I’m please to announce that Tonoharu: Part Two is, for all intents and purposes, finally DONE! I’ll need to make little changes once I talk to the printer and find out the spine width and stuff (hence the 5% still missing from the Incidentals bar). But other than that, it’s all ready for release.

It feels weird that I don’t have to work on it anymore. Tonoharu: Part Two has become a part of my routine; for almost three years, I’ve worked on it daily, usually for hours at a stretch. It’d be like if someone told you that you had completed the task of “brushing your teeth”, and didn’t have to do it again for the rest of your life.

Now that Tonoharu: Part Two is all wrapped up, I’m going to ramp up pre-publication marketing, and start talking with printers. There are also a few other projects I’ve been meaning to get in some work on, which I’ll write about some other time. And then I can always get started on Tonoharu: Part Three (sigh).

Next week I’ll posting artwork from one of the book’s hardest-to-draw scenes. Stay tuned!

More about Tonoharu: Part Two can be found here:
larsmartinson.com/tonoharu2

(Very Mild) Spoiler Alert: This entry discusses the story of Tonoharu: Part Two in abstract terms. Unless you’re really spoiler-adverse you should be fine; I won’t be going over specific plot points or anything. But if you’d rather not know the overall direction the story is going in, this entry would best be skipped.

***

One of my main objectives in creating Tonoharu is to paint a portrait of what it’s like to live in a foreign country for an extended period of time.

Several friends who read Tonoharu: Part One told me they had no idea I had such a terrible time in Japan. Actually I had a wonderful experience, but I can understand why they’d assume otherwise. The first book focuses almost exclusively on the loneliness and isolation that are a part of any prolonged stay in a foreign country. But this isn’t the entirety of the experience; in Tonoharu: Part Two, I try to show other facets of life abroad, with a particular focus on the relationships that develop.

In your home country, your pool of potential friends is almost unlimited. You can pick and choose who you spend time with based on compatibility and shared interests.

But in a foreign country, the language barrier prevents meaningful interaction with the vast majority of the population. In the rural areas of countries where English education is poor (such as the Japanese countryside, the setting of Tonoharu), your pool of potential friends can be in the single digits. You either spend time with whoever is around, or you do without human companionship.

If you absolutely can’t stand the people who make up your minuscule friend pool, this can suck. But just as often it can be a blessing in disguise. It forces you into the company of people you’d probably otherwise never socialize with, which allows you to see the world through the eyes of people whose interests, beliefs and outlooks are very different from your own. In this way, even spending time with other foreigners can be a horizon-broadening aspect of life abroad.

Tonoharu: Part Two will be coming out this November. For more information, visit:
larsmartinson.com/tonoharu2

A couple weeks ago, I gave a presentation on self-publishing at the Loft Literary Center as a part of their “Graphic Novel & Comic Writing & Illustrating Conference”.

Daily Cross Hatch reporter/cartoonist Sarah Morean recorded the whole thing, and will be posting it in segments on the Daily Cross Hatch website. Parts two and three are up now, so take a look:

[ Self-Publishing a Graphic Novel (in Eight Hard Steps) Parts 2&3/8 ]

Previous installment: [ Self-Publishing a Graphic Novel (in Eight Hard Steps) Part 1/8 ]

RANmagazine, a free English magazine based out of Nagoya,  ran a two-page interview with me about Tonoharu in their July/August issue.

The interview begins on page 32;  it’s available online at:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/33650987/RANmagazine-Issue-6-July-August-2010

My thanks to RAN and to reporter Adam Pasion for the coverage!

I’ll probably make some tweaks before the book goes to press, but I’m pretty much done with the front cover of Tonoharu: Part Two, so I thought I’d share it. A higher resolution version can be found here.

I’ve previously written about my design choices for the covers of Tonoharu here, so rather than repeat myself, I’ll send interested parties to that entry if you’d like more details.

