I was thinking of offering this as the first Stargazer print. Good idea?



Von

Mare Biddle, the playwright living in Phoenix, AZ who did a very lovely review of my book, also did a Q&A with me the other day, too. It's focused primarily on "taking risk" in one's life, career, and whatnot. It's over at http://marebiddle.com/blog/11-blog/82-risk-sailing-off-the-edge-of-the-page.html if you'd like to take a peek.

A sample:

I asked Von how he approaches the inevitable anxiety and fear that accompany risk. He said, “Not knowing how something will turn out is a scary thing, I think. But that's what risk is all about. There's a great quote I like from Eddie Rickenbacker, the World War I fighter pilot. He said, 'Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared.' I think that really, really sums it up. So, from a certain point of view making art, trying to create stories, and whatnot, there's always fear. It's a manageable fear and it's important to place it.”

Von

From Mare Biddle's awesome blog:

"When I saw the mock up of ” I was easily taken with Von’s artwork and his beautiful ability to illustrate “silence” on the page. The cover art is actually my favorite frame in the book. The detail of the "Lost Cat" sign on the light post sets a perfect tone. The more intriguing part of this book, and what made me Von’s fan, is the story.

When I read this book the first time, I immediately wondered how I would’ve felt about it when I was 13. Would I have pushed it away? Would I have exhaled warm air from my lungs in the kind of way that can change a teenager’s trajectory? Marie’s future is uncertain. Her giggles are stolen between day-to-night worries. Von leaves Marie’s story open so the reader can walk with her on – "

And from the blog japoly:

"This is indeed a very touching, very dramatic tale. Von Allan's dialogue is never at all unrealistic, and the everyday characters presented are fully-formed enough to cause the reader to wonder at what persons may have inspired such situational drama, such quietly desperate burdens. This is the kind of story that wonderfully, moodily, is all too real. Such a rich and honest portrayal of mental illness and the effects such can have on the many persons stuck in the tortured position of loving and/or living with the inflicted.

And the art is absolutely as effective, from smart page constructions sporting fluid faces and gestures to an appropriate pacing that intuitively slows down the camera whenever a forced introspection is dutifully beckoned from the story itself. This movie is shot in real time, with all of the world of nuances that the unbiased camera is always eager and willing to capture, beit for the amusement or judgement, of others. while the overall narrative is a sea of calm before the storm sensation, the few moments of violent action are called into vivid imagining with all the more clarity. And shock, like with ripples in the stillness of waters.

A fantastic and self-aware work, I am thankful in my own way to have come across it...Most definitely one of the finest graphic novels of the year, I think."

Um...Wow?

Von

Been a little while since I posted so here ya be.



( More After the Cut! )

Von

First, I've set-up a specific site for the road to god knows.... The domain right now is at http://the-road-to-god-knows.blogspot.com/ but that should redirect to a specific subdomain on my own site in the very near future. The big question right now is whether I've covered all my bases or if I'm missing a piece of information - especially pertinent if you've never heard of me or the book before and would like to learn more. So, should I add anything?

Second, Mare Biddle posted some extremely lovely comments about my book over on her blog. Go take a look if you get a chance, ok?

Von

Bumped by Moggy AGAIN: This is a huge deal for Von (and for me!). Tony is a wonderful guy and we feel very lucky to have him on our side!

We'll be editing (and bumping) this post as other retailers pick up the book...meantime, thank you to everyone who has supported us up to this point (and for all the nice comments on this post). (Re-posts of this entry would be appreciated, of course...just comment here so that we know.)

---------------------------

I just wanted to announce (oh.....formal!) that Tony Shenton will be representing the road to god knows... (and me, too!) starting right now. Yay!


(Yours truly and Mr. Shenton.)

