The Complete Creative

This week we’re talking anthologies, shockingly since we have our anthology live on Kickstarter now (Have you backed? No? You probably should. Just click here) with our good friend Christine Hipp. Christine came on to talk about her first anthology on this episode, and she’s back to talk about her new anthology, the MANthology, and everything she’s learned in the past year.

 

I can definitely sympathize with her more this year than during her last appearance since I’ve spent the previous 12 months figuring out my own anthology project. I didn’t want to rehash the same episode we did before, so this episode we did a top five list of things she learned from building three anthologies in 12 months.

 

Here are Christine’s 5 things she learned from editing three anthologies in the last year: 

Trust your gut - I don't know what your gut is like, but mine tells me to do things like check in with creators, remind people about deadlines, and double check work for typos. About 90% of the time this turns out to be really good advice.

Pad your schedule - People get sick, emails get lost, someone is always going to need an extension. Do yourself a favor and account for that in your project schedule so you don't have to stress out as much about getting to print on time.

Respect the Project Plan - Every time we start a new anthology we copy the project plan from the previous book. If contributors asking how to format a script or what size the pages should be, we can add that info that the project plan and know it won't be an issue for the next anthology.

The release party is where it's at - if you want people to buy your anthology tell them where they can get it, and make that event as appealing as possible with food, drinks, karaoke, and as many cool contributors as you have table space for. You can make fliers, post it on social media, and interview on podcasts (wink) to build hype, but the best results will always come from contributors telling their friends, family, and fans about this cool new book they worked on. 

The theme is your foundation - It's how you convince contributors to join the project, it's how you'll sell your book to potential readers. It will also help you make other important decisions like what should go on the cover, what age group the book should target, and how tonally consistent the book will be. 

That’s a great list. Everything on it is super important. I made my own top 5 list from what I learned from making my own anthology, Monsters and Other Scary Shit.

Here is my top 5 list. There is some overlap, but that’s mostly because creating an anthology has a set of rules, just like everything else.

You need to have the right group of collaborators. It’s not about finding people once you submit, you need to know at least a core group before you start.

A certain percentage of people will drop out along the way. Originally had tons of interest. Of that interest 350 pages committed. Of that 220 pages came through.

You are the leader. You need to set up the Facebook group, be on people about deadlines, and get everything together. It’s all on your shoulders to make sure it turns out right. Even though it’s a jam book, you have the vision.

Give creators lots of time to deliver. If you aren’t paying people, you need to give them a lot of time to do the book, but you shouldn’t give them tons of extensions just because they are working for free. It devalues the work of everybody who was on time.

Do all the cons. You have to go to so many cons and launch events to make sure your campaign is successful. It’s all about meeting people in person, and turning that into online sales.

Here’s a little bonus tip for all of you out there as well.

BONUS: You will never work with every artist you love in your career, so anthologies are a great way to work with friends and people you admire who you would never otherwise work with, either because they do the same job as you (i.e. they are also writers) or because they don’t work in your style. It’s also a way for people to try out different genres.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did please like, subscribe and rate us on iTunes by clicking here.

We’re doing something a little new and a little weird on this episode of The Business of Art. This episode is the second part of a two-parter I recorded with my friend Tyler James from Comixtribe and the Comixlaunch podcast. The first part of this two-parter is where he interviewed me and you can find it at www.comixlaunch.com.

In this second part, I interview him about his publishing company, Kickstarter, and his history in indie comics. Here’s a little snippet about Comixtribe from their website @ www.comixtribe.com.

We recorded this episode back in November, but between his 6-Day Kickstarter challenge and my Kickstarter launch, it's been tough to schedule it in. This feel like the right time. Even though this doesn't fit with our anthology theme, it's definitely heavy into the process of funding a comic Kickstarter and building a publishing company. 

We waited so long to drop this episode because both of us are in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign right now. His campaign is SINK, and it's one of the scarier things I've ever read. You can check it out by clicking here.

If you haven't checked out my new anthology, Monsters and Other Scary Shit, it's a 224-page monster anthology about monsters, filled with creators from Marvel, Vertigo, Image, Boom, and who've worked for brands like Transformers, My Little Pony, Invader Zim, and many others. Check it out today @ www.monsteranthologycomic.com.  

ComixTribe’s mission is simple: Creators helping creators make better comics.

