Publishing Changes

Late last night, my partner and I were discussing my work. Me, obsessing over a deadline for this month's book that I'm pretty sure I'll miss, and him actually learning about my goal to get this book out to my printer by the end of the month. There was a lot of back and forth and me realizing that I hadn't given him all the information about what I had already researched and decided, even though I was flip-flopping to something else, and him catching up with where my mindset was before I changed it.

So, I have this book called Book of Fates that I'm working on. You've probably seen me drop some pretty steamy pages on Twitter this past week, all from the first chapter. When I originally conceived this book, it was to be a webcomic. The whole idea from start to finish was a page-per-week release cadence for it and at the end (sometime in the following year) the whole book would be released in print (and available in the IOF shop, of course!). This year, when I actually started working on it, I thought maybe it could just be a print book, and I was fully on board for it. So began the scripting, page layouts, and so on.

Last night's discussion had me going back to this being a webcomic, page-per-week release with a final print volume at the end, and how appealing that idea still is. The print volume is also appealing because I really wanted to have that final book in my hands right now, or at least sometime next month for a summer release. Then came the thought of releasing each chapter as its own book but that's where we start getting gimmicky for no reason and that's not as fun. Sure, I could give myself a break, and readers could have a smaller story to digest in parts but it would be so divided over time as to be... not cohesive enough as an experience.

Ultimately, I think I do want to look at the webcomic release option, only because I think it would be kinda cool to explore that realm for my work. For now, I'm going to keep pushing on this book to release in August, but you'll likely see it pop-up as a webcomic by then. Of course, what this means now is that I need to do some research on how to publish a webcomic, what sites I'll use, and what monetization models exist before I do it. If I can't get it together the way I want, then I'll hold to a single print book and move on. I'm already familiar with a few, and I've seen people publish through their own websites (ideal for yours truly) but also Tumblr, and a couple of other places, so I'm going to start there.

But back to this book, all of this came dialogue happened as I realized I was already behind my deadline, and my partner trying to get me to relax a bit. And he's right. This book may take a little longer than the four weeks I had planned to do it, and that's because it's a bigger overall book than anything I've worked on before, coming in at 56 pages. That's a lot, especially for a new release, which is part of what had me looking at the webcomic idea in the first place. And then there's the second planned book for these characters that'll be around the same length that I'll work on sometime next year? Yeah, that's brand new work on brand new characters in a brand new story, and I just have to give myself the time it takes so that I can take note of what my actual productivity is, while holding to my current deadlines. Especially, if you remember, I didn't plan time-off days this month. So like, maybe cut myself some slack.

So yes! Webcomic likely going to happen, which should be its own adventure. See you in the pages!!