I’ve also created a dedicated page about Tonoharu: Part Two, which can be found here:

LarsMartinson.com/Tonoharu2

I’ll update that regularly with any Tonoharu: Part Two news that comes up, so bookmark it if you’re interested.

And while I’m at it, I may as well throw in an updated progress bar graphic, for those of you who are keeping score at home:

Progress Bar Key
Story/Artwork: The Story, Drawing, Inking, and Computer Work
Final Edits: Post-Production Edits
Incidentals: Designing the Cover, Preparing for Press, etc.

That’s it. Back to work!

Last Saturday I gave a presentation on self-publishing at the Loft Literary Center as a part of their “Graphic Novel & Comic Writing & Illustrating Conference”.

Daily Cross Hatch reporter/cartoonist Sarah Morean recorded the whole thing, and will be posting it in segments on the Daily Cross Hatch website. The first part is up now, so take a look:

[ Self-Publishing a Graphic Novel (in Eight Hard Steps) Part 1/8 ]

In the interest of good karma, I’ll plug something Sarah’s organizing: the Minneapolis Indie Xpo will occur on August 21st at the Soap Factory. I’ll have a table there, and it looks like it’ll be pretty cool, so check it out! Here’s their website: http://mplsindiexpo.com/ (Warning: The homepage has an autoplay YouTube video, so mute your speaker volume if you’re at work!)

Next week I’ll be posting the cover for Tonoharu: Part Two. Stay tuned!

A little less than a year ago back I posted a YouTube link to a Japanese CG cartoon I love called Popee the Performer, a cartoon series that’s like a cross between the work of Jim Woodring and a Looney Tunes short.

I recently re-watched the whole series, and it made me wonder if the director, Ryuji Masuda, had done anything since. Above is an episode of his more recent series “Funny Pets”. It’s not as good as Popee, but it’s still worth a watch.

At long last, I’m ready to commit to a concrete release period for Tonoharu: Part Two! The book will be out by November of this year.

I know this is probably later than you’d hope; it only barely makes my self-imposed deadline of “sometime this year”, and is a far cry from “late summer”, a release period I had brandished about before.

But after seeing how long things were taking to finish up, and realizing I needed to ramp up prepublication marketing at least few months before the book actually came out, November emerged as the earliest I could reasonably put the book out.

Depending on how things go, I may have copies by October; we’ll see how things progress. Any updates will be posted to this site, so stay tuned!

Progress Bar Key
Story/Artwork: The Story, Drawing, Inking, and Computer Work
Final Edits: Post-Production Edits
Incidentals: Designing the Cover, Preparing for Press, etc.

(More information about Tonoharu can be found here.)

I am delighted to report that the final edits for “Tonoharu: Part Two” are now halfway done!

As readers may recall, I started these edits about five weeks ago. My progress may not seem too fast, but it’s a HUGE improvement over the first book.

Other than the edits, all that’s left is the front cover/dust jacket. Now that I have a good sense of how long the edits will take, the cover is the biggest wild card.

I feel like I’m pretty far along on it (a lot further than the above “12%” would suggest) but experience has taught me that the cover always takes longer than I think, so I decided to put a conservative estimate on my progress for that.

I’ll probably take a break from edits to devote more time to finishing up the cover, so I can use it for promotion. Hopefully I’ll have something I can show within the next couple/few weeks, so stay tuned!

Next month I’ll be giving a 90 minute presentation about self-publishing graphic novels as a part of a conference presented by the Loft Literary Center and Hennepin County Library.

Details:
What: Graphic Novel & Comic Writing & Illustrating Conference
Where: Open Book, 1011 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN, U.S.A.
When: Saturday, June 19th, 2010. Conference opens with a keynote speech at 10am, with my presentation beginning at 11:15am
Admission: The event is free but registration is limited, so interested parties should register online or by phone: 952-847-8800

Further details, including a downloadable brochure, can be found here.

*UPDATE* The event is now full. To all those who have signed up, see you there!