The grand vision of what ComixTribe will become is extremely ambitious.  The ultimate goal is to make ComixTribe a premier online community and resource for comic creators serious about improving their craft.

We have an ambitious and exciting roadmap laid out for the development of the site.  However, we’re starting small and simple, with an initial focus on producing quality content geared toward comic creators.  We are curating a small selection of quality columns, podcasts, and resources we’re confident will appeal to the comic creating community at large.  Through frequent, consistent, and quality content updates, we hope to establish ComixTribe as a voice worth listening to.  As the community builds, we’ll incorporate new features that will go beyond content, to meet the many needs of comics creators.  ComixTribe will also sponsor special online events for creators throughout the year, such as the popular 30 Characters Challenge.

If you don’t know about the Comixlaunch podcast, Tyler hosts one of the best podcasts on Kickstarter around, and it’s ABSOLUTELY the best podcast that deals with how to launch a comic book on Kickstarter. Here’s a little bit about them from www.comixlaunch.com.

Kickstarter is the most powerful crowdfunding platform for new and professional creators and creative entrepreneurs alike. To date, nearly $40 million dollars have been raised for comics and graphic novel projects on Kickstarter.

Still, more than half of all comic projects on Kickstarter fail.

ComixLaunch is trying to change that by revealing the mindset, strategies, and tactics you can use to successfully crowdfund your projects.

Founded by Tyler James and Jeremy Melloul, ComixLaunch will help take you through the entire process, from pre-launch strategies to designing and managing a successful campaign, all the way to avoiding the pitfalls of fulfillment.

I actually met Tyler through Jeremy, who I cold tweeted about being on their show. Jeremy liked the idea and we did a three-way chat on Comixlaunch, which was the most downloaded episode of their show for the first 49 episodes. You can listen to it here. You’ll have to forgive it a bit. I didn’t even know The Business of Art would exist yet. I was still pitching Kickstarter University as a thing. It wouldn’t go under for a few more months after this.

Over the past year, Tyler and I became friends and often encourage each other and discuss business, both publishing related and podcast related. It’s not hard to see why we hit it off. After all, how many publishers do you know that also have a podcast where they talk about the business side of creating things?

Not many.

So when he came to me with an idea to do a two-part episode, I was thrilled. I wanted to have him on my show forever and this seemed like a perfect opportunity. I spent the first half of the show being interviewed on Tyler’s podcast, and then we flipped it and I interviewed him on mine. Honestly, we ran out of steam a couple of times during this episode, but we got it together enough to deliver another banger for you.

We started out this episode talking about Tyler’s mentorship and courses. I do some of this myself, and so it was great to get in the weeds a bit about why coaching is so important. Basically, it helps you cut years off your journey, and years are precious.

Then, we talked about his history with Comixtribe. As you can see above, helping and giving back to the community has been a mission of Comixtribe since the beginning, and it’s clear that Tyler always wanted to build a community. We talked a bit about strategic planning, and he gave his thoughts on how you should think of strategic planning, how far out to plan, and how much of a plan to have when you do.

Once we finished up that, we talked about Comixlaunch. We talked about how he niched down to find a really core audience of people that needed information on how to launch a comics Kickstarter. Honestly, that is a really small niche but, as he said, once you have authority in one field it’s easier to parlay that into authority in another field. Even if he has to pivot in the future, he never loses his authority as a Kickstarter expert.

One thing I wanted to dive into was how he was able to open a successful kid’s book imprint for his company. I tried to do something similar this year and failed miserably. Yet his C is for Cthulhu brand is a massive success, even though he came from the world of very violent and dark comic books, just like me. His insights were eye-opening and fantastic. I really appreciate the detail he gave to his answer. It almost makes me want to try kid’s books again.

Almost.

If you like this episode, head on over to http://www.comixlaunch.com and sign up for their mailing list and head over to http://www.comixtribe.com/subscibe in order to get five free comics. Also, sink.comixtribe.com will get you on the mailing list for Sink, which is a great mailing list to emulate for your own project, plus it’s a really cool book. They are also on Kickstarter now, and you can check out their campaign by clicking here.

Comixlaunch is on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/comixlaunch too, so if you want to help them out and get cool stuff, check it out.

If you liked this episode, please head on over to iTunes and rate, review, and subscribe to both The Business of Art and Comixlaunch today. If you are coming from Comixlaunch, then you can find me on Twitter or Instagram @russellnohelty. If you want to find Tyler, he’s on Twitter @tylerjamescomic.

