Self Publishing Dissemination - Reviews- Broken Frontier

Broken Frontier is a magazine-style website which focuses on comics, particularly small press and self-published work. They do a lot of comics reviews, promotion and news features on that subject. I plan to send my comics here for review to help with promotion when they are ready. Before that, I wanted to look into their process for requesting reviews, and found that they have a really in depth page that answers the question 'How do I get coverage for my self-published comic?'

Below is some key points which I found useful:

"For review requests, digital or hard copies. If you want to send hard copies to a particular staff member, please contact us for details. Due to the international whereabouts of our staff, we don’t list a public mailing address. Since we receive multiple review requests daily, we cannot cover all requests. We do, however, share requests that fit within our coverage area across the team and cover as much material as possible."

How to pitch that e-mail request:

So to sum up. This is what we always suggest when e-mailing Broken Frontier for small press coverage.
(i) A couple of short sentences about the comic’s style, themes, subject matter and why it may be of interest to the reviewer given previous coverage.
(ii) A couple of sample pages.
(iii) A link to your site/store.

Always offer a choice of physical or digital copy for review if possible"

Comic Promo Pages

 

End of Year Show - Display Planning

For my End of Year show display I want to make something eye-catching to use to highlight my work. I've mocked up an idea which will be made from wood and painted; with two brackets at the bottom to help it stand, which can be taken off for easier storage. I wanted to make something that has multiple uses so I will use this in place of a pop up banner at comics markets and fairs. 

I've assumed 3ft, but this depends on the brackets to make sure its sturdy enough... changes are it'll be smaller

I have booked a chat with the wood-work technician to talk through the specifics and get an intro to the woodwork machines I'll need to make it; which should hopefully be fairly simple!

Self-Publishing - Setting Up Pre-Order

I have gone and set up a pre-order store page for my two comics. It took a while to set up as I had to ensure postage and package was all correct, and write out descriptions, but now the page is set to go! I plan to make it live in a week or so, when I've really got more pages complete and feel more comfortable about fulfilment. As well as having more images to share to help me promote it.

I have used the inbuilt store option on my already existing website, purely for ease, it does up the subscription cost to £25 a month (including domain and hosting), which means I've added on an extra 50p per comic to go towards that. At markets and in-person I'll be selling each comic for £6.

The delivery time for the pre-order is set for August; I need to get everything printed by July 1st (my first comics fair), so I do feel reasonably confident I can meet that date.

My initial aim is to order 50 of each comic, dependent on how well the pre-orders go, which means I'll have extra stock to sell at the two comic markets I have lined up.

I will put together some graphics to help me promote the pre-order too, which I will use on my social media.

Self-Publishing - Pre-Orders & Crowdfunding Research

I researched out to the comics community via twitter to ask for advice on the pros and cons of crowdfunding V's a self-ran presale, here are some responses I received:

The consensus seems to be that a crowd funder (eg Kickstarter) is a great way to promote your work, its transparent about the costs of the project and how much you're looking to raise, it also allows me to send updates to everyone much easier than a self-led pre-sale. I still don't know if this is the route I will go down for this project (purely based on time restraints), but it's interesting to know for future reference.

Below is a slide from James Lawrences lecture on crowdfunding, specifically on working out the costings:

Discussed the maths (costings) with some other comic creators, and it made me realise how complicated this could be, I was advised that it can be time consuming too to promote and make it worth while.

An option that was given to me was setting a page up on my website as a pre-sale, with a link directly to paypal, to keep it really simple and manageable, with little pressure to hit a target in a certain time scale etc.

I think for my first two comics I will go down the pre-sale route, and for further projects (or even reprintings), where I have more time, I will go down the crowd funding route.

Creating my Own Font - Final Version

Based on the research I've created the below font. Below are two pages as example of the font being used. It still feels really like my own hand-writing, but a lot clearer and legible, and of course, much quicker to type out than hand letter. 

 

Self-Publishing - Lettering - Research

 I reached out to the comics community via twitter to ask for advice on lettering, specifically why a lot of comics are in capitals and for examples of any that where not in capitals, so I can analyse what would work best for my work, I want a balance between handwritten and professional.

Some observations:

• The fonts seem to be quite thin
• Lower case lettering varies in high often, meaning the line spacing needs to be larger.
• Most speech-bubbles seem to be centrally aligned