beach. But wisely all of the Minneapolis beaches and wading pools are closed. A friend of hers offers an old inflatable pool which we pick up one day while running errands, faces dutifully covered with masks.

My wife wastes no time in inflating the pool on our patio and filling it with water. I notice the edge of a blanket sticking out from under one side of the pool. “Hey, that’s my parents’ old beach blanket,” I say. “Why is it under the pool?”

Already wearing her giant sun hat my wife responds, “I wanted something to protect the pool from the brick.” While I agree this is a smart idea on her part I am annoyed that she didn’t ask before using it, and say so.

She responds from behind her giant Hepburn-esque sunglasses, “It’s just an old blanket. Nothing will happen to it.” Again, she’s right. It IS an old blanket. But it’s my blanket. My family’s blanket. Something that was part of my life before I ever knew my wife. For as long as I can remember.

I sit down in one of the patio chairs, “Yeah it’s old, but it was my parents’! We took it to the beach, we put it on the floor of our tent when we went camping.” I try to get the tone of annoyance in my voice just right. My wife continues to fill the pool and I settle back into the chair to read in the shade.

Once filled my wife dips her feet in the pool and sits down across from me. After a minute she says, “I don’t know why you care so much about stupid old objects when you hate your family so much.” I roll my eyes to myself and think, here we go again.

I give her a look, “I don’t hate my family.” It’s true, I don’t. But it no longer exists and I’m glad of that. My parents had a toxic marriage that had lasting effects on all of us. They divorced shortly after I graduated from college and we all went our separate ways. In time we were all better off. I started a new family of my own. And I was proud of that. But my wife never seemed to understand the way I held my old family at arm’s length so her shorthand for that was “you hate your family.”

I put my book down and look at her. “You know I don’t hate my family. How do you still not understand this, after all these years?” The heat index is near 100. My kids splash in the pool and squirt each other with water pistols while my wife dangles her legs in the cool water.

“It’s just that… that blanket is something from my family that I’ve had for a long time. We put it in our tent when we went camping. It reminds me of things,” I continue. I struggle mentally with a deeper explanation but my brain isn’t up to the task at the moment. The kids start fighting with each other and the moment passes.

The heatwave passes too. We have a cool, rainy week and soon the pool is full of dirty water and leaves. It begins to sag as air leaks out and suddenly we look like one of “those” families. Especially after it sits like that for a week. Eventually my wife decides she’s done with the pool and it’s time to put it away. She drains it and once empty tips it up to dry out and we both see it: the black spots all over the blanket. Mold. I know the blanket is ruined.

“Sorry,” my wife offers.

“Well that’s ruined,” I respond. She tries to be helpful, “I can wash it.”

“Really,” I say. “With mold? I don’t think so.”

The blanket continues to live on the patio for many days, even after the pool is rolled up and put in the garage. I come home from work one day and ask why the blanket is still there. “I like that it killed all the weeds!” my wife says.

I stop at the door, “I just wish you would’ve asked before ruining it,” and suddenly my brain lights up with memories.

It’s August of 1974 and my parents are on their honeymoon in Hawaii. They purchase the blanket from a shop near the beach. It’s cream colored with wide, light green strips across it. They lay it across the golden sands of a Hawaiian beach.

It’s July of 1983 and we’re camping at Gooseberry Falls State Park in northern Minnesota. My dad has just finished putting up our tent. It’s an old Sears Army-style canvas tent. It looks like set dressing from an episode of MASH. My mom spreads the heavy blanket on the floor of the tent before my little brother and I crawl in to unroll our sleeping bags. The smell of the waxed canvas is strong.

It’s the summer of 1986 and we take one of our few big family vacations: a road trip to Ocean City, Maryland. We lay the blanket out on the Atlantic beach, in front of the boardwalk. My dad falls asleep on the blanket the second day we’re there and gets such a severe sunburn he spends the next two days in bed. After that we rent an umbrella to shade the blanket. I learn about hermit crabs and get seawater up my nose for the first time. I discover a tangle of muscles and seaweed and bring them home in a bucket, packed in the back of our Volkswagen Quantum wagon.