And if you love monsters, check out my new anthology comic, Monsters and Other Scary Shit, live on Kickstarter now. It's 30 different stories from amazing creators, and you can pick it up for just $40 INCLUDING SHIPPING! With your pledge you also get a free digital download of the cover AND the pdf/cbz files for all the books. Check it out today @ www.monsteranthologycomic.com.

Dirk Manning is a horror institution. He’s been touring around the Midwest for nearly a decade with his amazing horror anthology Nightmare World, and more recently his companion series Tales of Mr. Rhee. He one of the few guys I know that cons as much and as hard as me. He did 31 appearances last year to my 45, but he’s been doing it for a lot longer too, so that stamina is even more impressive. Here’s Dirk’s bio, straight from www.dirkmanning.com.

DIRK MANNING is best known as the writer/creator of comic series such as TALES OF MR. RHEE (Devil’s Due) and NIGHTMARE WORLD (Image Comics/Shadowline), as well as the author of the ongoing inspirational column/book collection WRITE OR WRONG: A WRITER’S GUIDE TO CREATING COMICS (Caliber/Bleeding Cool).

If you’ve heard of him, that’s probably why.

That being said, Dirk has also written stories for other comics too, including LOVE STORIES TO DIE FOR (Image Comics/Shadowline), Riley Rossmo’s DIA DE LOS MUERTOS, and THE LEGEND OF OZ: THE WICKED WEST (Big Dog Ink) among various other anthologies.

Dirk has also written several short films for the popular YouTube horror film series BLACKBOX TV, including “The Hunger,“ in which Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite plays the villain.

Dirk frequents the comic convention circuit, especially in the Midwestern section of the United States, and when not on the road he lives on the Internet and can be found online on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @dirkmanning.

Cthulhu is his homeboy… and no, he doesn’t wear the scarf and top hat in real life.*

*When alone in his office writing, though? Every damn time.

The reasons I wanted to have Dirk on the show should be obvious: He loves monsters, he makes awesome anthology books, and he gives way more than he asks. He was one of the other teachers on Tyler James’s 6-Day Kickstarter challenge with me earlier this year as one example of his generosity.

The main reason I wanted him on, though, was to talk about anthologies. As you may know, I just launched a new Kickstarter a couple of days ago for my new anthology Monsters and Other Scary Shit: A monster anthology about monsters. It’s a 224-page anthology full of creators of all types jamming out about monsters. There’s cute monsters, scary monsters, sci-fi monsters, fantasy monsters, and more from creators who’ve worked on Star Wars, Transformers, Invader Zim, and more.

If you haven’t yet, check it out by clicking here. For just $40 you get the hardcover delivered to your door (in the US. Intl shipping charges apply), a digital print of the cover (trust me you’re gonna want it), and a pdf/cbz of the book. There are NO ADDITIONAL CHARGES (domestically).

In conjunction with the launch, we are having a bunch of amazing anthology creators on the show: Christine Hipp (Manthology, Secret Anthology), Gwendolyn Dreyer and Nicholas Doan (Monster Elementary), Amanda Meadows (Devastator Quarterly), DJ Kirkbride (Eisner Winning Popgun Anthology), Brandon Perlow (Eisner Nominated Watson and Holmes anthology), and Dirk.

I wanted to have them on to ask one specific question: How do you make an awesome anthology. I asked all of them to put together a list of their five best anthology tips. The first half of the show is the same BS banter you love, and it’s followed by five specific bullet points to help you plan a better anthology. Every episode we’ll recap the five tips here. Here are Dirk’s.

Select a theme.

Strive for artistic diversity.

Don’t have any filler story. Make sure every story is amazing.

Avoid overdone twist endings. They are for children.

Offer something uniquely you.

We discuss the tips in detail during the show, so I hope you tune in and learn something over the campaign to help you build an amazing campaign.

If you like this episode, go find dirk online @dirkmanning on Twitter and Instagram. If you dig the show, subscribe, rate, and review it today on iTunes by clicking here.

And don’t forget to check out our awesome monster anthology, Monsters and Other Scary Shit, live on Kickstarter now, by clicking here.

