The Complete Creative

This week’s show features Beth Scorzato, freelance editor, and maker of cool things. I’ve known Beth since she moved to Los Angeles a few years ago, and she was on my list of people I’ve wanted on the show since the beginning. Here’s her bio, straight from www.bethscorzato.com.

I'm originally from Connecticut, where I grew up in theater, surrounded by the workings of my mother's costume shop, a local business which started in our basement. I thought I'd be in theater forever, but I fell in love with comics during college at SUNY Purchase, where I earned my BA in Journalism. I continued to study publishing at Pace University, where I earned my MS in Book and Magazine Publishing.

Since then I've worked at Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Papercutz Graphic Novels, and Lion Forge Comics, as well as boutique YA literary development house Paper Lantern Lit. Currently, in addition to my freelance work, I am a partner and Editor-in-Chief at GeekChic Comics.

I moved to Los Angeles from NYC in 2014 and yes, the weather is great. And, after all that, I still work in theater on the side anyway.

Best is one of the few editors I know who doesn’t have a burning desire to write as well. She really loves editing and it comes through in everything she talks about in this episode. Listen to this episode if you want to know:

What makes a good freelancer

The biggest problems Beth finds when hiring freelance writers and artists

Why knowing the whole supply chain is critical to your success

Why prior success as a creator is important to whether a company will hire you

What you should look for when hiring an editor

Why editors are so important

If you liked this episode, find Beth on Twitter or Instagram @girladactyl, or on her site www.bethscorzato.com.

If you enjoy this show, please like, rate, and review it on iTunes by clicking here. AND if you are an author or creator who wants to make more money selling books, join our FREE Facebook community by clicking here.

This week we have another live show from Long Beach Comic Expo. This is our last live panel from that show, and it was an awesome one, especially if you ever wanted to learn how to sell at conventions. Our awesome panelists are some of the best I know at selling at conventions, and I brought them all together to show how their styles are different, and how you can be successful as an artist, writer, or even editor.

Here’s a description of the panel, right from the program guide:

It’s incredibly expensive to exhibit at a show. Not only are there table fees involved, but you have to pay for products and marketing materials among many other expenses. Most creators go into their first exhibiting experience blind and end up losing a lot of money. Don’t let that happen to you. Join moderator Russell Nohelty (Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter) as he talks with a panel of experienced con veterans including Mike Wellman (Guns A’ Blazin’), Gwendolyn Dreyer (Monster Elementary), Madeleine Holly-Rosing (Boston Metaphysical Society) and Daniel De Sosa (Purrvana) as they give you their best tips to make money at conventions and make sure you are profitable from day one.

Most of these awesome creators have been on the show before. You can catch Gwendolyn Dreyer’s of my show here, and listen to her talking about building an audience from scratch here. You can listen to Madeleine talking about Kickstarter here, building an audience here, and on her own spotlight episode here. You can hear Mike and I debate Kickstarter vs. self-funding comics here and here.  The only person who hasn’t been on the show at all is Daniel, but I can assure you he is a con selling rock star.

If you like this episode please make sure to find the panelists online to thank them. They can be found below.

Gwendolyn Dreyer (@monsterelem on Twitter, www.monsterelementary.com)

Madeleine Holly-Rosing (@mhollyrosing on Twitter, bostonmetaphysicalsociety.com)

Daniel De Sosa (@bardicfury on Twitter, www.desosa.tumblr.com)

Mike Wellman (@macafro on Twitter, www.thecomicbug.com)

If you like this episode, then make sure to rate, review, and subscribe on iTunes by clicking here.

And if you are an author or creator who wants to make more money selling books, then join our new, awesome, promo-free Facebook group by clicking here.

This week is another live episode, this time from the Comic Creator Conference at Long Beach Comic Expo. I know it feels like I’ve done a ton of live shows recently, but I have such a backlog of amazing panels that I want to get them out while they’re still relevant. Usually I like to toggle through interviews, live shows, and lessons, but with the anthology interview series blocking out seven weeks, I stockpiled a bunch of these episodes, and there are STILL MORE!

I know I still owe you an episode on the Kickstarter, but I want to make sure to collect all my thoughts, and that I’m feeling well, before I dig in to unpack that massive undertaking.

