Well I’ve heard from basically everyone I was waiting to hear from after San Diego, and it’s looking like everything is a no-go. Image thinks the Doris Danger books are just not marketable enough, even though they enjoyed them. AIT/Planet LAR thinks Limbo Cafe is too weird for them. The movie studio I was talking with really enjoyed the Lump, but wasn’t expecting the tabloid twists I threw in at the end, and prefer to finance more straight-forward horror stories. So once again, I’m back to self-publishing. On the other hand, I’m building up contacts, so that each project I finish, I will have more people to send it to for potential future projects.
I got the orders for “Dr. DeBunko: The Short Stories,” and was disappointed to see them at 279, which is my – third? – lowest selling, lowest grossing title to date. I had spent a lot of time trying to hype and promote it, so this was especially a disappointment. It makes me wonder just how much the hype actually helps, since in this case, it appears not to have helped. In my usual insecure, pessimistic fashion, I wonder if I shouldn’t just do whatever the hell I feel like, and if people buy it, great, and if they don’t, then at least I didn’t waste all that goddamn time trying to hype it.
Here are some things I did to try and hype the book. I sent out emails to fans and shops on my spam list, and to editors and online comics organizations. I sent 600 flyers to my distributor to get out to stores, which they never did anything with (because my new representative apparently didn’t know how to do what I asked him to do, so he just didn’t do it), despite all the time and money it cost me to produce them and get them to him.
For the first time ever, and I’ve been told this is just what you have to do (see how I learn with experience), I sent advance copies of the full issue to a dozen interviewers and reviewers. The only hype I know of which it received, as a result of this, was from my steady supporters at www.comixfan.com (Thanks a ton, guys! I don’t know why you keep doing it). They did an unprecedented interview AND sneak peek. I felt excited and good about that, but then frustration ensued…
Their website allows viewers to include comments of their own, and before I had even been informed that the interview was up, a reader had publicly posted a comment, directly following my interview. He flatly announced he would pass on my book, because of my overuse of the word “whacko,” which he determined was my synonym for “mentally disabled.” He concluded that I must be a “real winner.” Then at the bottom of his character-bashing announcement, he used the opportunity to invite readers to see a sneak-peek of his own upcoming comic. Unbelievable… Glad I could not only be the public demonstration of your ridicule and scorn, but also be used as a marketing opportunity for you, friend.
I guess I should be grateful that after two years of self-publishing, this was my first attack against my work or my character. But I really took it personally, and was in a funk for the rest of the day. I spent that time concocting a reply to his slam, in which I politely and defensively explained that I don’t really despise people with mental disorders. He actually wrote back again that he accepted my apology, which is good, because if he had tried to escalate things, I would have had to have let him have the last word, rather than continue an idiotic dialogue on the defensive. Interestingly, he even admitted he should check out the Skeptics Society, which I suspect may have been a part of his offensive reply to my interview.
What this has taught me is that my paranoid fear of saying things that will be either accidentally stupid, or taken out of context, misconstrued, or that will piss people off, is absolutely justified! I had better be even more paranoid from here on out!
But other things are looking up. While sending out hype for the Dr. DeBunko book, I have managed to wrangle up a new potential friend through comicon.com THE PULSE, who was kind enough to put together an interview on the subject of Dr. DeBunko and even a little hyping of the upcoming Doris Danger sixteen page comics.
Another ally that I’ve been in contact with for years, who is at last doing me another huge help in the marketing department is the Skeptic Society. Their Skeptic Magazine’s official podcast, Skepticality, has asked me to participate in a podcast, and I’m both excited about it and worried that who the hell knows what crazy-assed stupid thing will come out of my mouth, when I’m trying to wow basically all the literati I wish most to impress and get in good graces with. I’m breathing hard just thinking about it.
Doing books on a monthly schedule for three months in a row is a weird feeling. I only just send out an announcement and start getting images printer-ready on the first book, and all of a sudden the second book’s announcement is due. On top of that, I suddenly decided “Doris Danger Greatest Army Battles” just wasn’t quite working for me, and a month before it needs to go to the printer, I decided I need to completely redo three pages, followed by needing two new pages for the following month’s “Doris Danger in Outer Space.” Five pages is usually nothing for me to complete over a two-month period, but now…I have a kid…
Having a kid is like this. He screams and screams, so you hold him and rock him and shush him, and the next thing you know it’s time for bed and you haven’t been able to do anything else all day, except trying to keep him from crying all that time. It feels like what little time I have to do something, I’m rushing to pound out just a few minutes of work, since I know that sleeping angel will be screaming again long before I’ve finished what I need to do.
Once again, Elizabeth, my wife and the mother of my child, is so supportive of my struggling comics career (I say struggling because despite working hard and trying everything I can think of, I remain unknown in the industry, and I’ve lost thousands of dollars every issue I’ve put out). She’s been willing to take our little Oscar and let me work, way more than I deserve.
I’m realizing, as soon as I get these last couple pages finished, I have no books necessarily planned. I can theoretically start any project I want. It’s kind of an exciting sensation to think about that, because I always enjoy the excitement of the new ideas more than the execution of the old ones.
Although I do feel like 1. I should do another twenty pages of Doris Danger stories, and then collect them in a second humongous treasury with the two upcoming issues, and 2. I might like to pound through Limbo Cafe and put that project behind me as well.
So most likely, that will be the game plan, just completing as much work as I can, as quickly as I can.