Lars Martinson's Blog, page 8

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

(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:

And that concludes the preview! The remaining 30 panels will remain exclusive to the pay versions (at least for the time being). So if you want to see how this thrilling, heart-pounding story ends (or you just want to support this humble cartoonist), please consider purchasing this comic in either a digital or analog format:

The comic is available in HD on the iBookstore for 99-cents:

[ Click here to buy ]

Or you can buy the original print comic in my STORE for $5ppd. (Or Big Brain Comics in Minneapolis probably has a few copies still in stock (I think)).

And as always, blah blah blah Twitter blah blah blah Facebook.

Thanks to everyone who read this far! See you next time!

Two Exciting “Kameoka Diaries” Announcements! (Plus a Couple Boring Ones)

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!

3) More Marketing

I was really happy with the e-book sales I had for the month of May (443 books sold). In fact, if sales averaged that much every month, I’d be ecstatic.

Unfortunately, June sales are nowhere near that level. With half the month over, I’ve sold juuust over 30 books so far. If sales maintained that level for the rest of the month (and frankly I’m not even sure if that will happen) my June sales will be about 15% of the May sales.

It’s not unusual for sales to fall over time, but I think the reason the drop was so steep is this: other than the occasional blog post/Facebook update/tweet, I’ve done essentially nothing to market my books for the past few weeks.

Sure, blog posts/Facebook updates/tweets are better than nothing, but they’re sort of like preaching to the choir. The only people who will see them are friends, family, and already established fans, and if they were interested in my e-comics, they probably would have bought them by now. I’ve done next to nothing to reach out to new readers who might be interested in my work.

The main reason I’ve slacked so much on marketing front is things have been particularly hectic at my day job lately. I’m taking a few weeks off work during July/August, so hopefully I can give my e-comics the big marketing push I should have given them from the start.

4) Website Housekeeping

If you’re reading this blog entry around the time it was posted, then you can see the overall look of this site is pretty generic. The reason for the blah layout is this: about a month ago my site got like 48,000 hits in one day, and it almost gave my webhost a heart attack. I realized my site wasn’t optimized for that level of traffic, especially since, as a cartoonist, I need to display so many images. So I provisionally switched to website theme that didn’t use as much CPU power, so I could handle the extra traffic.

And that’s how the site stands today: the current iteration is almost like a placeholder, until I can get in there and fix things (on both the front and the back-end). On the front-end, I want to create a more inviting looking website, with more obvious links to twitter, facebook, my store, etc. On the back-end, I need to look for ways to optimize the site, and upgrade to a better (and unfortunately more expensive) hosting package so I can promote the site without worrying about getting too much traffic. And I might also try to add a way for people to purchase digital copies of my comics through my site. Again, I hope to do all this later this summer, when I go on “vacation”. Sigh.

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So those are the main things I intend to do in regards to my digital comics experiment over the coming months. After I’ve done all that and the dust settles, I’ll reevaluate where I’m at, and decide if I want to continue doing digital comics. Updates will of course be posted on this website (and on Twitter and Facebook).

Side-note: Every now and again people ask about Tonoharu, my graphic novel in progress. I’ll admit I’ve been slacking on that recently, but I intend to make work on Tonoharu a priority during my “vacation” (in addition to all the stuff outlined above). As always, don’t hold your breath, but know that the series hasn’t been abandoned!

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

(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:

***********

Whoa, what an exciting cliffhanger!! Will our hero make it to the bathroom okay??? Check out the forth and final part of the preview to find out! It’ll be up next Friday or so (probably).

Or you can buy the whole thing (in HD) for 99-cents right now! (If you have an iOS device):

[ iBookstore Link ]

And for those that don’t have iPods and iPhones, it’s also available in print for $4.95 postpaid in my store (residents of North America only please):

[ MY STORE ] (Young Men of a Certain Mind is at the bottom of the page)

As always, you can follow me on twitter or subscribe to me on Facebook as I’ll announce any new comics there. Thanks!

“Popee the Performer” Comic on Boing Boing!

Whoops, didn’t have time to do the Young Men of a Certain Mind preview update as promised; I’ll put it up next Friday, sorry!

But to tide you over, here’s a comic I did for Boing Boing about one of my favorite cartoons:

http://boingboing.net/2012/06/08/mind-blowing-movies-popee-the.html

My First Month as a Digital Comics Purveyor

[ 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:

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.
If sales were okay (hundreds of books sold) I would keep experimenting with digital comics and see where they took me.
If sales were good (thousands) I would redouble my efforts, and make finishing new digital books a focus.
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.
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.
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!

 

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

[ Follow me on Twitter ]

[ Subscribe to me on Facebook ]

 

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

(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:

********************

Part Three will be up next Friday, probably.

Or you can buy the whole thing right now!

