#another design that will hopefully end up printed to be sold at cons!

[sylvrndoodles]

[climbdraws]

How does an artist whose never really posted art online go about making a successful online store the same way you have? I'm not sure how to even start, do you open a store and pray? Get an endorsement from another artist? Am I gonna need a twitter? I guess im just looking for any tips, if you're willing to share. (BTW I got a a few of the holo skull stickers, ADORE them!)

hi! glad you like the holo stickers - hopefully gonna add more real soon!

(long answer so under cut)

I think the first thing you need to ask yourself is - how much effort do I want/have time to put into this? ((*For reference, my store would be categorized under upper-medium/high effort as I am doing art full-time))

Low Effort - POD service (print-on-demand) such as RedBubble, Society6, Teepublic (you upload your work, they handle everything else.)

PROS: They handle everything from site listings, product photos, product creation, packaging, shipping & handling, and customer support. They have brand reputation so people trust the site & your products. Offer a lot of custom printing (shirts, pillows, blankets, mugs etc) that would be pretty expensive trying to do yourself starting out. Very little involvement besides uploading your work & sharing it to your followers. 

CONS: Artists only receive a very small percentage per sale and it might take quite a while to earn anything substantial. Product quality varies (RedBubble sticker quality is hot garbage imo) as they are usually cheaply produced. A lot of stolen artwork/designs are sold on these sites and nothing is done to regulate it. 

--

Medium Effort: Online marketplaces such as Storenvy, Etsy, Shopify etc. A PLATFORM for you to sell your goods - you are responsible for creating, packaging, shipping & marketing your products. 

PROS: Convenient marketplace shopping allows people to easily browse your store alongside other vendors/artists. Allows you to brand your own store & products so that they are uniquely yours. A true “small business” as you are handling essentially everything except for the online store-hosting platform. Allows you to include personal notes/touches or freebies in your orders as you are packaging & shipping them yourself. 

CONS: Usually have to pay a fee for every sale/listing. Website/Storefront design are limited to what the platform has to offer (some don’t have custom HTML options). Requires YOU to create your own merch - whether it’s original art, prints, stickers, enamel pins etc - which means a lot of time spent talking to manufacturers, figuring out shipping rates etc. Can involve a lot of $$ investment upfront. 

--

High Effort / Full-Time: Creating your own website/storefront OR Patreon Clubs. Handling everything yourself & releasing new content quite frequently - good for artists with a following/brand reputation/full-time. 

Basically everything from the ‘Medium Effort’ tier but requiring quite a bit of time/effort (usually) daily. Monthly Patreon clubs are becoming pretty common - backers pledge every month for a ‘tier’ level and receive merch at the end of the month (which requires you to factor in manufacturing time, shipping time to you, packaging & then shipping to the customer which can be difficult for people who suck at meeting deadlines ((sometimes me but I'm working on it))

--

Honestly there is no “correct way” to go about creating a shop for yourself. I know a lot of artists who run their own stores & also have merch on RedBubble/Society6 as it’s just another revenue stream that’s quite low-key and the more visibility you have as a ‘brand’ the better. Some artists have shop openings with their store only being open for a week or two and then closed for a couple months and then re-open again (youtuber BayleeJae does this & is quite successful at it) 

There’s honestly so many factors that go into a store - what kind of merch/art you want to create, what your fanbase is, who you’re marketing to, how much funds you want to invest etc etc. It can be quite overwhelming which is why I really recommend those just starting out to start slow/small and test the waters with just a few items first before rushing in and spending a bunch of $$$$ on products that might not end up selling as well as you hoped.

Since you said you don’t really post online - I would suggest starting with a LOW EFFORT store like RedBubble, Society6, TeePublic etc and really focus on building your social media following & presence. Make sure your social accounts all have same/similar handles (mine vary a lil but it’s always ‘Climb’). Posting frequently can be hard but it’s really important to start getting people to notice you & gain interest in your work. 

[woohooligancomics]

A Personal Racism Issue. Can I Get Your Advice?