Kirk McKnight took his love of baseball and turned it into a writer career, writing a book called The Voices of Baseball: The Game’s Greatest Broadcasters Reflect on America’s Past time, where the game’s broadcasters talked about the majesty of each individual ballpark. He followed it up with The Voices of Hockey: Broadcasters Reflect on the Fastest Game on Earth, both published by Rowman and Littlefield.

I’ve never had a non-fiction author in the show before, and it was incredibly interesting to see how his process is different than many of the fiction authors and comic creators I’ve talked to before. It was interesting to see how he started as a film and TV writer, and eventually molded himself into writing non-fiction books when that didn’t work out. I mean, who does that sounds like?

It’s me. It sounds like me. And I’m sure lots of you.

With my first non-fiction book dropping later this year, it was interesting to hear Kirk’s experience as an author living in the space I will soon inhabit, and getting his tricks and tips on marketing a non-fiction book was invaluable to me.

Even if right now you don’t think that you will ever write a non-fiction book, I still think there is tons of value in this episode. I found a lot of value in how his insights helped me imagine leveraging the brands of the artists for my anthology, and how his tenacity could help me land a publishing deal for a new book.

There are tons of insights to glean from this episode. I hope you enjoy. If you so, check out Kirk’s books by clicking here, of find him on Twitter @thevoicesofmlb.

If you love this show, please head to iTunes by clicking here to rate, review and subscribe today. Help the show and make sure you never miss another episode!

I met Dave Lukas on Twitter of all places. We followed each other and exchanged some DMs, and that led to emails, phone calls, and eventually being on each other’s podcast. This is another podcast exchange episode. I was on Dave’s podcast, The Misfit Entrepreneur (http://www.misfitentrepreneur.com) to talk about improving your sales game without feeling gross about it, and he came on my show to talk about how to get your mindset right so you can scale your business to the next level.

Here is his bio:

Dave M. Lukas is a serial entrepreneur, author, and investor. He is vice president and co-owner, at Grasp Technologies, has almost two decades of global business development and corporate leadership experience. Mr. Lukas brings his senior executive business acumen to a wide range of organizations, from Fortune 500 companies to small and mid-sized enterprises.

Mr. Lukas is the author of amazon best-seller “The Ten Year Career, The Fast Track to Retiring Young, Wealthy and Fulfilled.” The book is a culmination of 5 years of dedicated research into the mindset and habits of success, and leads the reader on a path to greater success and fulfillment. From teaching readers how to harness the true power of their mind’s capabilities, to the consistent habits and methods of the most successful, “The Ten Year Career” gives specific action steps required to achieve higher levels and sustain them. The uniqueness of the book is that everything Mr. Lukas teaches he painstaking executed in his own life for over 5 years, proving the viability of the methods and refining them before the book’s publishing.

At a very young age, he founded his first business and continued to develop successful businesses throughout his college years. It was this entrepreneurial spirit that catapulted him into a successful career path where he earned recognition as the top sales producer of a Fortune 500 company early on in his journey.

Prior to joining Grasp Technologies, Mr. Lukas was a sales leader at Paychex Inc., responsible for developing training programs to accelerate rookie sales reps’ early success companywide and as a turnaround manager for underperforming districts across the mid-west. As the owner of LCS Group, he has consulted with companies at all levels, from startups to multi-million dollar organizations, coaching senior executives, developing sales programs and platforms, in addition to offering training and general business consulting services.

In 2005, Mr. Lukas invested in Grasp Technologies, a leading SAAS and software development firm, providing business intelligence software, global data consolidation and solutions for data related issues and efficiencies. Mr. Lukas joined the company full time as Vice President and CSO in 2010. He is responsible for leading growth strategy, sales, marketing, and operations. Under his guidance Grasp has realized eight consecutive record-setting years of growth; over 50% growth annually, is now doing business in over 100 countries, and was recognized to the INC 5000 list of Fastest Growing Companies in 2015 and 2016.

Mr. Lukas is an accomplished investor in real estate and stock investing. He is a member of the Trading Concepts team, an investing education company, lending his expertise in its mentorship and training programs to students worldwide. As a compelling public speaker, Mr. Lukas has spoken extensively in front of a wide array of organizations, with an emphasis on teaching individuals the strategies to reach their true potential and deliver exponential results. He has been featured on radio, TV, and in many top trade publications, including Forbes Online. His latest venture is a podcast called the Misfit Entrepreneur.