This panel is all about the Politics of Partnership. I was lucky enough to be asked to moderate one of the coolest, most epic panels of my entire career at this show, including a funny story that shows how a career can come full circle in just a few years. I won’t spoil it, but it involves being fired from Boom! While Mark Waid was the CCO.

This amazing panel is filled with fantastic guests. Here’s the panel description, straight from the C3 website.

Working with a creative team on an independent title or through a major publisher can come with questions of ownership and percentages. Mark Waid, Dean Haspiel and Amy Reeder discuss how to navigate these waters and negotiate the best deal for all parties involved.

We were also joined on the panel by Brandon Montclare, Amy’s partner on Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur and Rocket Girl. Between all the panelists involved, we had dozens of years of experience in both good and bad partnerships. They dropped knowledge bombs galore.

Hope you enjoy it. If you did, let the panelists know on Twitter or Facebook. If you liked this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review by clicking here.

And if you are an author or creator, looking to make more money selling books, I highly recommend our new Facebook group, Authors and Creators Making Money Selling Books. It’s no promo, just awesome content. Join now by clicking here.

This week on the show we have another live episode. This time, it’s an amazing panel I moderated and put together from Emerald City Comicon. The fact that me, as a first-time vendor at the show, was able to book a panel at Emerald City Comicon was pretty amazing, and it was almost entirely due to the amazing panel we were able to put together to talk about building an art portfolio and pitching to an editor, which is the topic of this panel.

This is the description, straight from the Emerald City ComiCon site: Before you can book jobs with publishers, you need to know how to build a portfolio. Once you've built a portfolio, you need to know how to pitch an editor or publisher. This panel combines both steps into one information-packed hour. Learn how to build and pitch your portfolio from pros who have worked in the industry for years.

I went out to find a diverse group of panelist who could hit this from all angles. I brought in writers, artists, publishers, editors, and art directors. Here’s a list of the panelists.

Pia Guerra (artist, Y: The Last Man; @piaguerra on twitter)

Tom Hutchison (publisher, Big Dog Ink; @tjhbigdogink)

Laura Neubert (artist, Artful from Action Labs; @missrosengeist on Twitter)

Greg Smith (co-writer/co-creator, Junior Braves of The Apocalypse from Oni Press; @thatamazingtwit on Instagram)

Margot Atwell (publishing director, Kickstarter; @margotatwell on Twitter)

It was an amazing and diverse panel of experts in every field of hiring and creating art. Two of our guests are returning to the show for this panel. Margot Atwell talked about Kickstarter here and Tom Hutchison discussed building a publishing business here.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, make sure to find the panelists online and say thanks! If you like this show, please write, review, and subscribe to it on iTunes by clicking here.

And if you are a writer or creator looking to sell more books, then join our free Facebook Community, Writers and Creators Making Money Selling Books, by clicking here.

Today on the show I have Angela Lauria, founder of the Author Incubator, which has successfully launched over 270 bestselling authors into the stratosphere.  I had to have her on to talk about her success and how she can create bestselling authors on autopilot. Here’s a little about the Author Incubator, from their website www.theauthorincubator.com:

People will tell you writing a book is a struggle, but with my system, it’s simple. There’s you and your book which is already written inside you. It already exists. We simply have to clear away the stuff between you and it.

The Author Incubator provides a structure and space so coaches and other healing professionals can get their message out to the world by writing a book that makes a difference with clarity and ease.

I’ve worked with hundreds of authors in transformation and what we’ve found is there are really only 10 pieces of the puzzle to writing a book that actually changes people’s lives. See writing a book SEEMS very complicated and that can make it overwhelming, but if you can master these 10 steps, you will have a book that makes a difference in many people’s lives. So would you like to know the steps?

That almost makes writing a bestselling book seem attainable to everybody, right? I actually found Angela from a Facebook ad, another nut I’ve been unable to crack successfully, and decided to reach out and see if she would be on the show. I expected nothing, but she replied the same day.

What amazed me about her advice for Amazon book launches was how similar it is to my advice about launching a Kickstarter. I shouldn’t be surprised, though, since a book launch is a book launch is a book launch.

If you enjoy this one with Angela, make sure to like her page on Facebook by clicking here, and follow her on Twitter by clicking here.