If you don't know, Tony represents a number of small press publishers to comic shops and other stores primarily in the United States. He and I have chatted for quite some time so it's really nice that he's willing to take my bookie on. Things will roll out slowly over the next little while, but I can say that the following comic book stores will have stock of road in the next week or so:

Jim Hanley's Universe in New York City

Cosmic Comics, also in New York City

Cosmic Monkey Comics in Portland, Oregon

I do want to point out that these stores are all taking a shot on me here, putting their money on the line and placing an order for me, primarily an unknown creator with an unknown book. This is basically based on Tony's reputation and persuasiveness. If you happen to know anyone who might be willing to give it a shot ($12.95 US for 148 pages, folks!), please let them know, ok?

Von

Giving this a bump just because I think it's interesting and one of the founders swung by and added his thoughts! (Von)



Slowly but surely, the news about Indy Comic Book Week is making the rounds. I don't know the organizers but I'm debating getting involved. If you don't know, the general idea is that Diamond will not be shipping new comics to comic book shops on December 30th. They are experimenting with a street date for DC's Blackest Night series, but that's technically shipping the week before and should not go on sale 'til December 30th. Either way, that date marks an interesting opportunity for small press titles.

From the site:

We challenge writers and artists to self publish new material for this week, and offer it to their local stores. We ask for retailers to take this as an opportunity to showcase local independent talent on the new release shelves. We encourage fans to break from their buying habits and try something new.

So, what do you guys think of this idea in general? And should I get involved in it? If I did, it would most likely only be on the local level (since the reason Diamond is missing December 30th is that shipping in general is tricky that week), but still...

Von

P.S. tip of the hat to kaolinfire to pointing the whole thing out to me.

BUMP-BUMPED BY MOGGY! Because this is awesome. :)

----------------------------------------

Or something like that. But yes, the road to god knows... is now available for ordering on Amazon.ca, too! Yay!



Von

Ok! Links are starting to show up on the various ordering sites! The cover is now up on these sites and the ordering links are good to go!



Road can be ordered on Amazon.com right here!

Here's the Barnes & Noble link!

Canadian links and more will follow as the book slowly enters into various databases. I'm not going to do any type of media push until all that happens, but getting things rolling didn't seem like a bad idea.

Yay!

Von

P.S.: full disclosure: we do earn a few cents if you use those Amazon.com links I've listed. You don't need to do anything special and there's no extra cost to you at all. Just to be clear!

Moggy and I are both getting over the flu and a few other ailments. Weeeee, what fun! La Casa Von and Moggy has been pretty low key of late as a result. Anyway, this is the colour version of the poster design that I put up a little while ago. I don't know if Stargazer will be a colour work yet, so this kinda thing is really just giving me a chance to play and experiment. 'Cuz, y'know, that's fun.

( Larger version after the cut )

Von

Copyright (c) 2009 Eric Allan Julien

This is just the lineart. I'm working on a colour version, too.

( Bigger version after ze cut! )

Von

I've been watching the marketing efforts of Ken Marcus, creator and writer of Super Human Resources for the past few months. Marcus seems like a pretty savvy guy, having an active profile on various message boards including the Comic Book Industry Alliance, active interviews all over the place, and not to mention that he's an associate creative director at an unnamed (though I think it's the Martin Agency) advertising company.

Not only that, but he also sent out a nifty press kit to a number of stores (this pic posted by James Sime of Isotope Comics in San Francisco):



As he explains, "...the whole mailer cost me a little under a grand. A 10 page preview printed from Ka-Blam, 5 postcards, a poster and a color letter. To about 280 indie friendly stores." Lastly, he also wrote a marketing piece over at Robot 6 at tail-end of February '09, covering a lot of what he did (and well worth a look, too).

