Lianne Sentar
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Always good ideas from sgl!
1.) We’ve run various polls with various sections of our audience, with…varying success! :D We’re probably going to do them a lot more in Year 2, though, and like you said – in a more permanent capacity. As for using a Members-specific poll as a way to gauge print – if the Gauntlet Kickstarter is any indication, the regular Sparkler subscribers ARE much more likely to buy print books than people who are new to the site. But there still aren’t enough subscribers for them as a group to sustain big projects yet. :(
2.) I agree that if we do an art book, doing one as a Sparkler collective will probably be more successful, especially if it’s crowdfunded. Also, we have SO much great art and SO many great creators that we want to include as many of them as possible in a project like that.
3.) Yes, we’re starting to consider POD for certain titles. Between you and some of our other Sparkler Distro clients, we’re seeing how much faster and cheaper it is these days than it was even 5 years ago. This industry is changing so rapidly…which is both a blessing and a curse for us. :) But our company was always designed to be flexible around changing technology and fluctuating demand, so we’re always open to other options.
Winners were announced on our Tumblr last week: see them all here!
Big thanks to all who participated, and congratulations to the winners! These were a delight to review. <3
We’d love for it to go to print. :) Our Gauntlet Kickstarter was just much harder than expected, so we’re re-evaluating how to raise funds for our print division. Of course, if enough ebooks of Dead Endings sell, that alone can push it into print. :) Ebook pre-orders will probably go up with the final chapter in August.
PW lets you start with a pretty low investment (maybe $10 or $20?) and search publishers by “type/kind,” so you can look up webfiction people, webcomics people, etc. Bigger numbers come from the webcomic sites, but they’re also more expensive, and may not stick around if you don’t have art? But Tokyo Demons (which has a lot of manga-style art) did really well on webcomic sites. PW comes with GREAT data, so you can follow very closely what sites are getting views and clicks. And then set up Google Analytics on your website so you can see how long people are staying when they click from another site…that lets you know which ads bring people who STAY on your site (i.e. actual readers). I think $50 or $100 got us rolling pretty well on PW in the beginning.
I ALWAYS go to sgl when I have webfiction questions (she knows her stuff!), so see her post above yours for advice on what communities to ping.
It’s up to you whether you want to mix original fic with fanfic on your personal site. If your original fiction is one big serial–like Tokyo Demons or Tales of the Big Bad Wolf–it might look weird and/or distracting to have fanfic in there as well, so probably just have a link in your “About” page or something. (That’s more professional, anyway.) But if you had a lot of readers of your fanfic, and you’re expecting big numbers from there, maybe you don’t need to be as coy. :)
You’ve just outlined one of the absolute hardest aspects of self-publishing. The Sparkler staff has over 25 years of collective experience in the publishing field and we’re still working day and night to answer that question effectively for this magazine. :)
But here are some places to start:
1.) Join a community of other self-publishers. Offer to read their stuff if they’ll read yours, review their stuff if they’ll review yours, etc.
2.) Try and get some good visuals. Invest in a piece of art(s) or cool graphic(s) that catch the eye. And then, using that…
3.) Buy ads. Join Project Wonderful, for example, and browse around for sites that may have similar audiences, and then put a good, striking ad for yourself on them.
Word-of-mouth and reviews are fantastic, but they’re hard to predict or plan around. But if you buy ads, YOU can decide when and how people see you. It’s a good way to get yourself out there a bit if nothing else is working. Ads were shockingly effective in our Tokyo Demons days…and then it helped get the word-of-mouth ball rolling.
Whoops, I didn’t get my notifications for this thread! Sorry for the late replies. :(
@pachitastic – The Mitsuko/Miki story is also in the Book 1 ebook, if you want a cheap way to get it while waiting for Book 2. :)
I’m glad you liked the Miki Date CD! I know it’s a super weird format (Japan is really into the self-insertion stuff for their otome market, and it was based off of similar CDs in Japan), but we had a lot of fun with it. Miki isn’t actually in the books all that much, so this was a great way to go into more of his and Mitsuko’s backstory. And Miki’s voice actor, Jennie Fiddes, totally killed it! She recorded it in front of a group of giggling female friends with prop cigarettes hanging out of her mouth.
@serene – Yeah, I know this book ended on a real down note, but I was hoping Kado getting his shit together would help ease the pain. They way he’s going to deal with Touya is nuts, and we’ve started going into it with the Save Me/Don’t Save Me short story. It’s time for him to put his ridiculous skill set and his strange talent for handling people to use!
Ha ha, I kinda hated Heart of Darkness, too. But like all great literature, it had some good points. :) Kado is supposed to be sorta poetic in a weird way, hence all his imagery and metaphors. (He reads a lot and is a very out-of-the-box thinker.)
Welcome, FeralKat/Sammdere! Thank you for buying a subscription. <3 Those are the primary way we raise funds to pay our artists advances, and it's been a really tight year...Year 2 is going to be even tougher. Thank you for the support!
Oh, by the way–if you’ve read all the prose, I strongly suggest you try Tokyo Demons Audio. It’s really awesome, and there are some audio-original short stories and bonuses for it, too.
There’s also fanfiction. :D I started getting really emotionally invested in “Magical Girl Sachi,” ha ha!
Yeeeeeeah, the Sachi-Kado relationship will have its true breakthrough soon, and it has to happen in Book 3, so I feel kinda bad dragging it out for so long. It’s just getting cruel. *lol* Their fans do things like this.
I’m not sure when exactly the second paperback is coming out, but probably in a few months? I’d like to go back and revise some stuff (the first half dragged pretty bad), so the trick is finding time to do that.
Tokyo Ghosts is gonna be SO MUCH FUN, if we can manage to get to that series. *lol* The Tokyo Ghosts short story is coming out in July or August, though, as a little taste. Rem’s even going to do a picture with Ayase and Jo in their early 20s. :)
Thanks, Pachi. <3 We have a few more short stories to do this summer, then Book 3 will start right after.
I’m glad you’re enjoying the series. I’ve been really exhausted lately and your post made me feel better, lol.
Oh, man, THE HISTORY BETWEEN THOSE GUYS. They met in another life…and Emily has it all planned out in fine detail. It taught me about ANOTHER era of history. I swear I’m learning more about historical conflict from editing this book than I ever learned in school. *lol*
I adore this chapter, but even the guest proofer handed it back to me and was like, “THIS GAVE ME TOO MANY FEELINGS. TOOOOOOOIVO.”
Ha ha! You guys are great. :D The video key will be revealed in a mere few hours. Becca’s putting the final sound effects into Chapter 8 now. <3
Ha ha! You’re sweet, Serene. :)
Yeah, people have told me in real life that they’re reading and enjoying Dead Endings, even if they’re not commenting here. It’s a great book! I think it’s also appealing to a different segment of the our readers…the older, more bookish people (who aren’t big in fandom and all the online commentary that involves). At one point I noticed a review elsewhere online.
We’re glad you’re enjoying it! Around the office, we can’t get enough of Cailen and Everett’s dynamic. SUCH BAD PARTNERS. Yet they get shit done! It’s great. Now that Gabriella’s around, at least they won’t get murdered while getting shit done. (Hopefully. :D)
Oh, man, I didn’t have this hooked up to my subscription feed yet. @animatorwannabe and @neila, great job! It’s nice to see our short comics get some love!
By the way, Denise (creator of Before You Go) was flipping out about this on Twitter today: https://twitter.com/SparklerMonthly/status/461671933609009153
I’m sorry to hear this, Emily! I checked our records, and your membership order went in fine, so this might be a technical issue with your browser. Please make sure you’re:
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