It’s the spring of 1995 and my friend Beau and I are going to camp in northern Minnesota for Spring Break. I find our camping supplies in the basement and the blanket is folded up next to them. As I lay my hand on the thick fabric I can instantly smell the damp waxed canvas scent of our old Sears tent. I can see the shoreline of Lake Superior. I can see my family sitting around the fire, making S’mores and telling spooky stories. I can see my dad swearing after he hits his thumb splitting wood. I can see Superior National Forest from the lookout on the top Carlton Peak.

It’s the summer of 1997 and I go camping at Scenic State Park with all of my old High School friends. The tent and blanket come with us. In the middle of our first night we realize we’ve pitched the tent on a bit of a slope as one of my friends keeps sliding into the corner of the tent. He grabs his sleeping bag and goes outside, opting to sleep under the stars next to the fire pit. We’re all glad to find him in the morning uneaten by wild animals. I go canoeing for the first time in my life.

It’s early spring of 2000 and the blanket now lays folded in my parents’ closet. They sit in bed reading when my dad tells my mom he wants a divorce. In the ensuing division of household objects I take ownership of all the camping supplies, including the blanket. I’m glad to have it.

It’s the summer of 2002 and I go camping with the woman I will eventually marry in 2006. The old Sears tent is long gone but the blanket comes with us to lay on the bottom of our little two person REI tent. A rabbit visits our campsite and my future wife feeds it a carrot. We hike up the Tettegouche River to discover the rustic cabins on the shore of Mic Mac Lake.

It’s June of 2016 and my wife and our two kids are camping in Yellowstone National Park. It’s early in the season and still very cold at night. My wife buys an extra pair of heavy fleece socks at one of the camp stores. The blanket lays under all four of our sleeping bags in our bigger four person REI tent. We climb to the summit of Mt. Washburn. We drive through a terrible but beautiful rainstorm in the Bighorn Mountains. It hails the morning we have to pack up and leave. My son drops his brand new stuffed wolf from Wall Drug in a urinal at an interstate rest stop. From then on the toy is referred to as “Toilet Wolf.”

It’s the summer of 2020 and I finally find the words to describe all of this to my wife. How even though it’s just a stupid old blanket, it is also all of these other things.

The next day I come home from work to find the blanket wadded up in a laundry basket on our patio. The black spots are still there. I ask and my wife explains she tried washing it. She’ll try soaking it in a bucket of vinegar next, she says. I tell her not to bother. It is just a stupid old blanket and I won’t miss it but it is also all of those other things. I go outside and put the blanket in the brown City of Minneapolis garbage cart and say goodbye to another piece of my old family.

 tylerpage.tumblr.com
I've just been consolidating my online presence and Tumblr has won out. I like the way it works with Twitter and Facebook better than Blogger.

Publishing Part 3 - Printing Problems?

(you can find Publishing Part 2 HERE.)


I want to step back from the numbers involved in publishing for a minute and talk about some of the technical aspects. Particularly, a problem that I encountered twice and how it was finally solved.


First, let's step back to 2007 when Nothing Better Vol 1 was published. I was pretty excited - I'd won a Xeric grant and was able to spend a little extra money on putting some classy French flaps on the book cover. It was going to look really nice! Files were sent off to the printer and I soon received my proofs. They looked awful. The art looked like it had been run through a copier multiple times. The line work looked fuzzy. I asked my rep at the printer about it (this was at Quebecor/Lebonfon). She stated the poor quality was just the proofs, that the final art would look just fine. I was a little leary. I hadn't had this issue with my previous books. The proofs I got for those looked just like the final art, as they should. But I also knew that Lebonfon was going through some changes, that maybe they had changed their internal workflow and so on. So I listened to my rep at the printer. I should have listened to my gut.