It’s available on the iBookstore (in HD) for 99-cents:

[ iBookstore Link ]

And for those that don’t have iPods and iPhones, it’s also available in print for $4.95 postpaid in my store (residents of North America only please):

[ MY STORE ] (Young Men of a Certain Mind is at the bottom of the page)

As always, you can follow me on twitter or subscribe to me on Facebook as I’ll announce any new comics there. Thanks!

“Young Men of a Certain Mind” Preview (1/4)

Introduction

My two new e-comics (available for 99-cents each on the iBookstore) were experiments on a few levels:

I wanted to see if I could create a worthwhile comic quickly, rather than endlessly laboring over it (like I do with the images in my graphic novel Tonoharu .)
I wanted to see if reading a comic could be a pleasant experience on a smart phone-sized screen, if you took the limitations of the device into consideration when you created the art work.
And finally, I was curious to see what effect offering the work online for free would have on sales.

I’d like to think that all of these experiments have been relatively successful, but the one that I’ve been the most pleasantly surprised by is the third one.

I started selling the two e-comics on the same day. For one of them, The Kameoka Diaries, I put almost 90% of it online for free beforehand. For the other, Young Men of a Certain Mind, I’ve never put any of it online at all.

I sort of figured that Young Men of a Certain Mind would outsell The Kameoka Diaries, since the former was 100% new material whereas the latter only offered a bit of original content. Much to my surprise (and delight) the opposite has happened. The shared comic has always outsold the unshared one.

Now I’ll admit this is hardly a scientific experiment, and that “correlation does not imply causation” and all that. But the thing is, I like to share my work. And to know that doing so doesn’t kill sales, and in fact may help them, is great.

So I’ve decided to try sharing Young Men of a Certain Mind as well. I’m going to put the majority of of Young Men of a Certain Mind—80% of it—online for free, and see if that helps/hurts/doesn’t affect sales. I’ll be doing it in four parts which will go up every week, the first part of which is this one.

So without further ado, here’s the first 20% of Young Men of a Certain Mind:

******

Part Two will be up next week sometime.

Or you can buy the whole thing right now!

It’s available on the iBookstore (in HD) for 99-cents:

[ Direct iBookstore Link ]

And for those that don’t have iPods and iPhones, it’s also available in print for $4.95 postpaid in my store (residents of North America only please):

[ MY STORE ] (Young Men of a Certain Mind is at the bottom of the page)

As always, you can follow me on twitter or subscribe to me on Facebook as I’ll announce any new comics there. Thanks!

Tonoharu en Espanol–Now on Sale!

Cover of Spanish edition of Tonoharu

This month the Spanish version of Tonoharu made its debut. It should be available right now in Spain’s finer comic book stores.

The book collects Tonoharu: Part One and Two into a single volume, much like the French version that came out last year. It’s the perfect gift for the Spanish-speaking, Japan-loving comics fan in your life. More details (in Spanish, of course) can be found at the publisher’s website:

http://www.sinsentido.es/noticias/editorial/132/

Fellow cartoonist Abby Denson was kind enough to snap a picture of the book out in the wild (look in the upper left-hand corner) when she was in Spain promoting her own book:

pic.twitter.com/fS9SL9NG

An editor at Sins Entido recently told me they’ll be sending me my copies of it, so I’ll let you know once I’ve had a chance to look at the real thing! Also, I’m not sure if/when it’ll make it to other Spanish-speaking countries outside of Spain; if I hear anything I’ll let you know!

Website Maintenance This Weekend

As I wrote in this entry, my website’s CPU usage is higher than it should be. I’ve optimized what I could, except for one thing: my website’s theme is pretty out of date, so I’m going to try update it this weekend with a new one and see if that helps.

If I were a web programming pro, I’d figure out how to do it offline and then upload it once I had it perfect. But I’m too lazy to figure out how to do that, so I’m just going to do it live.

My website’s content should be available all weekend, but it’s appearance etc. might be a bit weird while I’m tweaking it, just FYI.

“Tonoharu” dans un Livre Français de l’Architecture

The publisher of the French edition of Tonoharu, Le Lezard Noir, has put out a book entitled Mangapolis about the way Japanese architecture is portrayed in manga.

The book has a section about how non-Japanese comics portray Japan, and Tonoharu is among them, getting a two page spread. I also wrote a couple of paragraphs about Japanese architecture. Hopefully my uninformed opinions sound better translated into French than they do in the original English!

Sorry for the crappy photo…

Elsewhere in the book is a never-before published panel from Tonoharu: Part Three! O.M.G., right guys?!?!?!

So if you can read French and are interested in Japanese comics/architecture (and really, who doesn’t fit those two criteria) then check it out!

There’s also a gallery show coinciding with the launch of the book, running through June 16th 2012 at Maison de l’Architecture de Poitou-Charentes (thank god for cut and paste) in Poitiers, France. That includes some enlarged Tonoharu artwork:

So if you live in a Poiters area, do check it out. Details here.