I'm at a bit of a loss... so I'm hoping some of you hooligans might be able to help me out. This weekend I'm tabling a gaming convention with a friend of mine (and I'll leave his name out here for reasons that will be apparent -- I'll call him X). Admittedly, I'm a comedian and a cartoonist, so a gaming convention is slightly off-brand, but I'm hoping there will be a good cross-section of people who also enjoy comedy, and at the end of Friday I've already collected 5 new subscribers to our newsletter, the Woohooligan Weekly Dick Joke Advocate.

This came about when I got an unexpected call from X about a month before the event and he mentioned in passing that he'd already booked a table for this event. I offered to share the booth with him, because I want to attend more cons and I thought I could handle the 5hr drive. I've tabled about a half-dozen cons so far, this would be his first. And although he's a relatively new friend (a year?), I didn't have the impression he was racist -- at least not overtly or knowingly so... I wouldn't associate myself with anyone who identified as "Alt-Right", I think that should be apparent from my work, of which X is aware. Dunking on these racists was part of all three of my most recent YouTube videos, and a comic I published in 2016 which appears in my recent Woohooligan Vol 2 (page 29) that I now have on the table at the event thanks to our recent Kickstarter.

What I didn't realize until I arrived at the event, is that X is selling t-shirts labelled "Fantasy Lives Matter". There are about a dozen of them, roughly half of his t-shirt designs, so for example a picture of an orc with the text "Orc Lives Matter", another for Elf, Dwarf, etc. I hoped at first that it would go unnoticed as people often don't read the text and just check out the artwork. I've already noticed one girl at the table this morning was put off. She asked me, "are you a Black Lives Matter person or an all lives matter person"? To which I responded "black lives matter... I haven't had that specific conversation with X, though I suspect he's the same"...

Apparently I was wrong, which, I realize in retrospect is what I should have expected, because I think the majority of people would have picked up on the poor taste of trivializing serious problems faced by real people. I want to say I think most people would have picked up on that faster than I did actually, since I think I'd seen these graphics before (I mean, months ago), and it just hadn't clicked in my mind, despite all the work I've done.

I tried to have a brief conversation with X about it, which went nowhere good...

Me: Hey, X. This girl just left, put off by the FLM designs... she asked if I was BLM or ALM.

X: [rolls eyes] Yeah that was my dad's big problem too, thinking people would be offended, and if they are, fuck 'em. I'm saying "all lives matter", even fictional ones.

(That last sentence is a huge problem for me, for reasons I think should be obvious.)

Me: "All lives matter" is intended to shut down people trying to address serious problems.

X: People don't know how to address problems... and to be honest, some of those people running in with the police deserve what they're getting.

(We're way into not-okay territory here and I've invested a huge amount of time and a notable amount of money in this event, and knowing now that X apparently has difficulty staying awake while driving on the freeway, I'm also concerned about his safety if I decided to just leave suddenly... but at this moment I'm not ready to get into what seems like is likely to devolve into a screaming match in front of everyone at the con.)

Me: the BLM movement only exists because there's a huge amount of injustice built into the system. When everything else is held equal, a black person on average receives 2-3 times more jail time than a white person, and that should never happen.

(I don't have reference for that specific figure on-hand -- please check my work and leave a link if you have one, whether I remembered it correctly or not. Thank you.)

X: [basically murmurred agreement]

I don't want to make any excuses for his diminishing of real-world problems, I think it's bad... I'm conflicted about how to address this problem for myself... I plan to publish photos of myself at the con, and the signs for those designs will be in the background... do I black them out? If I do that, am I enabling him?

I don't *think* he realizes what the problem is... I don't *think* he's deliberately racist. On the way back to the house from the convention he offered to buy me dinner at a shawarma place (I'd never had it -- it was good -- it actually reminded me of some southern cafeterias, although the seasoning and the decoration were a little different.)

The waitresses wore hijabs and he was familiar them (had been there many times), and treated them nice enough... though I will say that some of the things he says seem fairly insensitive in a general sense. For example, he makes a lot of objectifying comments about women, including for example, one of the shawarma waitresses, "[damn she's hot]... and great tits". (Of course, he's only seen her breasts 100% covered -- not even cleavage -- so it's a little odd to me to hear someone be so overtly objectifying of someone who's entire outward image is one of "I am not here for you to ogle".) And the whole day at the con was similar -- frequent mentions of "she's smokin' hot" or "that red head" or "I've never wanted to give wood to an elf so bad", which I tried not to encourage. (I like porn too, but my interest in potential partners isn't based on their looks.)