The production on the cover of NB Vol 1 looked fantastic, but the interior art looked fuzzy in the same way the proofs did. I talked with the printer right away and asked for an explanation and a reprint as I was not happy with the quality. I double-checked my files and the proofs I had sent. They were all fine. The pre-press department at Lebonfon couldn't find any issues. After a lot of hassle in which I stressed how unhappy with the quality I was, I finally got a letter from the pre-press manager stating they didn't know what had happened but that the quality of the books wasn't poor enough to merit a reprint. My rep ended up offering me a %20 discount. I got almost $1000 back. So that was kind of good.

                                   fuzzy                             not fuzzy

I should stress that this issue was not the end of the world. Few people even noticed the problem unless it was pointed out and they looked closely. But as someone who's day-job involves print-related technology, I take a little pride in *occasionally* knowing what I'm talking about, especially when it comes to printing books!


I honestly would have preferred a reprint instead of the discount just because that first NB collection felt like such a big deal to me, especially with the Xeric grant. But the discount did prove to be a bit of a blessing. When it came time to print NB Vol 2 (which I discussed in Publishing Part 1), I took that refunded money from the first book and used it to pay for the printing of Vol 2. So that was kind of nice.


But the thing is, I ran into the same issue of fuzzy art with Vol 2 at first. The outcome was completely different though and I am confident it was because I dealt with a small, local company who was willing to work with me to solve the problem. With the first book at Lebonfon, I was just a small-time customer. Even though I was paying them ~$5,000, it wasn't enough to merit the best customer service they could provide. They took my money, printed my books and that was that. The nice folks at Bookmobile listened though.


So what was the problem? When you save or export files to a PDF there are a few default presets for Web, Screen or Print. And all of them have a setting for compressing text and lineart and it is ON by default. The thing I'd learned though, was that when you compress lineart, it looks like crap! The point of using compression is to cut down on file size, but if it compromises the quality of your work then it's not worth using.


I didn't think to ask the printer about it until Vol 2 because the files I sent to the printer both times were full-res PDF files with *no compression* and yet for some reason they were coming out looking like they'd been compressed. It occurred to me this time around (mostly since I've seen the issue at work more and more in the last few years) to wonder if the pre-press workflow at the printer wasn't set up to use default PDF settings. (And oddly enough, I did not have this issue with the test books I had made at Lulu.com.)


When you submit files to a printer someone in the pre-press department opens the files, makes sure everything is there, looks good, and then sends it through an automated workflow to properly set the files to run through their system for print and generate a proof. Part of that workflow would include re-saving the PDF file. And it was then that I thought they must just be using those default PDF settings, including the default compressions settings. I was on to something!

I asked my rep at Bookmobile if this might be the case and she passed that on to their pre-press/setup department. Sure enough, I was right! They generated a new PDF and proof without the compression settings and it looked just great. How I wish I had thought to ask the people at Lefonfon about this, but I also wonder if it would have really made a difference. As a small-time customer they seemed relatively indifferent to my problem and to them, that first book was still 'good enough.'


From my perspective, I'm glad I got to the bottom of the problem because I knew it wasn't something I had done wrong. When you're in a situation like that you feel like you can't rest until you've figured it out. I'm also glad I found a printer to work with who was willing to go that extra step and provide really good customer service. 


Even though my problem was solved, I've noticed a lot more professionally published books over the years with this same issue and it's because people don't pay close enough attention and it's always 'good enough' for them. Larger publishers who carry more weight with their spending dollars stand a better chance of demanding reprints or fixes, so this was also a lesson in the dollar being the bottom line with a lot of companies. Unfortunately that's how it works in the world of business and production goods. But it doesn't have to be.


It's also a great lesson in the world of commercial printing that your proof should ALWAYS look exactly like the final product. If it doesn't, don't sign off on that proof until you're %100 satisfied. And if your printer isn't able to deliver the quality of work you want then take your business elsewhere and let your dollars speak for *you!*

Publishing Pt. 2 - How Much is This Going to Cost Me?

(here is a link to Part 1 for reference)

$46,918.60!

When I first started looking into the reality of self-publishing the financial aspect of it seemed within my grasp. But printing books isn't the only thing you have to spend money on. It wasn't until I was a few years into publishing that I looked back and saw how the expenses creep up as you spend a couple hundred here, a couple hundred there and so on.

