Figuring out the Publishing Side
My college friend, Damon Thompson, had agreed to make the cover images for Tabloia. Years before, we had talked about doing a comic together, and it never panned out, but I thought of him again come time for the covers, and he came up with gorgeous images. So at this stage, I had a few issues of art completed, some great covers, and some nice pin-ups.
I was getting to know a friend, Wayne Jones, who had published a few books, and when he heard I was doing comics, he said maybe he’d enjoy helping me to publish. I gave him some copies of my stories, and we got together over lunch. The first thing he said was, he had a chance to read them, and he thought they were good. He just thought I needed to work on my stories and characterization a little bit, and I may have something.
That blow really shocked and hurt. I couldn’t really look at him as I tried to ask, “Like what do you mean? What do you have in mind?” And he immediately said, Just kidding. Man, though, that comment stuck with me and kept me insecure toward him ever since.
That lunch, we talked about me doing all the art and editorial, and him just keeping strictly to the publishing. That’s exactly how I wanted it. He talked about seeing if there were a way I could get a business loan, and use the loan not only to pay for the publishing, but to give myself a salary, so that I could work on the comics instead of needing a job. He said if he was going to be the publisher, he would pay a salary, but then he would get rights to the work, and we’d have to work out how much, and things like that.
All this was interesting and exciting to talk about. I kept working on my drawings and thinking about how I wanted to do this. It was a lot of pressure in one way, because if the book didn’t do well, I would have the guilt of knowing this guy was going to lose his own personal money.
Finally, we decided we would prefer for me to finance it myself, and he said he was happy to give his help, however I needed it, without paying him. By this time, we had tried to crunch some numbers, as far as how much the books would cost, running ads, etc. And it was evident very early on that even if the book sold all right, it would take a lot to make all this money back. Of course I kind of hoped it would sell pretty well, and had no conception of just how much money I would soon lose.
While we were making these plans, I was getting ready to submit a request to the Xeric Grant, for the third time. I had been showing Wayne everything I wrote and drew, and so now I showed him my previous two years of submissions to the grant. He said, You’ve got to learn to write a grant. And he helped me put together my third proposal. The plan was that we would begin the publishing process after the winners of the grant were announced, whether we were awarded or not. When we weren’t awarded, Wayne told me that he never thought I had a chance of getting it anyways, and was surprised I even bothered to try at all. I assume he thought I just made too much money, having a wife that makes a decent living, and making a decent living myself. But he never specified exactly just what he meant.
I bought a huge, expensive 12″x17″ scanner and scanned all the images, and then got copies to Wayne. He would clean the images up, size them, and get them ready for the printer. He laid out and formatted all the text pages for me. He got in touch with our printer. He helped me put a package together to submit to Diamond, containing the first three issues. He told them we wanted to run an ad and send out promotional posters, and Diamond agreed to distribute our book. He helped me get the account together with Diamond, and we were ready to begin publishing.
Of course, I thought it was just a matter of time now, before I became an instant, overnight superstar. I was proud of the book. People had told me they thought it was good. So why not? That’s what you always hope, you know?