These are things I hadn't noticed in previous phone or online conversations. So I'm a bit conflicted... He's open enough to be friendly with the shawarma waitresses... but he's also interested in them to the point of sexual interest in women who're being very careful to be NOT sexy. So how confrontational should I be about "fantasy lives matter"?

I don't plan to share a table with him again if he's going to continue promoting them... I would hope he would eventually figure out that the phrase is likely to reduce his sales, even when a person might agree with his sentiment, because they don't want to buy a shirt that's going to get them into verbal fisticuffs with people. But this being his first event, and saying that he's already plunked down $1400 into it, it seems to me unlikely that he'll learn that soon. Though in honesty, it always feels like cold comfort to me when someone is doing the right thing only because they realize some kind of financial reward for it.

So should just not sharing tables in the future be where I leave it? Is it okay to accept that, "he's not a deliberate racist, just kind of an insensitive jerk" and just limit my involvement? As an autistic person who knows what it's like to be ostracized for being unintentionally insensitive, am I being too harsh if I say I feel like this is too much? Does that make me a hypocrite? And what about the fact that there are now photos of me in the act of affiliating myself with the creator who promoted "fantasy lives matter"?

Regardless of how it may impact my image, I'm trying to figure out what course of action will produce the best results for everyone -- that hopefully anyone who can become a better person will, regardless of how it impacts my image. Obviously I always have to think about my image, we all do, but that's a secondary concern. I feel like I should be willing to sacrifice my image if the alternative is being hypocritical, cruel, or even just unwilling to evolve or better myself.

Thanks for reading and helping me with this. I appreciate any advice you have.

- Sam

(Now I need to get about 6 hours sleep, because I spent too long composing this blog and have to be up early for the event tomorrow. Thank god my diabetes didn't trash my energy today, and fingers crossed I have the same luck tomorrow.)

UPDATE 9/17/2018

Maybe I should have waited until the end of the event before writing this blog, but the subject distresses me and I wanted to talk about it sooner than later. At the end of Friday, neither X or I had sold anything at the event. Saturday morning, X printed off about 4 shirts as samples to lay on the front of the table (good marketing), to show people that, "hey these pictures on the poster in the back go on t-shirts". It worked and over Saturday and Sunday, he sold at least a half-dozen shirts, most of them "Fantasy Lives Matter" shirts. So while there are some people who are offended by them, there are apparently also a large number of people excited by them (I think exclusively white people that I saw, although most of the attendees looked pretty white to me as well). ::sigh::

Over the course of the event, 27 new people signed up for our Woohooligan Weekly Dick Joke Advocate mailing list. I know many of those people were either indifferent to the FLM shirts or some may have even been excited by them... but I have no idea how many people may have simply avoided conversation with me all-together because of them.

I still have no plans to share another table with X. It's weird to me, because he's really sensitive about other things, like he kept profusely apologizing for falling asleep in the car because he apparently suffers from pretty bad road hypnosis. He's made the hour drive before, but I was concerned about him making the drive after a full day manning the table at the con. Meanwhile I also discovered he's got a huge chip on his shoulder about (of all things) shaking hands.

X: I hate it. I don't like people touching me.

Me: You know people are about 30% more likely to buy from you right?

X: You may be right, but I don't care. It was originally a symbol of distrust. Do you know where it came from?

Me: Yeah, it was originally a way of showing that you weren't armed, but it's evolved into a symbol of trust.

X: It's evolbed into a bullshit thing we do for no goddamn reason!

So to recap: shaking hands is tragic evidence of the decline of civilization, while Black Lives Matter is deluded and don't know how to address problems, and "many of them deserve what they're getting anyway".

I just can't fathom how a person can have that set of priorities when they go out of their way to eat shawarma and so forth and don't appear to be outwardly racist in any other way that I can tell.