I read accounts of people who tried self-publishing only to call it quits because they'd already spent $20,000 or $30,000 and really couldn't risk any more. So in deciding to talk frankly about self-publishing comics I knew the financial aspect would be important to discuss.

I've detailed below my expenses for each year since I started publishing in 2002. Within each year I've called out the cost of any books printed that year, miles driven (if any) to conventions, and which conventions I attended. The total for each year then is the sum total of expenses derived from: printing, travel (car/air/hotel/food), art supplies, convention registration fees (table fees), promotion, office supplies, shipping and so on.

Here's the breakdown:

2002
------
$5512.11 for 2000 copies of Stylish Vittles: I Met a Girl
total expenses of $10,283.80

drove 11,117 miles (I elected to drive to San Diego so I could see the western US)
went to Wizard World Chicago, Comic Con, Mid Ohio, Kansas City, FallCon

2003
------
$5811.60 for 2000 copies of Stylish Vittles: All the Way
total expenses of $13,233.10
drove 7530 miles

con expenses
CCI = $1156.41
MoCCA = $1061.97
SPX = $882.58
Pitt = $565.38
Philly = $517.58
APE = $428.64
FallCon

2004
------
total expenses of $1734.25
no books

drove 2625 miles
-SPACE
-MoCCA
-WWC
-FallCon

2005
------
$11,518.02 total expenses
$3613 for 1000 copies Stylish Vittles: Fare Thee Well
$1517.20 for 2000 copies Nothing Better #1 (32 pg pamphlet)
$1856.23 for 1000 copies Nothing Better #2 (24 pg pamphlet)

conventions
-WWC
-CCI
-MoCCA
-FallCon

2006
------
$1123.56 total expenses
no books

conventions:
-MoCCA
-WWC
-FallCon

drove 813.18 miles

2007
------
$7462.37 total expenses
$4912.61 for 2000 copies Nothing Better Vol 1: No Place Like Home

conventions:
-MoCCA
-WWC

2008
------
$484.50 total expenses
(daughter was  born ~ no cons)

2009
------
$1079 for 300 copies Nothing Better Vol 2: Into the Wild
rest of the year's expenses not totaled yet.
(EDIT: total 2009 expenses = $3829.63)

As I noted above, the grand total of all my business expenses from 2002 through the printing of Nothing Better Vol 2 in late 2009 is $46,918.60. Yes, that is a lot of money. It is. But it's important to realize that was spent over the course of 7 years - it's not like I dropped it all at once. I also tried to be as thrifty as possible in my spending when I could, especially when traveling. I found the cheapest flights (I once spent a night in the Detroit airport to get a cheap flight to Pittsburgh), cheapest hotels (we stayed at the -relatively nice YMCA in Manhatten when we went to MoCCA), and cheapest food I could but spent what needed to be spent in order to produce a good product.

I should point out that this is only the majority of expenses involved in publishing. Cori traveled to most conventions with me and displayed her illustration work and so paid for a portion of expenses which are not listed here.

In the end it wasn't the cost of printing books that really rang up the bills - it was the traveling and conventions. The printing costs of each book was eventually covered through sales. For SV 1 I took out a small business loan and after that I used a business credit card in an attempt to earn bonus miles/points and such. A table at a convention can cost between $200 and $500 in addition to the cost of getting there and staying there for a few days, as well as feeding yourself. At most conventions I was able to make back the cost of the table but I think there may have only ever been a few shows where I did so well as to cover all costs and turn a small profit. But those were the exception rather than the rule.

I currently still have approximately $10,000 of credit card debt incurred from publishing expenses - from conventions and traveling. That should help put Part 1 of this essay into perspective, regarding how I did not want to incur any further significant debt in order to print Nothing Better Vol 2. I make extra payments and take on extra freelance work where I can to help pay that debt down and to cover any current and future business expenses.

I work in Higher Education and earn a very modest salary and have about $57,000 of student loan debt in addition to a mortgage and the costs associated with having a child. I'm not complaining - we get by - I'm just trying to put this all in perspective. If I were debt free we'd have a nice little cushion but taking risks is what life is about. All of that money spent wasn't for nothing. No, I'm not a superstar but I've managed to make a small name for myself in the comics world and even get a little high-profile recognition here and there (Eisner nomination and Xeric grant). Someone else might have done things different, smarter.