And I know you are jonesing for some Kickstarter knowledge and I promise I’m going to do a post about it eventually, but in the meantime, you can head on over to my Kickstarter Toolkit by clicking here and seeing everything I’ve ever said about the topic.

If you want to get somebody interested in buying your product, whether it’s a book, a print, or even your services, you need to start with a dynamite pitch.

In my experience, you don’t have much time to catch somebody’s interest. Luckily, I’ve perfected the steps to a good pitch so you can gain somebody’s attention in a minimal amount of time. Once they’re hooked, you can spend as much time as you want with them. The trick is getting them interested in the first place.

 I’ve tailored this formula through dozens of shows, but it can be used on social media, in meetings, or basically anywhere you need to get somebody’s attention.

A pitch needs to be simple and concise with specific appeals for your intended audience. There are tons of steps that go into a great pitch. Don’t worry if you get frustrated with it. Pitching, like any art form, gets better with practice.

Step 1: The question

The first step in any good pitch is the question. This is where you get your potential customer to engage with you by answering a simple yes or no question.

My first question to passersby at a convention is usually “Do you want to see a cool comic?” However, as the variety of titles at Wannabe Press grows, my pitches vary depending on what I am trying to push on any given day. If I want to sell more of my murder mystery novel, the question is “Do you like murder?” If I am trying to sell kids’ books, the question is “Wanna see something that will put your kid to sleep?”

The people who stopped and replied “yes” were immediately self-identifying that they were interested in what I was pitching. I knew they were in my target market because they said “yes.”

One of the most important concept in sales is the idea that many small yeses lead to one big yes—the big yes being a sale. If you can get people to say “yes” over and over again, they are confirming their interest in your product, and you have positioned yourself well to win their business.

If you are selling yourself and not your product, your question might be, “Are you sick of freelancers that bail?” or “Are you having trouble making people notice your brand?” If you are selling prints, you might ask, “Are you looking for a new accent piece for your bedroom?” or “Are your walls annoyingly bare?”

You won’t know exactly what works until you get out into the world and test several possibilities, but the idea is to get somebody to say “yes” to you right off the bat with a simple, innocuous question.

Step 2: The option

Once your potential customer is engaged with your pitch, you need to give them a simple two-choice option to move the conversation along to the next step. This option is another way to make your potential customer self-identify their preferences. When there are two comic books on my table, I ask “Do you like psychological mind screws or girls that kick butt?”

By giving them the choice, I’ve forced them to buy into their preference. Psychologically, this puts people in a more receptive mood to buy. By choosing their favorite, they agree they are interested in what I am selling. Now, all I have to do is make my case and hope they bite.

The beauty of this option is that I know every possible outcome and can plan my pitch accordingly. You know what your pitch will be if they say option one, and you know your pitch if they say option two. Even if they don’t pick either option, you know your next step because you’ve limited their potential responses.  For instance, if they say “both,” or if they pause for more than a second, I always pitch my best seller.

Some people prefer to ask their customers open-ended questions, but that is a dangerous game. If you ask a question like “What are you shopping for today?” or “What do you like?” you are giving the power to the buyer. They could say anything. For all you know, they might say, “I’m here because goats are cool.” By using the two-choice option, you get all the advantages of engagement with none of the risk posed by open-ended questions.

By narrowing down your potential customer’s options, you can nail your pitch every time. With pitching, even a few seconds’ delay can be the difference between a sale and the customer walking away in disgust.

Step 3: The pitch

Did you notice there are two steps before we even get to the pitch? This is called “priming the customer,” and it allows for you to get a couple of yeses before you even pitch the product. It also forces the customer to self-identify as a member of your ideal audience—twice. This leads to a more engaged listener and higher overall sales.

Your pitch is a simple one-sentence summary of your project’s biggest hook. For example, my pitch for Katrina Hates Dead Shit is: a woman gets sick of living during the Apocalypse so she sets out to Hell to Kill the Devil.

It’s short, sweet, and to the point. Most importantly, it creates an emotional connection with my ideal customer. The perfect customer of that book will hear my pitch and have a visceral reaction to it.

That’s the most important part of your pitch. It’s not about what your product does. It about creating an emotional connection to your customer. People make purchases based on emotion, so you need to make an emotional connection to the buyer. The good news is they’ve already self-identified that they want to hear your pitch. Now, all you must to do is nail the emotional hook.