His FLM shirts outsold mine by a wide margin, and frankly I don't care... or rather, I find it disheartening... and I'm not about to deliberately associate my work with it in the future. All people need justice, and if you think it through, you should realize that "all lives matter" is the actual meaning of "black lives matter". Saying "all lives matter" as a response is like saying of the condition of slaves, "slave owners have problems, too!" It takes air away from the importance of addressing a great deal of injustice in our country and I don't want to contribute to trivializing that in any way. Even if I stood to gain financially from it, I wouldn't do it.

I'm still not sure what else to do, beyond just not sharing con tables with him again, and would still appreciate hearing any thoughts you have on it. Thanks.

- Sam

[ellaucatwo]

My Evaluations through the weeks

Week 1 

For this week i have spent most of my time researching into children's books. I looked into how to create a children's book and it seems a lot harder than I expected to be. There are a lot of things to consider when creating a children's book. You firstly need to make sure your characters stay consistent throughout the book. This is one thing that I am nervous for as I only ever design one character for one frame, but for the book it will have to remain the same for about 30 pages. Another big thing to consider is colour, I have found out that colour is very important to children as their eyes are still developing. This means they don’t see all shades of colour properly and thats why they're drawn more to brighter colours. They also associate colour to certain things, so if I wanted to make my monster red kids could instantly make the kids not like the character as it reminds them of blood. This means I will need to make a lot of decisions thoroughly before deciding them. 

This week has made me realise how hard it is going to be to create a children's book, as I thought it was going to be an easy task. I thought kids minds aren't smarter enough or even cared enough on some features of a book, which would make it easy to make one. I am excited to find out more on how to create a children's so I can do it properly. 

Also this week my step dad has begun the writing for the book ‘Monster Twins’ with the two main characters of Bella and Bertie. So next week I will starting drawing ideas on how to create them. My plan for next week is to start developing my ideas to something.

Week 2

I have enjoyed week two quite a lot as it has been a more of a designing week. I have been designing monsters for what Bella and Bertie will look like. I have started on my sketchbook which has been a lot of fun because its hand on drawing and I can see all my ideas coming together. I’ve use a whole range of materials when creating my monsters, I’ve used watercolour, acrylic, biro, cardboard and pieces of paper. I really enjoyed using numerous materials for my monsters, it allowed me to see them in a new perspective. I enjoyed using watercolour for my monsters the most as it was the easiest to use and I was able to shade in a way I like. All though I wont have the monsters in the watercolour effect for the book, I will go for a more sold colour effect. 

This week I have made an important decision of what colour Bella and Bertie should be. I did research on the psychology of colour, I have found out the positives and negatives of each colour. From all the colours I looked at and the pros and cons of them and decided that magenta will be best for Bella and orange will be best for Bertie. It was very interesting looking up the psychology of colour as there was a lot of negatives about colours which I never knew. I didn't know that blue is seen as an unfriendly colour so it was one I couldn't use even though it would've suit Bertie very well. 

As I started the final project very late I now only have four weeks left to the deadline to hand in all of my work. So I am starting to feel a bit stressed that I wont be able to get it all complete, as I still haven't started my final piece and even haven't decide what body type to choose for Bella and Bertie. Next week I am hoping to have the body type decided for them and to have an official page finished and ready to print. My step dad has got quite a few pages written now so I have an option of choosing which page to practise on.

Week 3

This has been my most productive week out of them all as I have actually finished a couple pages of the book, which are ready to print. I am more than happy on how the pages turned out, the pages have come out so much better than I thought they would. It’s so amazing see the pages coming to life and seeing how they started from just the pages been written. To come up with the designs of the pages, I started designing them on my sketchbook. And I done this so I could see the pages forming together like a proper book and to sketch them quicker. 

Procreate is the app I have been using for drawing my pages and it has been so amazing. It makes drawing them so easy, there are so many features to the app which give so many options. 

I am happy with all the work I have done this week and think at the rate I’m going I might be able to get my book finished. I feel confident with how the pages turned out and I don't see anything needed to be changed on them. This week I have also done some research into different artists and illustrators so I could get some inspiration on how I could develop my monsters, but I didn't do as much research as I wanted to do this week so that wasn't good. 

My goal for next week is to starting sketching designs for what other characters should look like and hopefully by the end of the week I hope to have a rough idea of what they would look like. I would also like to get a couple more pages completed by next week.

