SamCostello
Name: Sam Costello
Bio: The creator and writer of Split Lip, the horror webcomics anthology: http://www.splitlipcomic.com.
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Comic Books Discussion, Podcasts and Community
Name: Sam Costello
Bio: The creator and writer of Split Lip, the horror webcomics anthology: http://www.splitlipcomic.com.
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Glad to see everyone's in the mood for scary comics this month! I think you'll like what I have on tap next week.
@Drake - If you enjoy being disturbed by Josh Simmons, you'll dig Suehiro Maruo next week.
@Patman2 - Thanks!
@HailScott - Thanks very much! I appreciate it. It's best to buy Split Lip direct from me (mostly because it's available at Amazon or Diamond :-)).
In fact, I've got a special offer for iFanboy readers for the rest of October. If you buy anything from the Split Lip store - http://store.splitlipcomic.com/ - and enter coupon code IFAN10 at checkout, you'll get 15% off your entire order. Thanks for your support!
Thanks for the great response everyone! I'm looking forward to doing this every month.
@WeaklyRoll - Good point. I'll do my best to link to online previews, where available, in upcoming columns.
@Wally - I totally agree. It's very strange to have an industry where pre-orders can determine whether something even gets published. And yes, Ice Haven has been out for a few years. I'm not limiting my coverage to new things. I'll write on anything in Previews in a given month.
@HailScott - When I see $3-$4 books that look good to me, I'll definitely include them. It just happened that the things that caught my eye this month were TPBs.
@Wally - Interesting suggestion. I haven't looked into that kind of thing, no. Do you have any sense of what kind of unit cost that printing produces? The POD place I use has great rates (much, much better than the more well-known comics POD houses), but I'm always interested in saving money.
@LukeB - It's funny, my girlfriend said the same thing when we were talking about it - people spend a lot of money on their classic cars, this is your version of that. I might need to buy a little less gas, though. :-)
Thanks guys! Glad you've enjoyed them - here's hoping I'm back with some more of these articles sooner rather than later.
@WeaklyRoll - Even though I use POD, I generally print a decent number of books at one time to make sure I have inventory for cons, taking to stores, and online sales. I generally buy about 100 TPBs in one order, and 25-50 minicomics. On a per-unit basis, the price feels pretty good to me. It's not as low as offset printing, of course, but I don't have a minimum order, which saves money. If I felt I could move 1,000-2,000 books, I'd definitely use offset, but the price would be at least double, maybe more.
Thanks for the offer, too - I may well take you up on that!
Thanks for the feedback, everyone! I think you're all right: shorter will be better. Just gotta practice the delivery.
Just turned in next wee's fourth and final column. It's about financials, and it's a doozy!
Thanks guys. Glad you're enjoying this and that I can sneak through amid all the SDCC news.
@Wally - The size of the buffer depends on a lot of things. For instance, how often do you post, how fast do you work, is it just you or do you depend on collaborators, etc. If you're going to do a Mon-Wed-Fri update schedule (which is pretty common for a strip-style webcomic), I'd try to have at least a month - 12 strips - in buffer. Ideally there would be more, but that's a decent cushion.
If you're posting on another schedule, I'd try to have more. For instance, I've got 4 Split Lip stories being drawn right now for a total of 60+ pages of comics. Having a a lot of stories in process helps keep the pages flowing.
If you're thinking about starting a webcomic, I'd strongly recommend joining Webcomics.com, which is a relatively new professional development and networking site for webcomics creators. They address this issue - and a lot more - regularly. It's $30/year, but you'll get waaaaaay more value (and discounts) out of it than that. I love the site.