Emotional connection is a powerful thing, and it’s the most powerful buying trigger you have to help boost your sales. When somebody doesn’t know you, they must be able to connect with your product emotionally in order for you to make a sale. 

Don’t worry if you don’t have this down perfectly at first. Discovering the emotional resonance of your product is difficult. You should write out ten to twenty potential pitches and then start delivering them to people to find the one with the best emotional connection. Most likely, you will need to combine the best parts of several pitches for the best effect.

Before a product ever even launches, I spend hundreds of hours developing the exact wording of its pitch. I show people our in-progress work, tell them as much as I can about it, and watch how they react, noting which parts of my description light them up. I mold that all into the perfect pitch. By the time the product launches, I know the exact emotional beats necessary to maximize sales.

Step 4: The flavor

Once you finish your pitch, let it settle in for a moment with your potential customer. Let them look at the product and turn it over a couple times. Once they’ve looked at it for a few seconds, you should start adding on some flavor elements to spice up your pitch. This is when you start peppering in some unique selling points and your value proposition for whatever you are selling.

These flavor elements are things they can’t find easily by looking at your product, like where it was made, why you made it, or who worked on it with you. Every product is different, and you need to find the right “spice” to resonate with a product’s ideal audience.

For my graphic novel, Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter, people respond when I tell them about our influences for making the book, that we used a single artist for everything, and that it’s a complete story. With Katrina Hates the Dead, I know they respond when I talk about the artist going on to work on a Star Wars story and that we have additional process images in the back showing how we made the book. Each of these bits of flavor perk up the reader and strengthen their desire to buy the product.

Step 5: The acceptance

Before you ask for the sale, you want to get them to agree once again that the product is cool. This can be as simple as “Pretty cool, right?” You are priming them one more time before asking them to buy. They’ve agreed this is a product they want—three times—and now it’s time to ask for the sale.

Step 6: The ask

Ask for the business by stating the price of your services and giving them another optional close. For instance, you could say, “This book is twenty dollars or two for thirty,” or “Will that be cash or charge?” This final optional close once again primes the customer that they are going to buy. Instead of the option being yes or no, it’s, “How do I want to pay?”

Don’t be too pushy here. You’ll see their reaction when you state the price. Most people will back off, some will buy, and some will be on the fence. For the people who back off, exchange cards and add them to your mailing list. For the people who buy, have them pay and add them to your mailing list. For the people on the fence, move on to step seven.

Step 7: Objection handling

Most people aren’t going to buy your project. Some will flat out say no, but others will sit on the fence waiting for you to convince them to buy. They want your product but you haven’t given them a strong enough reason to give you their hard-earned money. So, you have to give them a good reason to buy.

With these people, you want to give them another question, like “What’s stopping you from buying this right now?” However, a better question would be, “I know you want this, but you’re trying to save your money to see if there is something better, right?”

They will almost always agree with this, and then you can make them a special offer, something like, “What if I gave you a money-back guarantee? If you find something better at this con, come back and I will give you your money back.” I’ve been making this offer for years, and nobody has ever come back to get their money back.

Maybe they will have a great reason, like “I’m not getting paid for two weeks.” Maybe they have a crappy reason you can easily overcome and make them a customer. Perhaps the pricing is too high, and in that case you can lower the price slightly, or maybe they really want multiple pieces, in which case you can offer them bundle pricing.

If you can overcome these objections in one round of objection handling, then you should have a customer on your hand. If they still have objections, try to flush them out with one more round before giving up.

You want to do at most two rounds of this objection handling. If you can’t make a sale by then, exchange cards, add them to your mailing list, and make them a future prospect. You can keep going for as long as you want with objections, but I’ve found if you can’t convince them with two chances, then they most likely won’t buy, at least not until later.

In practice, this entire pitch, from meeting a customer through objection handling, takes no more than a couple of minutes, max. It’s the whittling down everything you want to say into a couple sentences that takes forever. The actual pitch should be no more than two minutes.

The first time you do it, it won’t take two minutes. It will take forever, and you’ll get everything wrong. You’ll sound terrible. You’ll say things in the wrong order. You’ll say things you didn’t mean to say. You’ll ramble on forever. You’ll be…just awful.

That’s okay.

It’s unnatural to talk about your project. Nobody likes to do it. Since you don’t want to do it, either, you’ll stop after two or three attempts. Then, you’ll hang your head in shame and never want to do it again.