It is a weekly podcast devoted to giving the audience incredibly useful and unique insight from the world’s top entrepreneurs with a focus on their non-traditional methods for achieving success, their Misfit side. Misfit was created to give the best, actionable advice to accelerate a listener’s success!

The show’s open format and Misfit 3 concept, combined with Dave’s intuitive and engaging interview style quickly uncovers each guest’s key tools, tactics, and tricks that listeners can start using in their lives right now. Released in August 2016, the show has already gotten many 5 star reviews and has had some of the top entrepreneurs in their fields from around the world as guests.

Mr. Lukas received his Bachelor of Arts in Business Management, Finance and Economics from Baldwin-Wallace University, and lives with his wife and daughter in Columbus, Ohio.

I usually cut some of the bio, but I put it all here to show you that Dave knows his stuff. He is a passionate businessman who brings creativity into his work. In fact, from the first question he spoke about his biggest passion is creative problem solving, and he shared several examples of that.

We talk about a lot in this show and cover many topics, but we focused on mindset at about the 30-minute mark. Mindset is such an incredibly important part of any business, and getting it right can help you with rejection, time management, productivity, and everything else. It’s really the foundation that a creative business is based.

I know in my own life, it was only when I learned how to get into the right mindset that my career took off and I felt like I had my life under control. So often, I hear creatives talk about rejection, or their inability to find work, or criticism, and I literally don’t deal with those issues because I’ve been able to build my mind into a steel trap. That’s not to say I don’t have haters or don’t get rejected all the time. It just means I don’t let it bother me.

I tell people all the time that if you don’t get your mindset right, then all the tactics in the world won’t help you. It’s why I start out by telling potential clients that if they aren’t willing to look at their art like a business then I’m not the right fit for them. My old talks used to be 80% tactics and 20% mindset, and they were very poorly attended. However, when I moved the needle to 80% about mindset and 20% about tactics people started seeing massive results immediately. That’s because when I gave them the tactics they were ready to implement them. That’s the power of mindset.

I know when I have business people come on to talk about their tactics they tend to be the least listened to episodes of the show, but I hope that’s not the case with Dave because he gave a step by step guide to improving your mindset that every single creative entrepreneur needs to hear.

If you like this episode, head on over to listen to my episode of his podcast of the Misfit Entrepreneur (http://www.misfitentrepreneur.com) and show him some love on Twitter. His show is awesome.

If you love this show, please head on over to iTunes by clicking here to rate, subscribe, and review it today.

If you have to catch up on old episodes, we have a commercial free version of all the hard lessons, ranterludes, and Kickstarter mini-seasons from the first year of our show, available by clicking here. That’s 74 episodes and almost 9 hours of content, and you can get it all for just $20

Today on the show we have another crossover episode, and with it a new format; the Roundtable.

Man, new formats are kind of becoming our thing in the recent past, huh? We had Tyler James on to do a two-part episodes with his Comixlaunch show, and how we have on Martin Dunn to do a crossover with his show I Make Comics.

Martin is a comic creator who has been through the trenches as an artist, too. He’s written for IDW, Hashtag, and his own company CAE, and inked for both DC and Dark Horse books, among many others. Seriously, his Comic Vine resume is hefty. Here is the first part of his it, straight from Comic Vine.

Martin Dunn is a comic book Creator/Writer/Artist as well as a webcaster and Convention Panelist, from Tampa, Florida. He currently acts as Chief Creative Officer of CAE Studios. He has done work for CAE Studios, IDW Publishing, Hashtag Comics, Creature Entertainment and more. His body of work includes his creator-owned properties 'Joshua Black', 'Project: A.P.E.X.', '#IFightGhosts', and 'FETCH: An Odyssey'. as well as work on the Hashtag Comics series 'Carpe Noctem', and IDW Publishing's 'Star Mage' and 'White Chapel'.

This wasn’t much of an interview in the traditional sense, but that’s not to say that it wasn’t packed with value bombs. Martin has been around the block and back when it comes to making comics, and he’s definitely a lifer at this point. We talked a lot about what makes a lifer in this episodes, and it comes down to making it past that extinction point where others give up. If you can push through that pain and make it out the other side a whole new world of possibilities opens up to you.

This episode was more like a roundtable of two people who have been around the block talking about comics. It reminded me of a panel I did with Lee Kohse at Anime California about how to make it as an artist. There wasn’t a lot of structure, but there was a ton of value. Similarly, this episode didn’t have any real structure to it, and there really wasn’t a moderator. Instead, it was just two guys talking about cool stuff. We riffed off each other about making comics, conventions, and why you should always be nice to each other.