If I were to start all over again today, fresh from high school or college I would definitely do things differently. But that's another post altogether.

Up next: Printing problems!

Publishing Pt. 4 - The Other Numbers

So I've already talked dollars. Now it's time to talk Diamond order numbers. I'm going to only address the initial orders for my books solicited through Diamond Comics Distributors to be sold in comic shops. I'm only addressing Diamond order numbers because orders and sales in the general bookstore market are much harder to quantify. Yes, I have records of those numbers but it would take much more work to pull them together and using these Diamond numbers gives a good general picture of sales from a self-publisher.

Initial Diamond Orders

---------

Stylish Vittles: I Met a Girl (2002)
208 pages b/w $15 retail
291 copies
(Eisner nomination for Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition)

Stylish Vittles: All the Way (2003)
296 pages b/w $17 retail
286 copies

Stylish Vittles: Fare Thee Well (2005)
184 pages b/w $13

220 copies

Nothing Better #1 (Nov 2005)
32 pages b/w $2.95 retail
751 copies

Nothing Better #2 (Dec 2005)
24 pages b/w $2.95 retail

528 copies

Nothing Better Vol 1: No Place Like Home (2007)
200 pages b/w $15 retail

261 copies
(Xeric Grant recipient)

Nothing Better Vol 2: Into the Wild (2009)
162 pages b/w $15 retail
101 copies

So there you have it. For those of you in the comics or publishing business these numbers might have some meaning. Certainly from the perspective of a traditional, large publishing company these numbers are tiny. And remember that these are only for the initial orders. For example, the first full year that Stylish Vittles v1 was out, I ended up selling over 800 copies (which is still pretty low).

And I didn't start getting distribution into regular bookstores and such until 2003 or 2004. Part of the reason I wanted to only look at the initial Diamond orders was because the numbers were quickly at hand but also because they are non-returnable. Book sales in the Direct Market (through Diamond to comic/specialty shops) are final sales. There are no returns. But the general book trade is like a giant consignment shop - everything is returnable up to a certain point.

My initial orders/sales through my first book distributor were in the several hundreds, on top of what Diamond was ordering. Which was great. Except that six months later a lot of those were returned and so while you might get paid right away for some of that, you don't know for six, twelve, sometimes even eighteen months or more what your final sales are going to be.

It's interesting to compare the five paperback books' sales - the very first one, Stylish Vittles v1 had the highest initial orders and it was a first book from a new artist. But I'm pretty sure that's also the book I worked the hardest on promoting because it was my first time. I sent out review copies, mailed postcards and promo packs and wrote personalized emails to hundreds of comic shops so that by the time the book was available from Diamond lots of people were already aware of it. And once a lot of that legwork was done I kind of just coasted along with it for the rest of my books. Not because I got lazy over the years but because I had less and less time to devote to the activity of being a publisher.

I had Stylish Vittles v1 printed  before I had any orders. I went to WizardWorld in Chicago that year and was really overwhelmed by the response I got. A month later I went to Comic Con in San Diego and did very well too. I came home from that and spent every night for two weeks straight in front of my computer researching comic shops, getting contact info and sending personalized emails. All of that work ended up with me having a very reliable list of promo contacts. I was as active as I could be in the online forums then as well.

But with every subsequent book, every time I sent out an email or promo pack, more and more would get rejected and returned. And as I mentioned, it got harder to find the time to follow up on that - it came down to deciding do I spent time with my wife, spend time drawing my personal comics, spend time on paying freelance work or spend time rustling up/updating my promo list?

And at first it didn't always seem like I needed to worry about that. Stylish Vittles v1 got a lot of attention (relatively) and I got the feeling some people thought it sold a lot better than it did. By the time Stylish Vittles v2 came out I got a review in Entertainment Weekly even. But it didn't translate into more sales. Neither did the Eisner nomination.