Don’t give up.

That’s the key to this. You can’t stop. You have to keep going. Over time you will get better. The more you practice your “pitching muscle,” the better you’ll get and the more natural you will become. The key to a pitch is that it can’t sound like a pitch. It has to sound natural, and it can’t sound natural until you’ve done it a thousand times. You can’t do it a thousand times if you stop after the first attempt.

You’re supposed to suck at this at first. Sucking at something, as Jake the Dog from Adventure Time says, is the first step to being kind of good at something. If you want to be kind of good at pitching, you have to do the work. There are no shortcuts in coming up with and practicing a compelling pitch. The only secret is to do it a whole bunch of times.

Nicholas Doan and Gwendolyn Dreyer are two of my favorite people in the comics community. They are incredible at giving of their time and knowledge, along with making dope ass books. 

I brought them on the show to talk about anthology in conjunction with the launch of my new anthology Monsters and Other Scary Shit. Click here to check it out. For just $40 you get a hardcover of the book, digital print, and pdf, including shipping in the USA!

Nick and Gwen put together the amazing Monster Elementary anthology. Published by Spacegoat Productions, Monster Elementary tells the stories of five monsters who are forced to attend a normal human elementary school, with hilarious consequences. Here is the premise, pulled straight from www.monsterelementary.com: 

Monster Elementary is a fun, witty, comedy/adventure comic for children of all ages featuring five monster children based on classic monster movie archetypes. These five monster kids are forced to attend a human public school after their monsters-only private school is raided by the FBI. To their surprise, they're not allowed to eat any of the other students. The monsters’ adventures and experiences hiding their identities and growing up are the focal point of the book.

The book is amazing, and they have been in the trenches for a long time, attending cons, and slinging books. It was great to talk with them about Kickstarter, the state of indie comics, and anthologies. You are going to get a ton of value out of this massive episodes. I highly recommend you listen. However, if you just want the cliff notes, here is their list of the top five things you must know before starting an anthology.

1.) Make sure you have a variety of art styles. What's the point of doing an anthology if it all looks the same?

2.) Try to have all your stories end in even page numbers. There may be circumstances where that is less than ideal, but it will make the layout stage go SO much faster.

3.) Make sure to balance the desire for diversity in stories with the need to stay on theme. Always be asking yourself, "Why does this story need to be in THIS book?"

4.) Make sure your cover, and front and back matter have a strong sense of design reflecting the stories and theme of the book. It can be difficult to find a unifying design, but it's necessary to accurately convey to your potential reader what's inside.

5.) Make sure you finish big. Make sure the last story in your book is on theme, impactful, and is the lasting memory you want your reader to have at the end stick with them when they reflect on your book.

If you dug this episode, make sure to head on over to www.monsterelementary.com and let Gwen and Nick know, or find them on twitter @monsterelem. Tell them they need an Instagram, too!

Don’t forget to check out the Kickstarter for my book, Monsters and Other Scary Shit, live on Kickstarter now. Nick has a 7-page story inside with awesome artist Daniele Serra! Back it today by clicking here.

It’s just $40 for a hardcover book, digital print of the cover, and pdf, including shipping! That’s 224 pages of monster goodness. Click here to back today!  

Also, head on over to iTunes to subscribe, rate and review today. Just click here and subscribe today!

D.J. Kirkbride is one of the people who I looked up to when I started doing cons. He had an Eisner, a ton of creator friends, and an awesome reputation. Over the years, he’s kept increasing his stable of books from Popgun at Image, to Amelia Cole at IDW, to The Biggest Bang at Dark Horse, to his new book The Once and Future Queen from Dark Horse, which you can find in stores now.

Honestly, I’m really impressed he gets any work with Dark Horse, since they put out so few titles, but I’m always impressed with people who can keep getting books published again and again with big time publishers. I guess it’s a little flaw in my personality where I look longingly at writers who were able to get a publishing deal with a big indie company.

On top of having a book that ran for 30 issues in Amelia Cole, D.J. is one of my favorite people in comics because he’s genuinely nice and helpful all the time. I asked him to come onto the show to talk about his work, but mostly to jam about anthologies. I recently read Popgun Volume 3, the volume that won him an Eisner, and I have to say it was one of the coolest, most beautiful anthology I’ve ever seen. It had no theme at all, just back-to-back awesome stories; 450 pages of them.