So, he's active, experienced, passionate and spent money. How did that, especially in light of Diamond Distribution's changes to their Purchase Order Minimums, effect initial orders on the first issue? Well, ICV2.com recently published their March 2009 numbers and the answer is not that great. Super Human Resources did place in the top 300, at #298, for an estimated total sales of 2,052 copies. At $3.50 US, that's a total retail order of $7,182.00, $932.00 over the new minimum of $6,250.00. Knock off Diamond's 60% cut of retail, the cost of printing a full-colour book, whatever small cut Ape Entertainment (the publisher) takes, and there would be precious little left over for the creators involved. Knock off the "little under a grand" that Marcus spent on the press kit and the first issue, at least, is most likely well short of being profitable. Worse, if orders drop by 20% for issue 2 (from 2,052 to, say 1,642), the book would be under Diamond's Purchase Order Benchmark (since 1,642 * $3.50 is only $5,747.00) and orders would probably be canceled (unless Diamond really believes in the book, of course).

It's tough out there, folks.

Von

In today's edition of Shelf Awareness, there's a little off the cuff comment from Jim Salicrup, Papercutz's editor and long-time comic vet. He said this:

"Salicrup said that while the DC/Minx imprint was established to try to reach tween girls, the themes were too angst-ridden, and they wound up appealing more to men in their 20s than 11- and 12-year-old girls."

Since I haven't read most of the Minx line, I can't really attest to this. I kinda thought that at least some of them were funner than what this quote implies. I've long worried that "road" was too heavy and that really hurt it's audience (though this will be confirmed soon when I put the print version out) and I'm a little worried about "Stargazer" for similar things.

Sometimes, god help me, I wish there was a simple formula. Ok, ok. I really don't. Not seriously. On the bleak days I do, but those are thankfully few. :)

Anyway! Thoughts? Agree or disagree with Salicrup?

Von

...that there's been a bit more discussion on this thread from a little while ago on Diamond's recent moves:

http://vonandmoggy.livejournal.com/402894.html

Just in case anyone wants to add anything to the discussion. :)

Von

Jim Munroe just posted over on his No Media Kings blog that he's offering Therefore Repent!, his original graphic novel with Montreal's Salgood Sam, as a free download in multiple formats. This is exactly what I want to do with my own bookie in the next few months (and what I did with Li'l Kids), so I'm certainly going to be watching this with a lot of interest.

That Munroe is a cagey guy, damn him!

Von

Dave Baxter over on Septagon Studios has a very interesting article on how Hermés Piqué and Juan Romera, creators of a comic called Misery Depot, distributed it through various torrent and other download sites. Since I've experimented with this myself I'm certainly curious to learn about how others have found it.

What do you think?

Von

(tip of the hat to Brigid at Digital Strips for pointing the article out)

Well, it's taken some doing, but road has now been moved off of GaM's site and onto my own. With new artwork, completely revamped lettering, and quite a bit of new writing, too. I think all of these changes make it that much stronger and I kinda consider this the "remastered" version.

The new url is at http://the-road-to-god-knows.blogspot.com/

Will it ever be perfect? Nope, 'fraid not. I've fixed what I find really glaring, but there's still things I'd like to correct. I'll probably always feel that way, but it's time to move on. It's a rookie project and I think it's still fairly green despite the changes. Flaws in artwork aside, I also really underwrote it - that meant the storytelling was weaker than it should have been and scene to scene transitions didn't work all that well. I think they work better now.

The book version will be coming out in the not to distant future and the same goes for free ebook versions, too. Right now it's still a webcomic but hopefully the site navigation works well.

Let me know what you think, ok?

Von

About a week back, ICV2.com ran an interview with Bill Schanes, Diamond's Vice-President of Purchasing. While it covers a lot of the same ground as the earlier Newsarama piece, there is one interesting bit (at least to me) that goes into a few numbers:

...A $2500 purchase order at Diamond’s cost of 60% off is about $6200 retail value. That would give us gross profit at Diamond on a blended average discount to retailers of 44% off retail of about $950, and a contribution to fixed costs, overhead, and profit of $200 or $300 after all the different departments and operations handle it. At $2500, Diamond’s not getting rich...At $1500 we were losing money on every purchase order, and that’s just not healthy.