Overall, my self-publication of my first graphic novel Tonoharu: Part One went pretty well. But there is one area where I dropped the ball, and it’s an important one: marketing/promotion.

I left for Japan to study East Asian calligraphy the same month my book came out, and between that and a broken ankle that I was nursing back to health, I did next to nothing to market my book once it was released. Books live or die based on how well the authors promote them, so this failure on my part is no small matter. So now that I’m back in the U.S., I’m trying to get back into the marketing that I’ve neglected for the past two years.

It was in this spirit that I attended SpringCon 2010 last weekend. It was my first time at SpringCon, and the first comic convention I’ve ever attended as a “guest cartoonist”. Here are a few thoughts on the experience:

You Have to be In It to Win It
For my first couple hours at SpringCon, I sat hunched behind my little table, and doodled while I waited for someone to come along. When someone came over and looked at my stuff, I adhered to the “don’t speak unless spoken to” rule, and waited hopefully for them to ask me a question or make a comment. No one did, and I didn’t make any sales.

Then indy comics darling Tim Sievert (author of That Salty Air) came along and set up his table. I noticed his sales seemed to be better than they were in my neck of the woods (I guess it’s hard to have sales that are less than none, but you get the idea).

I asked him about his sales technique, and he told me he had learned through trial and error that it’s best to be proactive. He stood rather than sat, and didn’t doodle or read during lulls. He said if you’re just sitting there drawing, potential customers are hesitant to come over and “bother” you (even though you want nothing more than for them to do so). So Tim figured it was best to stand, and to make it clear that you’re ready and waiting to talk to anyone who stops by.

He also said that when someone starts looking at your stuff, you should say something–anything–to them. When Tim first started doing conventions, he originally felt (as did I earlier in the day) that trying to start up a conversation would seem pushy, or might chase people away. But experience had taught him that taking the initiative and starting conversations with people helped his sales, and made the time go by quicker to boot.

So I tried Tim’s techniques, and they did indeed improve my sales, if only marginally. But it could’ve been worse; there were a couple cartoonists across from me that sat hunched over and doodled the whole time, and I swear I didn’t see anyone stop by their tables the whole weekend…

Cheap is Good
The vibe of the convention was very much that of a garage sale. I don’t mean that in a disparaging way; garage sales are fun! But they’re not the best venue to sell fancy $20 hardcover books. Most of my sales came from my $4 comic book Young Men of a Certain Mind; over the whole weekend I only sold three copies of Tonoharu: Part One, and one of those was to a friend who would’ve bought it anyway.

Other cartoonists I talked to agreed that it’s important to have cheap options; people might plop down a couple bucks on a cartoonist they’ve never heard of before, but they’ll rarely risk much more than that. Cheaper comics can act as “gateway drugs”; if the people buy & like a cheap comic from you, they sometimes come back later and buy more expensive ones. I’m thinking I might create a $2 mini-comic to offer at the next convention I attend and see how it sells.

Humble Pie
Before going to SpringCon, I had somewhat unrealistic expectations. I wasn’t expecting people to be lining up to see me or anything, but I figured I’d get a few fans of Tonoharu: Part One stopping by and asking when Part Two will be out and stuff like that.

But really, there was almost none of that. A couple of my fellow guest cartoonists said they were looking forward to Part Two (thanks guys!) but no convention attendees gave any indication that they had ever heard of me before.

Granted, I think SpringCon probably brings in more of a superhero comics crowd, but either way, it was a good reality check. I put out one graphic novel two years ago, and haven’t done anything in the public realm since (other than this blog). It’s only natural that I would still be essentially unknown. So it was a good reminder about the importance of marketing and promotion. I plan on promoting my work more aggressively in the coming months.

Conclusion
Overall, the convention was exhausting, but fun. I met a lot of local cartoonists and reconnected with old friends, and made just enough off book sales to pay myself minimum wage for the fourteen hours I spent behind my table.

I’ll be making a couple more public appearances later this year, so check back for details!