[dyernews]

Discover It Credit Card Review

Many months ago now, following what I called my financial awakening, I found that I was suddenly in the market for a new rewards credit card. This led me to start researching various cards before ultimately landing on my final choice: the Discover It card. Before we get into my hands-on review, let me explain what I liked about this card on paper and why I ultimately applied for it.

Why I Chose the Discover It Card

As you probably know if you’ve ever set out to find a new credit card there are tons of options, each with their own set of pros and cons. Admittedly my first line of thinking was to look at branded cards that would offer loyalty perks for various airlines or hotels. However, while I’d like to do more travel, at this time it wasn’t clear that I’d use any one of these brand-specific cards enough to get any real rewards. So what did I go for instead?

A flat cash back rate with rotating bonus categories

Before adding the It card to my wallet, my wife and I actually had been using a PNC card she’d been using for years. While it is a strong option overall, the credit card has one glaring downside: any category that wasn’t gas, entertainment, or dining accrued only .25% cash back unless we spent more than $10,000. Because of this,  finding a card that could fill that hole was a big priority. With that goal in mind I was attracted to the Discover It card’s 1% back on everything. However what really won me over were the bonus categories.

Each quarter the It card offers a new spending category that nets you 5% on up to $1,500 in spending. For example during this quarter cardholders can earn 5% on purchases made at restaurants. This actually tops the already-impressive 4% that my Uber Visa card (which I obtained about a year after my Discover It) carries in this spending category.  Currently, the rest of Discover’s announced 5% slate looks like this:

July-September 2018: Restaurants

October-December 2018: Amazon.com & Wholesale Clubs

Hopefully Discover will unveil their 2019 line-up soon as I’ve noticed that they do change a bit from year to year.

No annual fee

For a short time during my search I actually considered a card with an annual fee. In many cases, such as with the Disney Premier Visa (which I was drawn towards given my affinity for that particular company), it seemed that paying these fees might be a good bet in the long run. But who wants to shell up upwards of $100 to perhaps only barely earn it back?

That’s why I was delighted to discover (no pun intended) that the It card carried no annual fee. Additionally, unlike many other rewards cards, there wasn’t even a higher tier of card to tempt you. Ultimately this gives me greater flexibility as I don’t feel obligated to use the card or risk wasting my fee.

Foreign transactions + acceptance issues?

Before applying for my Discover card my biggest concern was about how many retailers would accept the card outside of the U.S.  This was especially important because, while the card boasted no foreign transaction fees, I questioned whether that selling point would ever even come into play if I couldn’t find anyone to take my card while on vacation. What started as a major concern quickly turned around once I learned that Discover has partnerships with UnionPay in China and JCB in Japan to boost their acceptance in a huge way. Unfortunately my latest travels haven’t taken me to that part of the globe (although I did spend time in Hong Kong, which is actually not included by the UnionPay partnership) and I learned from my visits to Paris that acceptance in Europe is pretty low. Therefore, unless you’re headed to China or Japan, it’s probably best to have cash or a Visa card onhand as a backup.

First year = double cash back

Admittedly the Discover It card doesn’t offer a huge signing bonus upfront. On the other hand that could be a good thing if you play your cards right. Currently the company is offering a bonus to new cardholders where they will match the cash back you earn in the first year.

To be clear, this means that you won’t receive your bonus until after a full year of using the card but this presents you with an opportunity to earn a big payoff. There is no limit to the level of cash back they will match and you can even use your cash back in the meantime without it deducting from your matching bonus. With this offer on top of the 1% all the time and 5% quarterly categories, I was able to score a pretty sizeable bonus at the end of my first year and still have a couple of hundred dollars sacked away, ready for me to redeem when the time is right.

Card design is on point

I’d be lying if I said that this wasn’t a factor. I opted for the plum-colored card but was happy to see that I can order additional cards that look like old cassette tapes or ones with NHL hockey team logos on them (go Devils). Initially you’ll have the choice between four basic card colors: plum, garnet, spruce, and the very rare and exotic… blue.

