Every book I've done has been beset with one problem or another; producing nice glossy colour books in fairly short runs (under 2000) requires a certain amount of cunning. To make a living from webcomics, you have to drag the absolute maximum profit from each of your burnt offerings. I can't tell you how green with envy I am when 'Dragon Face Comics' or 'Gamey Times' boasts of paying for a book with preorders - it takes me months to hit that mark. I did manage to pep things up last time by drawng a postcard to go in each of the first 400 books (the breakeven point on that occasion). Let me tell you what drawing 400 quite nice drawings in a couple of months is like. It makes you want to not ever draw 400 postcards ever again. And it certainly makes you not want to draw 600 of them.
In response to this annual complaint, someone will ask me "why don't you do pre-orders until you have enough money, then print?" The answer is that turnaround is slow on a book and I don't like to take orders until I have a due date.
I am not just here to gripe, after all I choose to do these things (in order to eat and live in a house). I am very proud that I run a business with no debts. The fact that it will kill me with stress at 47 stops me having to worry about saving for a pension. I will be on an exercise bike shouting into a huge mobile phone (about "perfect binding" no doubt) when something will pop and I will fall into a crumpled heap to be discovered by my model wife.
I think that what I need is a patron. A patron is a fat man in a waistcoat and buckled shoes with a pocketwatch who gives me a vast quantity of money and lets me get on with it. I am not going to piss it up the wall, no sir, anyone who knows me will tell you I am a cheap date. So I suppose the question is, is this you:
If it is, I have a figure in mind and while you will not get it back in material terms, your place in heaven is assured.
5 comments:
he'd make your house over with a touch of victorian age style.
there'd be big globes everywhere.
I can assume it is something you've pondered already, but how about knobbling a few of those industrious companies that pester you for your comics and trying to sort out a deal for a printed book that doesn't leave you with a missing kidney and liver, instead leaving you with printed panels?
Then again, who really needs kidneys? They're just a waste of bodily resources.
Or perhaps take it onto Dragon's Den? You could easily win over those scaly investors by offering them a free or cut-price portrait.
Only of these is a seriously offered solution.
Anonymousse:
My collections aren't really fit for proper publishers, they don't tend to be drawn consistently all the way through. They're just a nice archive for people who want the web strips for their shelf.
On Dragon's Den I can see Theo Paphites being initially interested in selling them in Staples, while Peter Jones will try to parlay his telecommunications expertise into a decent offer. However they want 50% of the business and I am going to have to go and face the back wall and think about it.
Deborah Meadon is not impressed, she likes Shelley but thinks Desmond is an idiot and for that reason. she's out.
If I ever fall into vast and ridiculous amounts of money, you have my patronage. I wouldn't have the nice Victorian airs of the man pictured...it would be more of a Yankee yee-haw type of relationship.
But rest assured, in the unlikely case I am ever more than a poor college student, I'll support you publishing endeavors :P
Oh, I wish that was me. I wish it so hard. Look at his piercing eyes, gazing so steadily at exactly the place in heaven which will be his! There is a man solidly (so solidly! Wonder at his solid, almost corpulent placement) placed in this world, yet firmly holding course for the next!
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