Ray Else's Blog: Writing with Head and Heart - Posts Tagged "self-published"

So the first part of my big marketing campaign for Our Only Chance: An A.I. Chronicle with AuthorBuzz launched this month and I'm selling books every day, a trickle to begin with (3 paperbacks/ebooks a day) which I hope will soon turn into a flood when the campaign and word of mouth get in gear.
Marketing is a gamble - I have thousands riding on black (ink) - in some ways a present to my readers because the odds of even breaking even on such expensive marketing are Vegas odds.
Yes self-publishing and marketing seem a sucker's bet, yet I do love to read reviews where I can tell my book touched the reader! That my story intrigued her!
My other big news is that I have contracted at acx.com with a professional narrator ($1,800) to do an audio version of Our Only Chance. The audio book should be out and available on Amazon, iTunes etc by November 2017. Which means I'll need to do another expensive marketing campaign then! (Excuse me while I go hack into a bitcoin vault to pay for all this ;-)
Ray

I'm pleased as purple punch - contracted a great new fast artist for converting my novel Our Only Chance: An A.I. Chronicle, to a graphic one. Here is the heroine Android Einna:

Here is the bad buy, Tagona of the Yakuza:

Issue 1 should be out in October, 2019.
Note the 3rd novel (non-graphic) in the A.I. Chronicles series, a book called 'Escaping Heaven', should be out in August if all goes as planned.

ANDROID EINNA: OUR ONLY CHANCE Issue #1
When I wrote my novel "Our Only Chance: An A.I. Chronicle", set in Japan, I chose a manga-like story-line. For I hoped one day to adapt the novel to a graphic novel. Roughly 3 years passed, with the writing of 3 more novels, before I decided to begin the adaptation.

I sat down and went through my book, visualizing the scenes, creating a simpler story-line that would translate to the telling of the story in images mostly. A very different kind of edit. I also decided to change the title, to emphasize the main character Android Einna.

Once I had an outline with a vague storyboard for each page, I addressed my problems.
o Problem One: I can't draw - so I needed to find an illustrator
o Problem Two: Professional illustrators are expensive - roughly $100 per B&W page or $150 for color.

The adaptation would be roughly 100 pages which meant $10,000 to $15,000. To create one graphic novel! A lot of money!

I decided to buy a drawing tablet and software and search out an amateur illustrator who might want to do the book for me on the cheap for the experience. Found one fresh out of high school - an excellent artist. She did two pages in about a month, struggling with the computer software, before she found a full-time job, a full-time boyfriend, and stopped producing any drawings at all.
So strike one.

Frustrated, I decided to damn the cost and look online for a professional illustrator. Found a great one who'd done many comics and had his own setup.

To keep the initial cost down, I decided to break the book into 2 or 3 issues (with the idea that if I ran out of money after the 1st issue, maybe there would never be an issue 2).
I told my illustrator I couldn't afford to do it all in color, but I wanted a color cover and maybe a few pages in color where it made sense. He agreed, and told me he would first sketch the major characters to get my OK.

Once I OKed the characters, he would rough draw 4 to 6 pages at a time based on my outline/storyboard (making creative layout decisions/sometimes turning 1 page into 2). That usually took 3 or 4 days - then he'd get my ok to ink them, and give the finished drawings 3 or 4 days later in a pdf, expecting payment. So a kind of pay-as-you-go agreement. Worked for me!

We made storyboard edits as we went, with my illustrator impressing upon me the need to limit text box descriptions and dialogue to spare minimum - to let the pictures tell the story!

Took roughly 3 months to get 45 pages that we thought told a good story for issue 1 (my original estimate was 25 pages!).

At the end he put together all the drawings into a single pdf. And after some magic we got both the ebook and the printed version submitted to Amazon and published!

I actually used Kindle Comic Creator to add panel navigation/zooming to the ebook version - that was another level of editing but fun.

So long story short: although an expensive challenge to adapt a novel to a graphic novel, with the right illustrator and a willingness on the part of the author to simplify the story and trust the images, it is do-able. And can be an emotionally rewarding experience, especially when you hand the graphic novel to your kids or grand kids!

ANDROID EINNA: OUR ONLY CHANCE Issue #1

Happy to announce that I managed to publish Android Einna issue 1 on comiXology as well as Amazon!

Sergio did a great job laying out the panels and illustrating to the outline I gave him. Work of art!

Click here to check it out!

We hope to complete issue 2 for publication in Feb 2020. Issue 3 sometime after that.

Been a very interesting exercise, to turn my scifi novel Our Only Chance into a graphic novel.

Happy to announce Android Einna issue 4, the exciting conclusion to volume 1 of my graphic novel, is live in full color on Amazon. Coming to comiXology in July 2020.
Sergio's illustration breathtaking as always!
Get ebook here