So as the years have gone by, with each book I've done less of a promotional push, instead relying on the supportive fans and retailers I already have who are waiting for my next book. Yes, it means I'm not really going to grow my audience but I've sort of settled into a place where I realize that's not going to happen on my own. Especially now that I have a family I have even less free time than I did before. And I'm okay with that.

The Xerix Grant got me some attention for the first volume of Nothing Better and I got some good high-profile reviews. The initial orders were only 30 books fewer than Stylish Vittles v1 and all I really did was send out emails and press releases to my standard list of shops and media contacts along with some review copies and promo packets.

With Nothing Better v2 though, things have changed even more. I did pretty much the same thing but almost half of my emails bounced, either from shops that had gone out of business or just changed their contact info. And while I kept a list of what changed I haven't had the time to look up new contact info for any of those shops. So I sold 101 books to Diamond with almost no effort on my part.

And none of this addresses the books I sell directly. Since Nothing Better is something actively updated online, orders are always coming in from my website. I did a healthy pre-order with NBv1 and sales on NBv2 online have been okay as well. Add in convention sales and you're looking at a, still small, but reasonable amount of sales for one guy doing basically all the work (who is also has a family, works a fulltime day job and freelance work).

Somewhere in there, before I started doing Nothing Better, I switched bookstore distributors. I had initially signed up with a company named Biblio who seemed to be seeking out graphic novels to push. After a few years of lackluster sales they let me go. But I was contacted by Baker & Taylor right away. And that's worked out a lot better because Baker &Taylor don't require you to keep a bunch of stock on hand in their warehouses. You can if you sell a lot of books. But if you're a small operation like me, they just send along orders as they get them and it's worked out very well. I get a slow, steady stream of orders from them, maybe a handful a month, instead of one giant order that doesn't amount to anything. And Baker & Taylor are one of the prime distributors for Libraries and Schools, which has become a great market for cartoonists. The orders they send through, since they're placed only as needed, are generally 'guaranteed' sales.

I think the last issue I'll address here is the sales of the floppy issues of Nothing Better. After doing the OGN SV books I got it into my head that doing a book every 6 weeks would be a neat thing to try. And from a potential income standpoint, it would provide steadier money. That's a big reason the larger comics publishers still do it. And more importantly I hadn't yet become a convert to the world of digital publishing so I saw a regular comic as a way to keep my presence out there.

This ended up being another of those ventures where I vastly overextended myself. I have a history of being overly ambitious. I know this. It can be a good thing. But you can also get in over your head very quickly. And while I might have been able to keep up with the creative side of things, it became painfully evident when I was getting ready to send the third issue off to the printer that I wasn't going to be able to keep up with the financing.

Each issue was $1500-$2000 for 1000 or 2000 copies or so. A thousand books is pretty much the minimum when you're talking offset printing. Anything less than that wasn't worth it. So I was looking at kicking out that amount of money every six weeks and getting $500-$1000 from Diamond every 30 days based on my orders - and the orders on the initial three issues wouldn't have covered the printing costs (I believe the Diamond orders on NB#3 were somewhere in the 400's). Projecting that out over a year it was just a financial burden I was no longer willing to risk.

And it was unfortunate because I got a lot of support - Chris Butcher from the Beguilling claimed that my order numbers on NB#1 were higher than the orders on Jeff Smith's Bone #1 and he tried to point out some more budget-concious printers. But again, projecting those costs out 6 months to a year it just didn't look good. True, if I'd stuck it out for a year or two and really hit hard on the promotion and conventions, I might have been able to ride out the downswing and see the book start to slowly make its costs back. But I just couldn't do it.

I was already, at that point in time, sitting on about $15,000 in debt from the printing/expenses of the SV books. My then-girlfriend (now wife) and I had been together for a while and were seriously looking at our future together - buying a house and getting married. And the financial risk I was happy to take on myself wasn't a risk I was willing to push on to her. It no longer seemed responsible.