When receiving the card you may be surprised to find that all of the info including your name and the card number is printed on the back. This leaves the front with a clean look, nice finish, and just overall sexy appearance. Like I said, this probably shouldn’t be a big deal but it is. For what it’s worth, I did end up ordering the cassette tape design for my wife and she gets compliments about it from just about every merchant that sees it.

My Experiences So Far

Having been a Discover cardholder for some time now, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to explore the card’s site, app, and more. Here’s what I think is worth knowing about the Discover Card user experience:

Apple Pay and iOS integration

I presume that most credit cards you can obtain these days are compatible with Apple Pay but that’s always a good thing in my book. However what really impressed me was another iOS feature Discover offered.

If you’re like me you frequently swipe down on your iPhone to reach your notification center and overview of the day. While this typically includes a look at the weather and what items are on your calendar it also allows for third party widgets, including Discover. Now I can quickly view my card balance from this dashboard making it easy to keep on top of things. Plus the Discover app is compatible with Touch and Face ID, which I say is another win.

Something else I should mention is that, since I time I first got my Discover card, they updated their app to allows users to access their credit card and Discover Bank accounts under a single login. As a Discover Bank customer, this was a welcomed improvement. The change also makes it easier to transfers earnings from my Cashback Debit to my It card rewards balance.

Bonus offers and coupons

On top of the regular cash back offers there is also a section of the app and the site devoted to Discover Deals. This page houses a mix of retailer-specific cash back bonuses as well as various coupons made available to Discover customers. For example cardholders can enjoy 5% cashback on purchases made at JCPenney.com, Ulta.com, Gap.com, and more. Keep in mind that you’ll need to shop at these sites using the link on the Discover Deals page and, of course, terms and conditions apply.

Cash out for gift cards and get more

Another aspect of the It card I was surprised to learn about was their selection of gift cards that could be redeemed with cash back earnings. What makes this an even better proposition is that all of these gift cards come with free money. For instance $45 can buy you a $50 AMC movie card while $20 can get you $25 to Bed Bath & Beyond. Currently there are more than 100  gift card deals listed so this offers a lot of options to get the most from your earnings.

Credit score

Since part of the reason I decided to get another credit card all that time ago was to help bring up my credit scores even more, I was encouraged to find that Discover includes your FICO score from TransUnion on your statements. This information is also accessible through the app and the wesbite. Although this will only give you one credit score it’s nonetheless a nice added perk.

Easy account freeze

If you’ve seen a Discover card commercial in the past several years you’ve probably heard about this nifty feature. Basically, if you misplace your card but aren’t quite sure that it’s gone for good, you can put a hold on your account just in case. If you do end up finding the card afterward — no harm, no foul — you can unfreeze your account and go back to using your card. This is one feature I hope to not have to use but I’m still glad it’s there.

Final Thoughts on the Discover It Card

I was attracted to the Discover It card for its simple flat-rate cash back offer as well as the 5% quarterly categories that would make it easy to supplement my current rewards card.

Add in its lack of foreign transaction fees, a first-year bonus cash back doubling offer, it’s downright pretty design, and I was sold. However my choice was further validated once I received the card and got to fully explore its tech integrations, security features, and the various ways it allows me to save money.

Even my wife’s PNC card and my Uber Visa in the mix, there are still purchases where my Discover’s cash back wins out, allowing me to maximize my rewards all around. For all of those reasons I would recommend the Discover It card to anyone looking for a solid cash back card.

  The post Discover It Credit Card Review appeared first on Dyer News.

[faeuniblog]

Official Script For Visual Essay

Page 1

Hello there fellow melons, I’m gonna be educating you guys on the joys that are the publishing industry!

So, Melon Sandy, I see you have your book there!

If you’re a writer that’s just written the best story ever, you’ll probably want to share said book with the world so you can make lots of money and be really famous, right?

But almighty voice in the sky who sounds super amazing and cool - like it really sucks that this is a written visual essay and not an audio one - I here you cry!

How do I go about share my creation with the world?!

Well, you have two options little Melon Sandy. You can go to Publishing Company or Self-Publish your work.

Page 2

Now let’s talks about what a Publisher is and does.

Publishing Company – Basics, Pros and Cons.