This is one of the longer episodes I’ve recorded recently, and it was nice not to be confined to the hour space I’ve been stuck with for the past year. I’m enjoying having a more free flowing experience to talk with people for longer or shorter than usual, but let’s be honest it’s always longer.

If you liked this episode, you should head on over to Martin’s website @ www.caestudios.com or find him on twitter @mdunn82. If you are new to this show, head on over to www.thebusinessofart.us to rate, review, and subscribe today. It’s the best way to make sure you don’t miss any of our awesome content. If you want to connect with me, I’m on twitter @russellnohelty.

James Haick is the publisher of Jamestown Publishing and creator of Solar Flare, a comic about a solar flare that destroys humanity’s way of life, that was successful on Kickstarter several times over the last few years.

I had James on the show because he’s starting a new company called Jamestown Publishing, which features an initial slate of four books including Walter Ostlie’s Shiver Bureau and Richard Rivera’s Stabbity Bunny, among others. His company is new, but his business sense and style are on point. I know Walter and Richard. Their work is synonymous with quality. In talking with James, it’s easy to see why they were convinced.

This dude in on POINT.

I always said the way to start a successful company that gets in with Diamond is to use Kickstarter as a proving ground, and James took it to another level. He layered convention success on top of Kickstarter to create a potent 1-2 punch. Since my two biggest revenue generators are Kickstarter and conventions, this sounds like a great way to build a foundationally successful company.

On top of that, Jamestown also will only publish books that have completed a full arc, or their entire run, whichever comes first. This is a caveat for publishing with Wannabe Press, so I’m all for this strategy. However, they are actually going into the direct market, which is something Wannabe Press has avoided like the plague.

This is one of my longest episodes ever at over 90 minutes long, but after talking with James for a while, it’s easy to be impressed with the future of his company. He seems to hit every note right when it comes to getting everything started on the right foot. There are no guarantees in this life, but I would say this is a high percentage risk.

This is a little bit of a weird episode because for most of it James was interviewing me and pelting me with questions. I don’t know he got the upper hand, but you should get a ton of value from what I deliver specifically about conventions. I hope I helped tweak James’s convention strategy to be more successful, and helped yours too.

I’m very candid in this interview b/c I kept thinking we would start the show and I would ask my intro question, but it never happened. This is like a 90 minute pre-interview which you get to listen in on. I know most of my episodes feel like a behind the scenes look at a creator’s brain, but I think this one even more so does that because I never thought we were recording.

If you like this episode, head on over to https://www.jamestownpublishing.com/ and let James know, or find him on twitter @jameshaick.

If you love this show, then head on over to www.thebusinessofart.us/itunes and rate, review, and subscribe today.

I also have a completely free Kickstarter Toolkit I’ve put together to help you succeed in your own creative business. There’s no sign up required. Head on over to www.thebusinessofart.us/kickstartertoolkit to check that out today.

Maytal Gilboa is the founder and publisher of Emet Comics and Rosy Press. Since she just acquired Rosy Press, I wanted to have her on in order to discuss why she bought the press, along with her massively successful Kickstarter for Finding Molly. Besides that, she's a wealth of business knowledge. Here is the description of EMET comics, straight from their Wikipedia page.

Emet Comics is the independent comic book publishing division of Emet Entertainment, LLC, an American graphic novel publisher and entertainment company headquartered in Los Angeles, California, United States. The Emet Comics publishing line is focused on empowering female creators and storytellers in comics

Emet Comics was founded in 2015 by Maytal Gilboa an ex-animation executive who recognized a void in the comic book community when it came to content with a female point of view. During Emet Comics first two years, the company has enjoyed many successes. In their first year, the company’s title Zana by Jean Barker and Joey Granger, a fictional story about apartheid in a future South Africa, was nominated for the Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics.Also, in their first year, the company sold their title The Wendy Project by Melissa Jane Osborne and Veronica Fish, to Papercutz for English language distribution, and to Editoria Oceana for Spanish Language distribution.[4]

In November 2016, the company announced the purchase of Rosy Press, a romance comics publisher focused on diverse stories about love and relationships. Emet announced that they would be continuing Rosy Press's successful Fresh Romance series as both a webcomic and printed graphic novel series.

