I wonder if it would be a smart move to submit Rita as a last-minute entry for the Philip K. Dick awards. It’s an award for “distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States.” Which, I dunno, who thinks Rita qualifies as that? The growing number of glowing rejection letters from comics publishers have me starting to think it ain’t a comic book. (But that said I’m planning to submit it for the Eisners once those open up.) And PKD is the name I really do my best not to check when describing the overall story.

Maybe I’m insane.

I decided it’s time to start mailing out these books. I ambled down to the U bookstore and grabbed some mailers and some labels so I can get the first few out and get a real sense for what shipping’s gonna be (and then put the book up for sale online!), and ordered a pile of mailers from Uline. Hopefully they won’t be too delayed by Christmas gift stuff yet.

So far I’ve got 12 books drawn in, out of 65 books that need drawings in them. So you may be waiting for a little while if you’ve got a signed book!

Next time I also think I’m not gonna offer prints as a perk. I didn’t think about what a hassle it’s going to be to pack an 8.5×11 print with an 8.5×5.5 book, and I want to avoid it next time. Maybe some stickers. Or maybe postcard-sized prints. I dunno. Or I might just be super minimal and say “this much for the book, this much for it signed, this much for it drawn in, this much for your name/picture/bigger picture in the back of the book as a sponsor.”

Now to figure out how to efficiently generate labels from a CSV file of addresses. Probably InDesign.

I just roughed out a design for Carol’s personal car (a rare affectation). It’ll be appearing in Decrypting Rita in three or four pages, so I figure it was definitely time to do something about it. I’d been doodling some stuff a while back, but it looked awkward and weird; a little perusing of concept cars put me on the right track to making something that looks futuristic, but very definitely goes fast.

I think the next step is probably to make a stab at modeling it in a 3D program. Which one, I dunno. Maybe Blender, since it’s free and has spline tools. This car is very definitely a spline object. And I really don’t want to have to construct it from scratch in every single drawing – though I’m sure I’ll abuse and distort it the same way I do Rita when she’s running fast!

But I think that for the remainder of today I’ll work on drawing some other stuff that needs drawing.

Yay, now I have the next four pages of Rita scripted out, with some thumbnails. That’s to the end of this chapter.

No progress on the NaGraNoScriMo; I was low on energy yesterday. Low on it today, too, it took me hours to get going. Probably because I decided I was going to work on Rita and knew that I needed to do the script for the next few pages, and kinda didn’t want to.

(And besides, I ended up slouching around doing some drawing purely for myself instead of working on the Drowning City script. Roughed out a completely indulgent naked picture of my dragon alter-ego [NSFW]. I feel like that’s the first time I’ve drawn anything purely for fun, instead of for an external obligation, or for a comics project, in forever.)

Well, off to a shower I guess. Maybe some work on something for a bit, but it’ll be time for aikido in a couple hours, and then I’m meeting with Jason to talk about the Foolscap poster. Busy busy.

(edit: oops, fixed the link. Cut and paste error.)

So yesterday in addition to the actual books, there was the final invoice from Marquis. Shipping was $304, so with the slight print overrun, I ended up paying $4004.80 for 420 books. That works out to about $9.54 per book. If all people had chosen was the $25 “you get a book” option, I would have broken even at 160 books. Not including shipping them out; I’ll see how much that ultimately comes to and do the final accounting. The Kickstarter closed at $5928, minus like $600 for Kickstarter and Amazon; I am pretty sure that the bonus prints and shipping the stuff is not going to cost $1.5k!

As is, I’m shipping out 105 books. 106 now, as I got an email asking for a copy after posting photos to FA/LJ/Tumblr/Twitter. Since he wasn’t part of the Kickstarter, I’m charging him a couple bucks extra for shipping. And I sold an extra one last night in person; I passed off the first two at a party last night, and had a few more books in my bag just in case anyone else wanted one. Which the hostess did! So yay.

Overall I’m pretty pleased with these numbers. It’s not “making a living” numbers but it’s also not “throwing money away” numbers. I’ve also got 312 books that will sit in my closet and hopefully get sold over the course of the next year; I’ll be selling a few to one of the local comic shops today for starters! At a reduced rate of course but still, that’s that many more books out of my hands. And every time I look in my closet I’ll have a reminder that I want to EXPAND MY CON PRESENCE; as is, I’m doing ECCC and AC this year in addition to my usual rounds of FC and RF. I’d applied for an alley table at Sakuracon but ended up way down on the waiting list, so that’s probably out unless someone got in and wants to share.

(Memo to self: look up local comic shops, drop them an email asking when there’s someone with authority to buy stuff in the store, bring ’em some books.)

(Also probably toss some at the local bookstores. I really feel like my market is not necessarily in comic shops. And maybe try to donate one to the local library when I’m there dropping off books that are due today, as well!)

Books books books books booksbooksbooks books!

I am a REAL SMALL-PRESS PUBLISHER now.

It took three tries for the truck to actually get here. I mentioned this while chatting with the driver and he regaled me with a tale of a delivery to Facebook’s offices that was SUPPOSED to be a 15-minute dropoff, but turned into a three-hour epic when a manager came out and said “we’re not scheduled to take this yet so take it away”; he had to get it all back on the palette and in the shrinkwrap. He also expressed curiosity as to the book when I mentioned that it’s my first delivery as a small-press publisher, so I gave him a flier.

Now to start signing them, drawing in them, and getting them in the mail! I am definitely gonna be hitting non-furry cons this coming year, because I don’t want to have these things filling up my closet too long if I can help it. I’ll have four full boxes and one partially-full one after I ship out the ones that are already spoken for.

Valuable lesson learnt: When scheduling the dropoff, schedule it early, and politely ask if they could maybe make sure to load it near the back of the truck so I have a fighting chance of getting it in the shipping window.

Tracking the Rita books.

The original delivery estimate from the shipping company was the 29th; now it’s the 31st. No biggie, that’s about when the printer told me it’d get here anyway.

BOOKS! Oh god I hope I didn’t miss something in the proofs. I will FIND OUT SOON.