If we assume a profit of $300, then Diamond's per title expense is roughly $650 ($950-$650). With that in mind, I did a quick spread sheet to compare the new Purchase Order Benchmark with the old (see pic, below). Note that it does bear out the assumption that the old $2500 benchmark actually cost Diamond money. This assumes that the reported expenses of approximately $650 is accurate, of course. While I have no reason to disbelieve it, it's important to keep in mind that there's no independent way to verify it.



As the fallout from this continues, both Haven Distributors (formerly Cold Cut) and Ka-Blam (see note at the top of the page) are making moves into Direct Market distribution to pick up the slack. Or rather, Haven is evolving to include a pre-order model while Ka-Blam's exact plans are still unknown. Will retailers embrace new alternative distributors? Dunno. With the bigger indy publishers tied up with exclusive deals at Diamond, it's impossible to get a sense of how this will play out. Time will tell.

Now, a question: does anyone have any thoughts about Fanflow? What do you think? Is exclusive content behind a subscriber wall a good idea? It's been done before and seems to have faded out, but Fanflow is bringing the concept back. Good? Bad?

Von

Newsarama's Matt Brady did an interview with Bill Schanes, Diamond Vice President of Purchasing, regarding the new Purchase Order Benchmark. While I think it should be read in its entirety by anyone interested in the business of comics, a few tidbits did standout:

NRAMA: Why were these changes needed?

BS: I think, as everyone is aware of, the economy across the whole world – and the United States not being immune to that – has been pretty tough through 2008, and there don’t appear to be any immediate signs going in to 2009 that things are going to change that much. Diamond’s sales were down last year – within a realm of acceptability, but they were down, and we’re looking at decreases in 2009. So we’re looking at ways that we can reduce costs on our side on the lowest selling, least profitable lines, and we felt this was a reasonable approach to reduce some costs and still provide a very high level of service to the vast majority of our clients and our retailers.

and:

NRAMA: Along that same line, in that the benchmark applies to every product with a code, some publishers have said that the new rule will have somewhere between interesting and devastating effects on their relist titles and their backstock that they can offer through Diamond...

BS: Right – it does apply towards what we call “Offered Agains” – some folks call them relists. Basically once a product comes out, and has gone live in the marketplace, and the publisher or Diamond wants to put it back in the catalog, we call it an Offered Again – it’s our name for it – and that’s generated some amount of revenue for all those concerned. The problem with putting it back in the catalog is that is has the exact same cost attached as a new product. We still have to process the orders, still have to pick and pack them, ship, and handle shortages and damages. There’s no difference from an operation cost standpoint for an Offered Again product and a new product.

and:

NRAMA: One myth to possibly bust with the benchmark change – does this mean that Diamond is now closed to new products from new, smaller publishers?

BS: Of course not – it has never meant that. But we’re also looking for things that sell – so are retailers, and so it everybody else. So if we see a new comic cross our door that looks promising, with a good concept or a good creative team, we’re going to give it a try. But when we have a brand new creator or a brand new talent team, that’s a judgment call. Hopefully we make the right call based on our years of experience here, but we may occasionally miss one. There are times that some creators have called me and said that they think we missed s good one, and sometimes we agree, and sometimes we don’t. But that’s a healthy dialogue, and we’re very open-minded with that.

Now, while I don't fault Diamond one bit for running their business in whatever way they wish, I thought it would be useful to give a contrasting opinion on Diamond's operations from a few years back. In Todd Allen's The Business of Webcomics are segments from an interview that Allen conducted with Tony Panaccio, then Vice President of Product Development at Crossgen Entertainment. Some relevant bits:

"Let's look at exactly what Diamond does for a moment," Panaccio explains. "1) They print a catalog, which they make outrageous money on. That catalog costs them about $1 per unit to make. They sell it to consumers for $5 per unit, and make an average of $5,000 per display ad, with more than 150 pages of display ads per issue. 2) They take big boxes and make them into little boxes and ship them, via UPS, which costs them very little. That's it -- there are, perhaps, four field sales reps, a few sales executives in Baltimore, and that's it. For an entire industry.