Do I regret not trying harder on the single issue thing? Not really. I have this feeling that even if the series had started to balance out cost-wise, it would have been at such a big expense that I would have been under a larger mountain of debt that would have taken forever to climb out from under. Even as it is, I am just now, five years later, getting close to paying off the last of the debts I incurred with the SV books and NB singles. It simply didn't make any more sense for me at the time to push my luck. And more importantly, even if I had 'succeeded' at that, would it have been what I really wanted?

By that time I had started following some online comics and social media was starting to take its hold online and I found all of those things interesting. So the idea of posting pages of my comics online and putting out print collections occasionally really appealed to me. Plus I'd finally started to feel like I was making a difference with my day job at MCAD and it helped to balance out my perception on where I was with my life, career-wise. Yes, I was not a successful fulltime artist, but I was a successful administrator at one of the country's top art schools and I had experienced some measure of success as a comics artist and publisher. So I felt a degree of satisfaction that wasn't there earlier - that hunger that kept forcing me to print comics and spend money was partially satisfied.

Would I have done things differently in hindsight? Yes and no, and it all depends on the desired outcome. And that's really the tricky thing - the difference between what we think we want and what we actually need out of life to thrive and be happy. That's what I will end this series of essays with: what lessons I've learned, what I would have done differently and why, and how the whole experience showed me what I did and did not really want out of life and a career as an artist.

Publishing Pt. 1 - Print on Demand? Really?! Well, sort of...

I tried something different when printing and publishing Nothing Better Vol 2 and it got me thinking about the other things I've experienced as a self-publisher. It got me thinking about the things I didn't know in the beginning and the sort of information I continue to wish I had access to. So I thought I would start sharing.

I'm going to start by talking about what I did differently in publishing Nothing Better Vol 2 and why I did what I did.

My goals when I started to think about putting out Vol 2 were heavily influenced by the fact that I now have a family. My concerns were mainly financial. With the books I'd previously published it was really only myself I was putting at risk. But due to those efforts and my student loans I'm sitting under a sizeable, but manageable, mountain of debt.

I continue to produce Nothing Better because I enjoy doing so and there are people out there who enjoy it as well. I wanted to be able to offer readers Vol 2, but I also didn't want to take on any more debt while doing so. That was my goal.

Goal: Publish Nothing Better Vol 2 while limiting or eliminating my financial risk.

Printing books is expensive. The previous books I've published, in quantities of either 1000 or 2000, cost anywhere from $3000 to $6000. There are a lot of other costs involved too but I'm going to save the numbers and money stuff for later. For right now lets focus on the fact that I didn't want to saddle myself with another few thousand dollars of debt - I couldn't really.

So I realistically began thinking about print-on-demand (POD). In doing so, cost was only one of two major factors. The other factor aside from money has to do with the publishing and distribution side of things. Diamond Comics Distributors (the main distributor to comics shops) had recently changed their policy on order minimums. Meaning that orders on any listed title had to clear a certain dollar amount for them to cut a purchase order. I was right on the border of that limit with NB Vol 1 and as anyone will tell you, a second book will always see fewer orders. I knew I wouldn't make the cut for Diamond, but I knew there were people out there who wanted Vol 2. Yes, there are other smaller distributors, like Haven, for comics shops, and I get listed to bookstores and libraries through Baker and Taylor, but without that hefty initial order from Diamond to help pay for a printing bill, it just wasn't worth it. This also meant I was planning on selling the majority of books direct through my website so my profit margin had a little more room as all the money from those sales goes right to me - there's no middle man. So I was also considering doing a smaller, more manageable print run.

The most books I've sold in a given year were around 800 (and again, I'll get to numbers later) but I knew that wouldn't be the case here. Yes, over the course of several years I could move 1000 copies of Vol 2, but I didn't want to have to sit on that cost or store more books in my house. Was POD really an option?

The problem isn't the quality as much as the cost - POD is more expensive per book than traditional offset printing. The reason this matters is because as a publisher, you sell your books to a distributor or store at a discount - up to %60 off the cover price. And if your book has a cover price of $15 and it cost you $5 to print, you're not really making any money once you factor in shipping and such. Could I find a quality, "cheap" POD option?

