I am unsure what to do about my O Men collections. For a while now, I've been thinking about doing nice big trade paperback books - they do seem affordable these days.
There are some pro's and cons. Cons are:
- I'd feel bad for the people that have shelled out for the 3-issue collections
- the cost (not only putting it together, but shipping it too).
- the time it's gonna take
- the sheer rubbishness of the first few issues - although, my theory has always been that Adrian Tomine started off worse, and he's happy to collect his early stuff (but would it put people off? There's always the possibility of 're-mastering' it all, but I doubt I would ever have time.)
Another option is PDFing the series, but I'm not a huge fan of that.
If I went with the Books option, I reckon it would cover 6 books in total. Issues 0-7, Issues 8-17, Issues 18-27, Issues 2.1-2.6, 2.7-2.12 and then volume 3. So some of them would be over 200 pages.
But at the moment, I really doubt I could afford it.
One of the reasons I got thinking about this was the upcoming Anthology issue - I feel like I should promote it more through Previews, since people are gonna put a lot of time and effort into it - and then I got to thinking that maybe Books might be a more viable option.
That's another thing - say I put 2.5 into previews, the anthology issue - what would I do if I got over 1000 orders??!! It takes me long enough to staple 100 issues lol (I print my own covers). But then again I guess if I went down that route, I'd have to use a proper printer on 2.5, who would do the cover too.
Oh sod it, I'll just have to win the lottery.
7 comments:
You can't get an Arts Council grant? (They'll shell out for anything these days :-))
If you're that unsure about the early material, perhaps the thing to do -- if you ever did win the lottery -- would be to put out a Season 2 anthology first, and then, if sales permitted, bring out the earlier stuff as "O-Men Classic" or some such thing.
But, you know, I'm a chemist, not a marketing bod, so...don't listen to me :-)
I've often wondered about big phonebook-style collections of The O Men. You could probably do two for series one, although I have no idea about costs. It's probably far too expensive to think about.
Have you thought about getting a "celebrity" artist to do a cover? That might translate to a few extra orders, which might then make a collection economically feasible.
Oh, and have you submitted anything to the Judge Dredd Megazine small press section yet?
As far as digital production goes, you could also try a comic book archive as an alternative to pdf. The CDisplay reader works better, in my opinion, than a pdf reader does (we've used both for review purposes at SBC).
oh ha ha you know, i tried that a while ago, and it's so confusing!!! the idea is that you're not allowed to make any money out of it. the calculations just puzzled me! i gave up.
that's an interesting idea.
one thought at the moment, is to just publicise Book 11 (2.4-2.6) in Previews - but don't call it Book 11, just call it its title (Team-Building) and say it's a great jumping-on point!
(That's another question - Volume One ends with the Book Nine collection, so what do i call the first collection of Volume Two? Book 2.1? Book 11?)
I use the CDisplay reader for...you know...stuff...and I agree with Kelvin: much easier to use and more versatile than yer basic pdf reader.
I'm gonna hopefully get a celeb to do the cover of issue 2.5.
i hear it's not that expensive tho. i mean, everyone seems to be doing it.
i haven't done a judge dredd submission d'oh.
i think when i release the next collection, that'll be a good one to send out to EVERYONE (ie Marvel etc).
I will have to look into the CDisplay thingy. Not heard of it before!
CDisplay is smaller and easier to find too. It's only about 150k, has it's own webpage, and you don't have to navigate through umpteen pages to find the most recent version. It's small enough to bundle with the collections if you go that route.
How are they numbering the Ultimates 2 trades? Is it Ultimates 2 volume 1, etc? You could go that way, although the "2.1" format still has that cool techno-geek chic thing going for it which still hasn't worn off.
sounds cool. i do like the printed page though... (as fiddly and expensive as it is)
not sure what to do on the numbering yet. I was just gonna say it'd be Book 2.1, but that's too confusing isn't it! (So that comes between the already-existing Books 2 and 3?!)
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