"Now -- if your main business is boxing and shipping, your margins are reduced with each new publisher that enters the market, and with each new store that opens. If 75 percent of all your product comes from 5 vendors, and the other 25 percent comes from a combination of 40 vendors, your margins actually rise when some of those other 40 vendors go bye-bye. If 75 percent of all the product you ship goes to 750 locations, and the other 25 percent goes to the remaining 2,400 locations, then your margins actually rise when those bottom feeder stores go bye-bye. Fewer vendors and fewer shipping points equals a higher margin of the product you are guaranteed to place no matter what, because you are a monopoly and have no competition.

"Diamond's primary business model is to shrink the comics industry down to its lowest common denominators and squeeze out any potential competition for its premier publishers" (Private Interview).

and:

"It is my belief – and I am not alone in this belief, but I am sure that many of my colleagues feel it is not in their best interests to voice their opinions on this matter – that the Department of Justice blew it when they initially investigated Diamond to examine its compliance with the anti-trust laws on the books right now," Panaccio said. "While many analysts within the DOJ could see the argument for technical compliance, especially when it is presented solely by Diamond’s lawyers, I believe that any sitting judge would have seen through Diamond’s definitions of ‘broker’ and ‘distributor’ in relation to their vendors, and ruled that Diamond was indeed in violation of anti-trust laws. In my mind, Diamond is one of the worst-case scenarios of monopoly in American publishing, and the resulting power and influence wielded by Diamond in the marketplace is unfair and illegal. It is fundamentally unjust that this criminal conduct is allowed to continue while thousands of retailers, thousands of creators and dozens of publishers locked outside the premier vendor club suffer under a system that was constructed solely for the purpose of entrenching and rewarding a select minority."

Food for thought, hmmm...? See, what I find interesting in all of this is that there's been little discussion on the uncompetitive playing field that the smaller publishers operate under. A really good example is Diamond's re-order penalty - retailers are charged 3% surcharge when they re-order a book from a non-brokered (Marvel, DC, Dark Horse and Image) publisher. I was hoping that Diamond might announce that they were going to eliminate that with this PO Benchmark announcement, but to date they haven't. Worse is the fact that the smaller publishers operate under more onerous discount terms to retailers then the brokered folks do. In the latter case, these publishers set their own discounts that Diamond must comply with (and, I should add, this is one of the reasons why I've long argued that Diamond is not a distributor in the classic sense. They are really a freight-forwarder. They do not own the books from the brokered publishers - they simply move them around). In the case of the non-brokered publishers, however, Diamond sets the discounts to retailers. Which means that if a publisher gives Diamond a 60% discount off retail, retailers might only get 40% to 45% off cover (my suspicion is that it's the latter and that Diamond operates on a 15% margin). On top of it, these titles are non-returnable. While I don't believe that if these two discrepancies were corrected indy comics would suddenly thrive, I do believe sales would be that much stronger. Retailers aren't stupid - if you only have "slots" or shelf space for X number of titles, you are going to carry the ones that can maximize the greatest amount of revenue (margin) in the shortest amount of time (stock turn). Since most indy comics lean towards slower turns, the discount is what could be normally used to offset that to some extent. With low discounts and slow turns, that's a recipe for poor sales. Direct Market retailers have learned this - they only need to look at the black and white implosion and the later crash after the Death of Superman speculator bust and what it did to their retail brethren.

I also think that Diamond may have made a long-term mistake with this. As I said to fuzzy_queen the other day, The DM was built on comics - the good ol' 32 page saddle-stitched variety. By going "trade only" (as Diamond has effectively done), they may find that there's far more competition in the marketplace. Especially if Diamond's discounts don't change and if they keep the re-order penalty in place. By all accounts Baker & Taylor competes quite strongly on discount with Diamond for GNs. And they're returnable, to boot. I'm also pretty sure that most of the DM-exclusive publishers (like Fanta and Top Shelf and whatnot) are not exclusive to the book trade - and thus comic shops could get exclusive books from other distributors.