Having reached the pinnacle of prestige anthology making, I wanted to have D.J. on to talk about his biggest takeaways from making anthologies. We talked for over an hour about his work, but he was nice enough to send me his bullet points in case you don’t want to listen to the whole episode. Here they are.

Organization is key. Something as simple as an Excel spreadsheet can save your ass. There's a lot to keep track of when dealing with a large number of creators on an anthology.

Bigger isn't necessarily better. With POPGUN, each book got bigger. I thought keeping the price point the same while upping the page count would add incentive for readers, but that didn't pan out. We got to include more great comics, but it wasn't financially responsible.

Themes can be good. While I loved and love the "anything goes" mixtape feel of POPGUN, we might've had an easier time finding readers if we'd had a loose theme for each volume. I'm not sure, though, at least not for POPGUN. The variety was king, but overall, for anthologies, a theme can be good.

A great cover speaks volumes. Mike Allred, Paul Pope, Tara McPherson, Ben Templesmith-- whoa buddy, yeah, we were honored and lucky to have them on our POPGUN covers. A great artist with a cool visual coupled with excellent design, which we had on our covers from Fonografiks, can really help you sell all the awesome comics inside.

You have to LOVE it. Careers aren't often made editing most anthologies, nor is any money. You need to enjoy getting cool work out there to curious and adventurous readers.

There are some themes emerging from all of these interviews, and I can’t wait to do the wrap-up show of the Kickstarter to discuss my biggest takeaways. If you liked this episode, head on over to Twitter and let @djkirkbride know how much you enjoyed it.

If you love anthologies, especially ones with monsters, head over and check out our anthology live on Kickstarter now @ www.monsteranthologycomic.com.

And don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes by clicking here. It helps more than you know.

This week on the show we welcome back Amanda Meadows to Jam out about anthologies with me! Amanda is the publisher of Wannabe Press along with Geoffrey Golden, and their awesome comedy publisher started our through anthologies, specifically Devastator Press.

If you haven’t listened to her previous episode, check it out by clicking here.

This episode is part of the celebration of our new anthology project, Monsters and Other Scary Shit, a 224-page monster anthology about monsters, which is live on Kickstarter now. It’s 47 creators and 30 comics about monsters of all kinds; funny monster, scary monster, fantasy monsters, sci-fi monster, and more. It’s just $40 shipped right to your door (in the US), and you get the pdf of the book included, and a digital download of the cover image, at no extra charge! Check it out today by clicking here.

I wanted to have Amanda back on the show, specifically, because she’s created 13 different anthologies, and really built her entire business from anthologies into a full line publisher. I wanted to know the top five pitfalls new anthology creators should avoid when they are planning their project.

Here’s her list.

1. Sloppy Planning + Infrastructure Most people beginning an anthology project for the first time don’t realize they need a process in place for accepting and managing submissions (what’s your timeline? where’s your documentation?), streamlining production (what’s your CMS?), keeping all their assets in order (where are all the files kept and backed up?), getting consistent final files (what are the print specs? do you have PS or InD template?) from all their contributors. All those above questions have to be answered before you start taking pieces, or it’ll be a monster of a puzzle for you at the end of the project.

2. Lack of Guidance (AKA Lateness) There can be a reluctance from editors of anthologies to, well, be editors. They want to commission the piece then expect it in their inbox by a certain date. But many contributors need more help in order to finish their pieces. Many creatives don’t really know (they were never trained) how to manage other creatives. The biggest issue in this category is lateness. One late piece can cause a cascade of production problems and delays. Learning how to communicate effectively and promptly with contributors is key to, if not preventing, then at least managing late pieces better.

3. Loose Curation An anthology is as good as its curation. There can and will always be amazing gems, but if the one story doesn’t work after another, it can make the whole book feel less amazing. You also want to ensure that there is a baseline of art and writing quality you’re sticking to. Nail down your criteria for submissions and make sure you’re transparent about those criteria if submissions are open to the public. There can and absolutely should be anthologies for newcomers and beginners, but if you are doing that, make sure you’ve chosen styles and tones that complement each other, and stories that make sense for the theme of the book. The order of stories can make or break a reading experience.