If you decide to go with the Traditional method and get published by a big publisher, you’ll need to have your work accepted by a literary agent first. Once you get an agent, they will take care of selling your manuscript to the big publishers (2).

Literary agents take 15% of your total income from the first sale. (1)

By going through an agent you’ll be paid an upfront advance for your work. The advance could range from £1,000 to over £100,000 (2).

Having an agent take care of shit is nice, but its damn hard to get an agent to take your work and even then, there’s no reassurance that they’ll even be able to sell your manuscript to a publisher (3).

If you're lucky enough to get a publisher interested.

The publisher will take care of editorial, copyediting, and design work, as well as invest in sales and marketing (3). Depending on whether you’re with a small or large publisher, the budget on these things can range from £15,000 to £50,000 (2).

However, one down side is that Publisher might make you edit you story in ways you don’t agree with. (3).

You probably won’t get a moving or TV deal but you stand a much higher chance by going with the traditional method (2).

Your book will be released both in physical and digital shops (2).

So, you get a load of support from a Publisher and Agent but in return you will have to give up a percentage of your earnings and control (2).

Page 3

Let’s look at J.K. Rowling as an example for publishing with a Company!

The first Harry Potter book was rejected by the first literary agency she applied too, and to add insult to injury, they didn’t give back her folder! (4)

She would luckily be accepted by the next literary agency, Christopher Little. Little sent the manuscript to 12 different publishers (who all rejected it!) before finally ending up with Bloomsbury (4) (5).

As when you go to a publisher, J.K was told to change the title of the US version from ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone’ to ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone’ as they didn’t think America’s would know what a ‘philosopher’ was would think it sounded boring (6) (7).

Hopefully, Melan Sandy, you won’t have a much trouble getting you book published as J.K. Rowling did.

Page 4

Self-Publishing – Basics, Pros and Cons

If you decide to go with Self-Published, there are two types of self-publishing: Digital and Old-fashioned (2) (3).

Anyone can be an artist or writer with the internet around.

Amazon charges nothing for you to upload your work to its worldwide audience, and websites like Tumblr give you a place to post your art and stories for free (2) (3).

By Self-publishing, you have complete creative control over your work, meaning it can be about anything with no one to stop you!

And all the money you make, is your money, no sharing with a big company!

With online shops like Amazon, you won’t get a money advance like you would if you’ll with a publisher (2).

Your book won’t be in bookshops and you’ll still have to face some costs like editorial and copyediting (2).

Remember, Amazon has over 5,000,000 e-books in its store and your book will simply be one of them, so it might be hard to get attention (2).

With free websites like Tumblr, you’re not going to make any money unless you go to separate sources such as Patreon or ko-fi but you have basically no limitation on what your work is about.

Page 5

An example of the Old-fashioned method would be making, printing and selling Zine, at conversions or online.

A zine (short for magazine or fanzine) is a small self-published work made up of text and images and is usually reproduced via photocopier (8).

They can be made by a single person, or a small group. An example of some popular zines are ‘Aint-Bad Magazine’, ‘Home Zine’ and ‘Record Culture Magazine’ (9).

Examples of people who have done shit with Self-Publishing

The Martian is a science fiction novel written by Andy Weir in 2011. Weir started writing the book in 2009, and was rebuffed by literary agents when trying to get prior books published. Weir decided to put the book online on his website in a serial format (10).

Fans of his book later requested him to make an Amazon Kindle version for 99 cents (the minimum allowable price he could set). The Kindle version sold 35,000 copies in three months, quickly rising to the top of Amazon’s best-selling science-fiction list (10).

Podium Publishing an audiobook publisher, signed for the audiobook rights in January 2013 and in March 2013 Weir sold the prints rights to Crown for over US$100,000 (10).

Homestuck is a webcomic written, illustrated and animated by Andrew Hussie and published on MS Paint Adventures. The comic is a combination of static images, animated GIFs, instant message logs and games made with Adobe Flash (11).

Homestuck arguably has the largest fan community out there, which has said to reach in the millions. Unlike the other authors on this list, Homestuck never got involved with publishers, this may be because it’s the only one on my list that’s a comic (11).

If you go almost any conversion, you are likely to find a Homestuck fan there either cosplaying or selling zines or art (11).