One of the things that stopped retailers from moving orders away from Diamond in the first place was that it could effect one's overall dollar order and thus a retailer's overall Diamond discount. But if some GNs just aren't carried at all by Diamond (due to not hitting the new threshold), then getting books more efficiently (and perhaps at a better discount) becomes much more reasonable. Ditto for re-orders.

It'll be interesting to see how all this shakes out.

Von

Word has been going around about some major changes in how Diamond distributes small press comics in North America. In a nutshell, they're raising certain sales benchmarks to new, higher levels. These levels will make it that much harder for certain titles and certain publishers to be viable in the Direct Market.

I'm phrasing it this way since there's quite a bit of confusion regarding exactly what the new benchmarks are. Until that gets clarified, I'm not going to speculate. But here are some quotes and other bits and pieces that are known/speculated right now.

From Simon Jones, Icarus Publishing:

I’d like to take a small amount of time to explain what the purchase benchmark increase means in the real world, and perhaps betray my own misconceptions in the process. But this is as best as I understand things now, absent a more public and detailed announcement from Diamond themselves.

Diamond, the undisputed ruler of direct market distribution, asks vendors to meet two sets of sales guidelines. The first is a general sales threshhold applicable to initial orders, somewhere between $3000~4000 retail, that Diamond expects comics to meet to continue to be listed in Previews. New comics are given a few issues to reach that plateau. If the comic doesn’t, or falls below it after a few issues, Diamond will ask the series to be cancelled. While the sales threshhold is applicable to all products, this is most relevant to the concept of comics as periodical magazines; serials which have limited shelf lives.

The second type of sales minimum is the purchase order benchmark, which before today was $1500 retail. This is the minimum value for which Diamond is willing to issue a purchase order. The difference is subtle, so it’s best explained through examples:

* Comic Ace issue #1 has a cover price of $5, and retailers order 1000 copies, putting its retail value at $5000. It surpasses both the sales threshhold and the purchase order minimum. A purchase order for 1000 copies is issued by Diamond, and Comic Ace issue #2 appears in the next Previews catalog.
* Comic Bee issue #1 only garners orders for 500 copies, totalling $2500 retail. Diamond issues a purchase order for 500 copies, but warns the publisher that if orders for issue 2 does not increase, they would not allow issue 3 to appear in Previews.
* Comic Cee issue #1 gets an abysmal 200 orders, for a total value of $1000. Despite retailers ordering 200 copies, they will never receive them… Diamond refuses to issue a purchase order at all for Comic Cee because it missed the PO benchmark.

Dan Vado, SLG:

The average person reading this may not realize that most small press comics (and by that I mean floppies) do not meet that benchmark. I think if the average reader knew how lousy some of our sales were they would be stunned. I can't tell you how many times people have wandered into our booth at one convention or another and engaged me in conversation and walk out scratching their heads and reeling to find out that the comic or graphic novel they just love more than anything sold maybe 300 copies total.

The other effect is that what few books we published as floppies will probably not ever see the light of day. While a first issue might sell well enough to meet the benchmark it is more than likely that everything from a second or third issue on will not. Again, I think your average reader might be shocked at how poorly some comics sell. So, if you're a small publisher or a self-publisher and your plan is to release a mini-series and then collect it as a trade, those plans might change.

It's a tough spot for everyone to be in. Diamond is in essence asking everyone to sell more in a recessionary environment or find themselves out of the catalog. Short term, a lot of publishers are going to find themselves with no distribution. While that might sound like I am angry with Diamond, I am not. I am unhappy, but the industry's current situation is one that has been coming for some time, recession or not. Some of the fundamental flaws in the industry and the way things sorted themselves out in the post Marvel/Heroes World debacle are coming to roost in a time when even the best run non-comic business is in danger of folding. The economic base for comics and the direct market is built on jelly. The number of people living hand-to-mouth in this business, from paycheck to paycheck, having to work two and three jobs is stunning and always has been.

More as this develops...

Von