by Talking to Tom was incredible. He’s by far my favorite comic writer because his work ethic is unsurpassed, plus he’s got that pulp-style aesthetic to his books which couples positive heroism with the great soap opera drama that Stan Lee brought to his audience and changed the comic landscape forever.
If anything, the takeaway is to redouble my efforts to get more out.
On a comic level, there’s not much more I can do. I’m already extended as far as I can go with the resource I can’t do much about — money — to pay artists to draw my stories every month. Unless we can really find a way to get this movement jumpstarted to where there’s a greater group who really is here for comics, I’m not sure what I can do.
On the novel level, I have been slacking. Definitely not outputting at Tom DeFalco levels and this is where I’m going to be able to push harder. I’ll redouble my efforts to get more of this content out as I’ve stalled a little bit the last couple months. I’m getting very close to the end of my Sword and Sorcery, The Demon’s Eye and need to just get that done!
I think I’m also going to refocus marketing on Patreon. The comic crowdfund craze has died down a little, and Amazon is due for an e-book market crash which everyone’s getting a bit panicked about (plus Amazon’s pay-to-play nowadays for exposure). Getting Patreon to higher levels means steady income which makes comic and book production a lot easier.
A comic issue costs me just for art about $2,000 before I even see anything for my work.
A novel costs me about $1600 between cover and editing.
If Patreon subs can get up to the point of dialing that in per month it allows me to do more, take more risks with out-there projects and random things I want to write but probably shouldn’t spend time on from a commercial perspective, which will allow me to really flex as an artist/creator.
That’s gonna be the goal this year as industry is changing.
I just put out a samurai short comic 8-pages to my patreon subscribers yesterday, The Duel, which is a lot of fun and satisfies my inner weeb. This is the type of story I can do but probably won’t be something I can run a crowdfund for a general audience. It’s fun and awesome and different — and that’s going to be how to transform culture, not playing by corporate rules.
Check out The Duel and tons of other great pieces of content here.
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