Month: June 2012

(This comic is available on the iBookstore. Click here to buy.)

In case you missed them, here are the first three installments:
Young Men of a Certain Mind Preview 1/4
Young Men of a Certain Mind Preview 2/4
Young Men of a Certain Mind Preview 3/4

Introduction
To introduce this final installment of the preview of Young Men of a Certain Mind, I want to briefly write about the way I formatted the iBooks version of the comic, cuz I’m pretty proud of it.

For the most part, the original print version of Young Men of a Certain Mind was comprised of uniform panels, four to a page:

So transferring it to a smartphone-sized screen was pretty easy, since (coincidentally) each panel happened to be the right size for that.

However, on a handful of pages, I used double-wide panels like the one at the bottom of this image:

That doesn’t work well on a smartphone-sized screen. So what I did was I altered those double-wide panels so they appear as two separate panels. Here are the two separated images when viewed on an iPhone screen:

(Also added in a little walking dude on the panel on the left, and altered the thought balloons. Yup, I’m the George Lucas of alternative comics.)

So that’s all fine and good for the small iPhone screen, but what about when you view it on a larger iPad, which has the screen real estate to show the double wide panels? Let’s take a look:

As you can see, it shows up as the original image.  I set up the file so that if you view it on an iPad, you get the wide original images, and if you view it on an iPhone, you get the optimized, smartphone screen sized images. Cool huh? I mean, okay, it’s not rocket science or anything, but it took me a long time to figure out how to get that to work, and I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out.

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And with that, here’s the last part of the Young Men of a Certain Mind preview:

Continue reading “Young Men of a Certain Mind” Preview (4/4)→

In my e-comics sales report a couple weeks ago, I wrote that I intend to keep at my little digital comics experiment and see where it takes me. I eluded to four things I intend to do. In order of what you’re most likely to care about to least, here they are:

1) The Kameoka Diaries: Volume Two

Sample panel from the forthcoming book

May as well officially announce it: I’m working on a second volume of Kameoka Diaries comics! As with the first volume, it’ll be in the neighborhood of eight chapters, I’ll be selling it for 99-cents, and I’ll be putting some (most?) of it online for free.
But I thought I’d try one thing different this time. I’m going to release the e-book first, and then start putting them online in the weeks that follow. I thought this might provide that extra bit of incentive for people to fork over the 99-cents. It’s worth a shot, anyway!
I’ve already finished about half of the book, and expect to finish and release it later this summer (or maybe early autumn at the latest). I’ll keep you posted!

2) The Kameoka Diaries in PDF format for Android/PC/Whatever

A few people have asked about a PDF version of The Kameoka Diaries: Volume One, so for the past couple weeks I’ve been working on that. It’s almost done, and I’ve started looking into ways to sell/distribute it. (Speaking of which, if anyone knows of good services for selling digital downloads, lemme know!)
Like the iBookstore version, the PDF version will be in HD, DRM free, and cost 99-cents. If things go to plan, it could be out as soon as a few weeks from now (no promises, but hopefully). Stay tuned!
Continue reading Two Exciting “Kameoka Diaries” Announcements! (Plus a Couple Boring Ones)→

(This comic is available on the iBookstore. Click here to buy.)

In case you missed the first two installments:
Young Men of a Certain Mind Preview 1/4
Young Men of a Certain Mind Preview 2/4

I planned to write a little introduction here like I did for the first two entries, but it’s been an exhausting week, so I think I’ll just skip it this time around. (Also, I promised a couple of totally thrilling announcements this week, but I’m just too exhausted to write it; sorry! I’ll put it up next week for sure!)

So here’s the third part of the preview:

Continue reading “Young Men of a Certain Mind” Preview (3/4)→

[ Buy My Digital Comics for 99-cents in the iBookstore ]

My foray into the world of e-comics has been an experiment. I figured I’d give my books six months, and let my sales dictate what I did next:

1. If sales were terrible (like a few dozen books sold) I’d see the writing on the wall and give up on the whole thing.
2. If sales were okay (hundreds of books sold) I would keep experimenting with digital comics and see where they took me.
3. If sales were good (thousands) I would redouble my efforts, and make finishing new digital books a focus.
4. If sales were great (ten of thousands) I would seriously look into switching to a half-time job (as opposed to the full time day job I work now), so I could devote more time to cartooning.
5. And if sales were spectacular, (hundreds of thousands) I’d take another stab at cartooning full time and see if I could make it sustainable over the long haul.
6. And if sales were phenomenal (millions) I would buy a solid gold jet-pack and eat nothing but caviar for the rest of my life.

Okay okay, the latter half of the list are total long shots. But that’s probably for the best, since gold has a low melting point and I could get seriously injured if my jet-pack melted away while I was flying around in a caviar-induced stupor.

But I digress. Realistically, I figured six months of sales would fall somewhere between a few dozen books to maybe… I dunno, a couple thousand or so? That’s a huge range I know, but since the whole digital comics thing is new to me, I’m not really sure what to expect.

Now that May has come and gone, I have a full month of sales data under my belt. While there’s still another five months to go in my half-year time frame, I feel like I have enough info to draw a few tentative conclusions. So after one month, where on the sales spectrum did I fall?

I’m already firmly in the second tier, with 443 e-comics sold during the month of May.

I mean, okay, they’re not Harry Potter numbers or whatever, but not too shabby for a first attempt, I think! Even if I didn’t sell another e-book for the next five months, I’m already in the “provisionally keep at it” sales range.

So what will “keeping at it” entail, you might wonder? I have four main things in mind, which I cover in a blog entry next week. This will include a couple of totally thrilling announcements, so try not to get too excited, everyone!

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(This comic is available on the iBookstore. Click here to buy.)

Introduction
This is a bit belated, but let me briefly introduce this comic since I didn’t do so in the first installment of this preview.

Young Men of a Certain Mind is a 44-page comic I did in 2003 (just before I started work on my graphic novel Tonoharu). It is a account of the year I spent working at a four star hotel as a night bellman prior to coming to Japan to teach English.

Or I guess I should say a *fictionalized* account; I took tons of liberties with chronology, and generally exaggerated things for comedic reasons. For example, I’m not *quite* as much of a bitter crank as the main character of this comic (or at least that’s what I tell myself).

I’ll admit there’s really not much to Young Men of a Certain Mind in terms of story. It’s more supposed to be a slice-of-life type thing more than anything else. But for a comic that’s almost a decade old, I still think it holds up. It’s the oldest comic I’ve done that I can still read without cringing in embarrassment. (How’s that for a ringing endorsement! Buy it now, folks! Ha… ha…)

Well, I guess that’s enough foreplay. Here’s the second part of the preview:

Continue reading “Young Men of a Certain Mind” Preview (2/4)→