Maytal is a powerhouse in indie comics and one of the few people who loves the business side of things as much as me. It was incredible to listen to how Maytal has pivoted her business in the last year, and how she thinks of her books as marketing material. I love how she is going about moving into 2017, and what she plans to do with her company in the near future.

What was really interesting to me was the reasoning behind her purchase of Rosy Press. Rosy is a romance comic book company, and Maytal said she bought the company because she refused to let it die because it was too important.

For those of you that don’t know, Rosy Press’s publisher announced she was shuttering the company, and a few weeks later resurfaced to announce Emet Comics’s acquisition. It’s truly a fascinating story, and one I enjoyed hearing immensely. It’s actually a great case study in how to acquire a company.

Throughout the interview, Maytal talked in detail about her exact marketing plan, along with how she repackaged many of her books for more success. She talked about what she will and won’t be bringing back to her next Kickstarter, and the struggles with having too many rewards.

Check out this episode, and go and find them @ http://www.emetcomics.com or on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram.

If you like this episode, head on over to iTunes to rate, review, and subscribe today and if you are getting ready to launch your own Kickstarter, head on over to my Kickstarter Toolkit to find everything I’ve ever written about the subject by clicking here.

This week on the show we have Tim Powers, Philip K. Dick award-winning science fiction and fantasy author of Dinner at Deviant’s Palace and On Stranger Tides. I met Tim at Loscon and he made an offhand comment about how nobody should ever self-publish their book. I asked him to come on the show and make his case, and he agreed! This is his bio, straight from Wikipedia:

Timothy Thomas "Tim" Powers (born February 29, 1952)[1] is an American science fiction and fantasy author. Powers has won the World Fantasy Award twice for his critically acclaimed novels Last Call and Declare. His 1988 novel On Stranger Tides served as inspiration for the Monkey Island franchise of video games and was optioned for adaptation into the fourth Pirates of the Caribbeanfilm.

Most of Powers' novels are "secret histories". He uses actual, documented historical events featuring famous people, but shows another view of them in which occult or supernatural factors heavily influence the motivations and actions of the characters.

Typically, Powers strictly adheres to established historical facts. He reads extensively on a given subject, and the plot develops as he notes inconsistencies, gaps and curious data; regarding his 2000 novel Declare, he stated,[2]

"I made it an ironclad rule that I could not change or disregard any of the recorded facts, nor rearrange any days of the calendar – and then I tried to figure out what momentous but unrecorded fact could explain them all."

Tim has been a published writer for a long time, and I really enjoyed his perspective on writing. Even though I don’t agree that there is never a reason to self-publish. He laid out his case very well for why somebody should look for a publisher, and even how to do it. I really enjoyed toward the end of the interview when he went through the step by step process for how to get a book published. It was a brilliant strategy, and even though he’s not a marketing person he clearly has some marketing in him because it’s genius in its simplicity.

I also really liked what he said about how to find an agent. Yes, he went through the exact process you should use to find an agent toward the end of the interview and it was great. There is a secret piece of the puzzle you need before getting an agent interested, and the way he talks about it is just fantastic.

The four publishers he talked about in this interview that accept unsolicited manuscripts are Tor, Daw, Baen, and Ace. I know I’m going to look into them and if you have a qualifying book then you should too.

If you liked this episode, please head on over to Tim’s Facebook page and website to say thanks. If you like the show, please head on over to iTunes. Rate, review, and subscribe today.

If you want to check out my Kickstarter Toolkit, the free resource I designed to help you launch your own project, filled with everything I’ve ever said about Kickstarter on my blog and podcast, click here.

This week on the show, we’re back at Palm Springs Comic Con for one of my favorite panels I’ve ever moderated, because I interviewed a living legend. Two living legends in fact. I was honored to moderate The Man who Created Halloween panel with Irwin Yablans, legendary producer of the film, and Shelly Saltman, who didn’t make Halloween but did help market the Birds and is a TV legend in his own right.

Here’s Irwin’s bio, straight from Wikipedia:

[Irwin] produced films which included Halloween (1978), Tourist Trap (1979), Roller Boogie (1979), Nocturna: Granddaughter of Dracula (1979), Halloween II (1981), Hell Night(1981), Blood Beach (1981), Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), and Tank (1984). Since his resignation from Compass International, Yablans produced films with Charles Band such as Prison (1988).

