Tag: distribution

Store Level Achieved

Spearcarrier

As of just a few minutes ago, what I can do to get the online bookstore finished has been done. This included revamping all of my old things, which meant setting aside some current projects, while being careful not to let commissions get neglected. I’ve had to pace my work to mornings only, which has been a little frustrating for me because I wanted things done.

Well, they’re done as they can be. You can now visit Wôks Print to see what I mean. Everything in there has been set up to their respective distribution plans. For some that means Ingram. For others it means a special plan I created after a lot of research into various ebook aggregators. The final goal, of course, was to get The Heavenly Bride into China – or at least, standing against the Chinese firewall seeking permission to be allowed inside.

I have three things left to do with this. Two of these three things are books; The Page of Cups and It’s Never Romantic to Wash the Dishes. I’m a bit at a standstill with them. I could go ahead and push The Page of Cups through Ingram as I plan to do, yes, but I have decided it needs to be examined first. If there’s an area that needs fleshing out, now is the time. With Dishes, it’s almost the same situation. There’s a short story I recently submitted to an online magazine that would fit with it very well. But I have to hear back from this magazine first.

The third thing is actually a bunch of things. I have to decide what to do with the Heavenly Bride chapters. They used to do very well at Amazon. Sales for them died a long time ago.  Maybe the Amazon readers discovered the online website. Maybe I’m just that bad of a storyteller. Maybe it was that one review on Chapter 4 (3?) that did it. Either way, I wonder if it’s worth it to keep up with this effort.

Assembling the chapters is a little bit of work, even though I use templates to some degree. The time it takes pulls away from the time I have to make the next page of the current chapter. There’s also the fact that, well, if no one is buying them… is it worth it.

I am distributing the chapter books out, of course, so I thought perhaps I could just take the chapters down from Amazon and out of Smashwords distribution completely. I could then offer them in the Wôks store, even though I don’t expect anyone to frequent the store… ever.

Decisions, decisions.

For now I have to set these decisions aside. My brain will poke at them as I go about other business, and I’ll come to a decision eventually.

Chocolate would help enormously in this. I should get some chocolate.

Mini-comics, a new distribution

Death

MagazinesMy occasional journeys through the internet to find a way to represent 10 Confessions & A Kiss have turned up next to nothing. Oh, I found this one guy that pushes mini-comics for a living but he never got back to me. Another guy who runs a small online zine/comic store never got back to me, and that was disappointing because I used to work with him when I ran Kinships Magazine. Two others will only do commissions, and you gotta do leg work to claim things back. The mini-comic exchange, in which people sent in their mini-comics in exchange for mini-comics in return, is defunct. Coldcut takes minicomics… but…. Yeah, I’d say the effects of the cheap cost of webcomics plus the economy hit the mini-comic culture pretty hard.

I love the mini-comic culture. Comics are a true American art form that other countries adopted, despite popular belief in the manga community. The mini-comic movement was one of the first self-publishing revolutions in the modern history of our country. People are saying the mini-comic is dying, but I’ve seen people at conventions. They still love mini-comics. Mini-comics are choking from lack of exposure, but they’re not in danger of dying any time soon if we make an effort to keep them alive.

I thought about it and decided that since I already am a publisher of sorts, I’d add a mini-comic section to the Apocalypse Store, The OOAK Gallery for Little People. And that I’d try to revive the mini-comic exchange program somehow, because that was a nifty program. But then again I’m a sucker for getting random comics in the mail.

While putting my plan in action, I managed to break the website entire. Which required a complete reinstall. Which means most of the old content I wanted to save – the gallery of dolls and horses for example – are gone, and if I want those images back I’m going to have to find the image backup through my host server. (sigh) Through it all I finally have a working website back up this morning, one that when I can get the funds to expand it will take submissions and allow creators to manage their own content. The comic exchange program is a working feature, and while it’s not free like the old program was with enough participants it still can be great.

So: The Apocalypse Writers (of which I’m the only remaining one) is now going to become a side distributor of mini-comics and host a mini-comic exchange program. Visit our store website: http://ooakleaf.apocalypsewriters.com, bookmark it, and keep an eye on it. It won’t be long before I’m able to do the final touches on it and open submissions. I’ll be looking to see what people have to offer. I’ll be looking to see what people want to read. I’ll be, uh, probably sleeping after an all-nighter working on the website.