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8.10.2005

The Small Presser, No. 9: "Building a Schedule"

The great thing about self-publishing is that you are your own boss and you impose your own schedule deadlines. So if something comes up, you can slide a little. And some folks don’t have a schedule at all—the books simply come out when they do.

Personally, I feel it’s good to have some type of schedule to keep you driving forward. A regular publishing schedule also keeps a consistent beat in terms of getting publicity. For example, if you publish quarterly, distributors, comic shops and (hopefully) readers will begin to recognize the title.

Keeping any kind of schedule is difficult, given that most of us have full-time jobs and families. Even if you can’t commit to publish quarterly, at least set some deadlines around key shows that you plan to attend, especially if the shows offer free publicity for debuting books (as SPACE and SPX do). That’s what I do. So expect to see new stuff from me at SPX next month! (Teaser: the D.C. Conspiracy’s Dr. Dremo jam book, Mr. Big #5 and perhaps another brief book.)

If you plan to take this approach, build in some extra time for the actual printing of the book. Shit will happen. In fact, just this week, my printer sent me the Dr. Dremo job that I wasn’t happy with—the pages were a bit off center, a little too much for my liking. The printer will redo the order for me, but that takes extra time—I have to send the package back, they have print the order again, and ship it, etc. If you set a deadline too close to a show, you’ll end up either pulling your hair out if something screws up or you simply won’t have books for the show. Either way, it sucks. Building in an extra two weeks for printing lets you take on unexpectedly problems with ease.

Dembicki at 9:27 AM  |  link to this     

2 Comments

I think this is a really important thing Matt. I mean, the biggest problem that indy ccomics face is proving to potential readers that there is going to be a next issue. You have to be able to do that for the reader to invest any time immersing themselves into your story. A great example of how this can effect a great comic is to look at the indy book "faust" by David Quinn and Tim Vigil. Issue 13 just came out a few months ago. I swear to god issue 12 came out two years ago. they've never been consistant with thier publishing, although they do put out a high quality book. I mean, from a readers perspective it really sucks, although it'ss nice to be able to put it on your subscriptions list to finish out that 20 book list and get the discount knowing you won't have to shell out more than $3.95 a year for that title.

Jacob at 8/10/2005 10:28 AM   

But, on the flip side, sometimes lateness and delays can be turned into an endearing quality ala Stray Bullets.

But yes, there is only one Lapham and one Stray Bullets, schedules are important. In one WTOT review we got a comment that went something like "WTOT is a good book despite it's erratic schedule". It's bimonthly, never missed a ship-date. If some people don't get the concept of bimonthly, they'll never jive with a book that comes out when it comes out. You need some kind of consistency, whether it’s tied to an event (like a con) or a time frame.

Jason at 8/10/2005 2:01 PM   

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