4. Zero Retail Marketing or Publicity

Just, in general. Anthologies don’t exactly get the star treatment in comics shops or book stores. They’re hard to sell unless there’s some major internet juice or star power behind it. So you have to be crafty and have a plan. Not just the Kickstarter plan, but the afterlife plan. How are you going to sell the stock remaining after shipping to your online orders? How will you mobilize your contributors to push the book beyond the first few months of release? If you’re going to conventions, how will you promote those appearances? How will you retain interest in the book after year one, two, three of it being available?

5. The Urge to Make More Anthologies I dunno, do you need to make another one? Sometimes it makes sense to let the anthology go, and move on the next big challenge: writing or editing a full-length graphic novel, starting a new indie series, or write a novella. Sometimes the arduous task of launching a good anthology is enough to prepare you for the next thing. For example, if you make a gorgeous and well-received anthology like my friend Taneeka Stotts did with the queer fantasy tome BEYOND, you should try to roll that goodwill into a partnership with another entity, get a gig on another book — seize the moment. If you’ve got a hit on your hands and see specific demand for more anthologies, great! Do it. Otherwise, consider taking a break and moving on to a new format and change things up.

I really appreciate her putting together such a thorough, thoughtful list. This is all advice I would have loved to have before I planned my first anthology. I mean my book turned out amazing, but some of it was just because of the awesome creators that I chose to work with, and not so much my amazing organizational sense. I ended up hoping it would work out because of my own scheduling issues, and it just happened to be amazing at the end of the day.

If you want to thank Amanda for her amazing advice, Amanda is on twitter @amandonium. You can find Devastator Press on Twitter @getdevastated.

If you love the show, please go to iTunes by clicking here. Please subscribe to the show, rate and review us today.

Finally, go check out our amazing 224-page monster anthology, Monsters and Other Scary Shit, live on Kickstarter now. If you love monsters, this is the anthology for you. Check it out by clicking here.

Brandon Perlow is an interesting cat. I met him soon after he raised over $20,000 on Kickstarter for the Eisner-nominated Watson and Holmes, and we’ve been friends ever since, feeding each other advice on publishing and Kickstarter. I’ve learned a ton from him over the years, and I’m so glad he came on to talk about Kickstarter and anthologies. Considering we are currently running a comic book anthology Kickstarter this is perfect synergy with our current campaign.

In fact, he prepared a list of the top five things he learned from working on an anthology project and how to make them success. Here is his list:

1) The tighter the theme and subject are, the better. For instance, having an anthology dedicated to Watson and Holmes is better than having a broad anthology based on a group of people, or an anthology with no theme at all, like Our First Anthology.

2) Vary up the creators. It’s good to have creators who are well known and ones that are up and coming. You never know what up and coming creators will one day be massive stars, and the well-known creators help boost up the immediate sales and professionalism of your book.

3) The quality of the stories is what matters. You want the work to be of good quality. Anthologies are a great place for creators to show something different, but just make sure the art and stories are very high all around.

4) Size matters. Sometimes bigger is better. but not always. Try to have as many good stories as possible. That’s what people will remember. Don’t fill the anthology with junk just to make it bigger for the sake of size.

5) Packaging is important. At the end of the day the reader is what matters. If you don’t have something awesome then nobody will buy it, so make sure to make the packaging something readers will want.

He also got some bonus insights from noted Sherlock Holmes author Lyndsay Faye, who has contributed to many anthologies.

Obviously quality consistency is my biggest issue, but I also like variety when it comes to both style and length. Solid editing with a strong eye for plot is also key, because a lot of anthologies let authors get away with things that the editor of a book wouldn’t — plot holes, language problems, etc. And I want them ordered well, with an arc that makes sense from start to finish.

I hope this helps you plan your next anthology. Brandon mentioned a previous episode of my show with Tim Powers, which you can find here.

If you liked this episode, please head on over and tell Brandon thank you at @bperlownps on Twitter. If you like this show, head on over to iTunes and rate, review, and subscribe today. It only takes 30 seconds and it helps more than you could ever know. All you have to do is click here to be redirected.

And most importantly, we are currently running a Kickstarter campaign for our anthology, Monsters and Other Scary Shit. It’s a 224-page monster anthology about monsters. Check it out by clicking here and get your copy today!