Lulu.com is kind of the big player in the POD market. Back when I published Stylish Vittles Vol 3 I had a test book made at Lulu just out of curiosity. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't awesome either. I think POD is better suited to prose publishing than something that is graphic-heavy. On the sample I had made the toner in all black areas would rub off and in general, because it was run on a laser printer, the toner had a shiny, hard look to it. Outside of that concern the print quality was good. Laser printers delivery sharp, crisp images. But it wasn't for me. It felt too much like I'd just printed off my book on one of the printers at work and bound it.

But that was a few years ago. Lulu has grown more dominant and now offers discounts for printing large quantities. So I thought I would at least look into the option. Had things changed? Vol 2 was completely laid out, just waiting for me to finish the cover. So I mocked up something quick and upload a file to Lulu.com to get a test book made.

The test I got back was actually pretty nice. The halftones were nice and crisp and the toner didn't feel like toner on the page. I suspect they were using a higher quality digital press than they had in the past. The only thing I wasn't thrilled about was the glossy cover being the only cover option. But if going through Lulu meant getting the book out to readers I could live with it. Lulu seemed like a real option. I put in a quote for bulk pricing. They offered me $4.48 per book for a quantity of 300. Hmm. Not great, but better than their per-book price which was somewhere north of $7. Which, in and of itself, still wasn't awful if those were direct sales - I'd still be getting somewhere around $7 in profit per book, and Lulu would handle all of the fulfillment.

(Fulfillment means that when you order a book through Lulu.com's website, they print it, ship it, and collect the payment for you. Then they pay out on a quarterly basis. That was also attractive, to a degree, as it would relieve me of having to pack and ship off books.)

I finished designing the cover and the few remaining touches on the book and ordered another test copy. This second test was disappointing. The backside of each page was 'smudged.' There had obviously been an issue with the imaging drum on the printer this book was run on. Without getting technical about the problem, it pointed out a huge potential problem: if I was having someone else print and ship books without me ever having seen them, how was I to know that customers wouldn't be getting messed up books like this? It was the issue of quality control that knocked Lulu out of contention (which isn't to say that they're not the right choice for someone else's project - as I said before I think POD favors the prose work as text means much less coverage on the page).

Oddly enough, this entire time I had another option staring me right in the face that was practically in my backyard. But I didn't think of it until after I decided I couldn't go with Lulu. I had started thinking I was going to have to postpone publishing Vol 2 until I could raise money for offset printing. And then I remembered a company here in Minneapolis called Bookmobile, who specialized in digital printing, POD and book galleys. I had known an MCAD alum who had worked there, and a few MCAD students who had had short runs of books printed with them. And I'd even gotten a quote from them years ago for an SV book to see what their prices were like.

Working with Bookmobile was a lot like working with a regular printer - especially when compared to Lulu. I ran into a couple issues (that I'll go over in a separate post) but they were handled professionally and quickly and it made all the difference in the world working with a local company and being able to speak with a person.

The cost still wasn't as good as offset printing, but it was definitely better @ $3.60/copy and honestly, dealing with a professional printing company in my back yard really appealed to me. The per copy cost is low enough to make a tiny profit from each copy when sold at a discount to distributors, but remember, the goal at this point is to simply not lose money.

The customer service at Bookmobile was great and my books were printed within a week. I picked them up, they looked good, and I have enough to sell on my website, at conventions and a few through distributors all without spending a huge chunk of money. Goal achieved.

I know there are people who will point out that I could have saved money in the long run by paying more upfront to do a larger initial run on offset, but in addition to not spending a lot of money I also wanted to minimize the already large stacks of books in my basement. Printing through Bookmobile was a solution that seemed to satisfy all of my needs for right now.

Up next: numbers!

(PS - It's worth noting that Diamond just announced a modification to their policy stating that as long as an item was listed in their Previews catalog, even if the initial order was under their new minimum amount, they would still ship product on that initial order. If that had been in place when I published Vol. 2 I might have given more thought to doing offset printing.  But honestly I'm happy with how things worked out - I was able to keep things affordable and also not have a ton of boxes sitting around.)