When Yablans was younger he realized he wanted to work in the movie industry by looking in one of the drive-in movie theater trash and found pieces of cut out scenes.

Halloween began as an idea suggested by Yablans (entitled The Babysitter Murders), who envisioned a film about babysitters being menaced by a stalker. Carpenter took the idea and another suggestion from Yablans that it take place during Halloween and developed them into a story. Along with noted film producer and financier Moustapha Akkad, Yablans put forward $300,000 for the film's production, filming in Pasadena, California over the course of 20 days. Released in late October 1978, the film was an unprecedented success, making $70 million in its initial theatrical run, becoming the highest grossing independent film of all time until it was surpassed The Blair Witch Project, released twenty years later. Yablans and Akkad remained as executive producers after the film's sequel rights were sold to Dino De Laurentiis, the latter producing every entry in the series until his death in 2005. Yablans and Akkad, along with producer Joseph Wolf, founded the independent production and distribution studio Compass International Pictures (later Trancas International Films Ltd.)

And here is Shelly’s, also from Wikipedia:

Sheldon "Shelly" Arthur Saltman (born August 17, 1931 in Boston) is a promoter of major sports and entertainment events including the worldwide promotion of the Muhammad Ali / Joe Frazier heavyweight championship boxing matches, creating the Andy Williams San Diego Golf Classic, helping to arrange the independent NFL Players Association games during the 1982 NFL season Strike, and bringing cellular phone technology to the former Soviet Union. But in the eyes of the general public, he is perhaps best known as the man that Evel Knievel tried to beat to death with a baseball bat.

Shelly has created, written, and produced shows for television such as Pro-Fan, Challenge of the NFL Cheerleaders (an early "reality" show), and the movie Ring of Passion about the fights between American boxer Joe Louis and German champion Max Schmeling in the years leading up to World War II. Shelly is also the author of various books including EVEL KNIEVEL ON TOUR by Sheldon Saltman with Maury Green (1977 / Dell Publishing) and FEAR NO EVEL: An Insider's Look At Hollywood as told to Thomas Lyons by Shelly Saltman (January 2007 / We Publish Books).

If you are interested in listening just to Shelly, he stays pretty silent until the last 15 minutes of the episode. So if you want his opinion on why he’s terrified of ravens, what it was like going town to town promoting the Birds, or how he created Sports Goofy, then fast forward to the last 15, but I highly recommend starting at the beginning, because this is mostly about how Irwin created Halloween, filled with tons of awesome stories. Some you might know, like whose mask they used for Michael Myer’s character, and other you might not, like how they came to cast Jamie Lee Curtis in her breakthrough role.

It’s not often in your life you get to share the stage with a living legend, and I don’t take it for granted. It was amazing hearing Irwin talk not just about Halloween, but how he helped invent independent movies, how movies have changed over the years, why he can’t watch horror movies now, and his #1 secret for success.

Irwin and Shelly are far and away the two most successful individual people we’ve ever had on the show, and talking with them was a delight. I tried to soak up the information they gave like a sponge, and hope you will too. There is nothing like hearing how somebody sustained a career in a creative field. It gives you insights on how to build your own career and shows you a path in the darkness.

Irwin also has a book, The Man who Created Halloween, which is his biography. It’s full of amazing anecdotes about how he came up inside the business, what he had to do to succeed, and how he built a career for himself. I was riveted to every page and highly recommend you checking it out by clicking here. Your copy won’t be signed like mine, but it will be filled with the same awesome knowledge.

Shelly also has an amazing book called Fear No Evel: An Insiders Look at Hollywood, where he talks about promoting the legendary Ali/Frazier fights and playing tennis with Boris Yeltsin, along with the time Evel Knievel attacked him with a baseball bat. Check that one out by clicking here. It’s soon to be a major motion picture.

When there is knowledge to soak up, I’m there, and both Shelly and Irwin dropped knowledge throughout. I truly enjoyed this conversation and hope you do as well. Interesting tidbit, my first management company was Trancas International, who co-produced Halloween with Irwin. Small world. 

If you do, please head on over to iTunes to rate, review, and subscribe today. And if you are looking to catch up on past episode, there is no better way than through our commercial free course that captures all the Hard Lessons, Ranterludes, and Kickstarter mini-seasons from our first 100 episodes. That’s over 74 episodes and almost 9 hours of content which you can find by clicking here.