I’ve wound up with a game plan, but I don’t need to stick with it unless I feel like it.
1. First priority.
I’m going to do another giant-sized Doris Danger book. This is the obvious one, because it can collect the two 16-page Doris Danger books, and all I need to do is pound out maybe a dozen or twenty new pages, and that will be ready. It will be a big book with a big cover price, with a minimum of extra work to be done.
I’ve got a blurb from Stan Lee, and a cover by Shag. It’s going to be another nice package, that I can be as proud of as the first one. And I’m really proud with the Doris Danger work I’ve been doing. I flip through the pages, and find myself laughing out loud at all my jokes. Isn’t it nice knowing my books have at least one fan…ME. Of course I’d like to have this published in time for San Diego this year.
The sixteen pagers sold pathetically low numbers, and on top of that, because the cover prices were so low, it did that much worse. On top of that, I woke up in a sweat one night and realized I can only break just even, if for some reason I manage to sell every issue I print. Which is impossible, because I’ll send a portion out to reviewers and editors.
When I came up with the $2.50 cover price, I felt like a heel charging so high for a piddly 24-page book. But the problem was, that means I only get one dollar a book from the distributor. The problem with that is that the printer charges me, including shipping, $960 for a thousand issues. For the less-math-inclined, that means it costs me ninety-six cents for each issue, and Diamond pays me a dollar. So when I went to the printer with these books, I figured, well that’s four cents I can theoretically make per book. And never mind the books I give away for notice or reviews, which would automatically cut into that four-cent-per-book profit I was making.
The reason I woke up in a sweat is, I realized I’d forgotten that Diamond charges an extra two percent fee for shipping my books from the printer to them. So just like that, my amazing profits are cut in half! I just NEVER FUCKING WIN AT THIS GODDAMN INDUSTRY! OH, THE GODDAMN MISERY OF IT ALL, JUST TRYING TO GET MY BOOKS INTO THE HANDS OF POTENTIAL FANS! THE GODDAMN MISERY!
I’ve drawn four Doris Danger pages in the last three weeks. I did two pages in two weeks on my own. This week was Thanksgiving, so not only did I have less days of work, but also my parents were in town, and could hold my little screaming baby and keep him busy and smiling while I got some work done. Realistically, I don’t know the likelihood I’ll be able to be this “productive,” EVER AGAIN…And I say “productive” with quotes because I think it’s PATHETIC to only get two pages done in a week, for Christ’s sake…but everyone said becoming a parent is a definite life change…