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By going with a publishing house, they will bear the costs, such as editing, marketing and paying advances, but they also take a substantial share of the profits can take control away from you to better suit their ideas of what is best (2) (3).

The changes the published made you do could arguably be for the better, but they could also be for the worst.

While is you self-published, if you want help for advice, you’ve going to have to pay for it with your own money.

With Self-Publishing, the author bears all of these costs but gets the benefit of all profits being exclusively theirs.

I think another one of the appeals of self-publishing is the control you get to keep over entire process. The writer decides the price, distribution, marketing, and public relations, they can also outsource these tasks if they want guidance or support (2) (3).

A lot of people who go for Self-Published end up with a Publisher anyway, but with a lot more control and say over what your product is then you would normally have.

Is this detour into Self-Publishing this just an extra, unnecessary step to get a Publisher?

Page 7

The method you decide to go for should depend on what type of story you are publishing.

For someone like J.K, the internet wasn’t a viable option while she was writing and she wouldn’t be able live off the slow money that comes from publishing on the internet.

She didn’t have the means to advertise her book by herself either, going to a Publisher was the only option.

Andy Weir tried the publishing root first, but they weren’t interested, so he started writing his book in a format that worked well with the internet (10).

Homestuck, could only really be a digital comic, there might be a physical one somewhere down the line but the original could only ever exist on the internet.

Both methods have the negative and positives.

But hey, whatever method you decide.

Good Luck

By Fae-Jinni & Melon Sandy

Ending

Page 8

So Melon Sandy have you decided how you’re going to publish your awesome book?  (I turn to look at Sandy)

(There is a crushed Melon in the floor)

“Melon Sandy?” (Confused)

(It have bow like Melon Sandy)

(I look down to see a knife in my hand with Melon blood on it…)

(Camera movies to show my face. It is coved in Melon juice…)

 References

(1)  Staff, W. (2017). How Literary Agents Get Paid: Standard Commission Practices And Payments For Literary Agents - Writer's Relief, Inc.. [online] Writer's Relief, Inc. Available at: http://writersrelief.com/blog/2014/02/standard-commission-practices-payments-literary-agents/ [Accessed 18 Nov. 2017].

(2)  Writersworkshop.co.uk. (2017). How to publish a book: a guide | Writers' Workshop. [online] Available at: http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/How-To-Get-Published.html [Accessed 21 Nov. 2017].

(3)  Here!, S. (2017). Pros And Cons Of Traditional Publishing vs Self-Publishing. [online] The Creative Penn. Available at: https://www.thecreativepenn.com/self-publishing-vs-traditional/ [Accessed 21 Nov. 2017].

(4)  Flood, A. (2017). JK Rowling says she received ‘loads’ of rejections before Harry Potter success. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/24/jk-rowling-tells-fans-twitter-loads-rejections-before-harry-potter-success [Accessed 21 Nov. 2017].

(5)  Kennedy, M. (2017). JK Rowling posts letters of rejection on Twitter to help budding authors. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/25/jk-rowling-harry-potter-posts-letters-of-rejection-on-twitter [Accessed 21 Nov. 2017].

(6)  En.wikipedia.org. (2017). J. K. Rowling. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._K._Rowling#Subsequent_Harry_Potter_publications [Accessed 21 Nov. 2017].

(7)  Theguardian.com. (2017). Why the name change from "Harry Potter and the Philosopher''s Stone" in the UK to "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer''s Stone" in the United States ? | Notes and Queries | guardian.co.uk. [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-18387,00.html [Accessed 21 Nov. 2017].

(8)  En.wikipedia.org. (2017). Zine. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zine [Accessed 21 Nov. 2017].

(9)  Format.com. (2017). 11 Cool Artist Zines You Need to Own. [online] Available at: https://www.format.com/magazine/galleries/art/11-cool-artist-zines [Accessed 21 Nov. 2017].

(10)          En.wikipedia.org. (2017). The Martian (Weir novel). [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(Weir_novel) [Accessed 21 Nov. 2017].

(11)          En.wikipedia.org. (2017). Homestuck. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestuck#frb-inline [Accessed 21 Nov. 2017].