By Shaenon K. Garrity
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For someone who's been a semi-professional (which is to say amateur) cartoonist for almost ten years, I haven't self-published a lot of comics. Not even minicomics. Sure, I've gone through the all-night long-arm stapling rite of passage—it's required by Cartoonist Law—but only a couple of times, making a
Narbonic minicomic in 2001 and a
Skin Horse mini in 2008. When kids ask me how they can get started in comics, I always tell them making minicomics is an easy way to begin sharing and selling your work, but if I think it's so easy, why don't I do it more than once every seven years? Well, Shaenon?
(And, yes, kids ask me how they can get started in comics. It really happens. Poor misguided young things.)
The six big print collections of my webstrip
Narbonic were done by a publisher, Mike Barklage of Blueshift Studios. He emailed me one day and asked if I'd ever thought about doing books, and a few months later I got twenty-three boxes of trade paperbacks from UPS. Something happened between these two events; I'm a little fuzzy on the details. Suffice to say that, until now, I've been able to avoid most of the nitty-gritty of comics publishing. Until now.
Self-publishing my current webstrip,
Skin Horse, seemed like a good idea. My collaborator, Jeffrey, and I would be able to design the book to our specifications. We'd keep all the profits. We'd have total control over every stage of production and sales like the cutting-edge Web-based mavericks we are. Also, Dark Horse turned us down.
Things I learned in my first foray into trade paperback publishing:
1. I am bad at design stuff. If you want your book design to come out right, you really have to learn software like InDesign, which I haven't because I'm lazy. I hired my friend Pancha to design the book for me, and she did a far better job, based on my crude drunken sketches, than I ever could have.
2. Actually, I've learned a few things about design. The most useful thing I know is to use as few colors as possible and make sure they complement each other. The easiest way to get a good-looking color palette is to grab a picture off Google and steal colors from it. Sleazy but true. I use Alphonse Mucha prints a lot.
The
Skin Horse Volume 1 cover has an original color palette, but the overall design is based on some turn-of-the-century children's book covers I found. From about the 1880s to the 1930s, people were really good at design. You can't go wrong ripping those people off.
3. When choosing a printer, go with the one that actually answers your emails and calls. In my case, that was Canadian company Lebonfon, which was fast and helpful, plus all the staff who handled the book had amusing French Canadian names.
4. Everybody knows somebody who will do pull quotes. If you don't know anybody, I'll do pull quotes for you.
5. Don't buy ISBNs secondhand. They get screwed up. You have to buy them from the mysterious ISBN headquarters. Buy them in batches; they're cheaper and then you've got a ton of ISBNs to swim around in and toss in the air and let them hit you on the head.
6. Proof everything over and over before you send the materials to the printer. Making corrections at the blueline stage is expensive! No wonder Viz gets ticked off when we do that.
7. If you get the option of putting a cute patten on the inside covers, totally go for that.
8. Next time, .tifs rather than .jpgs.
9. Nothing is slower than books on their way from Canada. That week and a half lasted exactly seven years.
10. Now and forever, twenty-three boxes of books is a lot.
Shaenon K. Garrity is a manga editor at Viz Media and is best known for her webcomics Narbonic and Skin Horse.
All the Comics in the World is © Shaenon K. Garrity, 2010
