Since the disappearance of Mr Dilworth I have been looking at how to go forward with projects.
I am trying to stifle the new ideas that come into my head every day because there is only one person who is going to be drawing them: me. I already have enough things on the drawing table and that is where the problem starts.
As I have written before the days of the mega project graphic novels or graphic novel series such as Return of the Gods: Twilight of the Super Heroes and The Green Skies are gone. Unofficially titled The Invasion Earth series those books took years to complete and as you start getting older you begin to think "do I have ten years left to start a new long running series?" 😔
I have a couple options open for the work. The first is to just make series with smaller page counts -say 32-48pp. The second is the one I have been toying with but there are problems. It is to produce larger books, maybe quarterly, with all of the strips/stories mixed together in an almost anthology like style.
I was worrying over the price to charge for new books but as I have kept book prices very low for ten years now and no one really buys I thought "sod it!" Books will be priced to cover the costs and then make me at least some profit on a sale (since the US Tax people hit me on sales). For that reason I threw that concern away.
The problem is fewer page comics to complete each story arc or a massive book with everything mixed in together? The behind-the-scenes chores are the real problem as the printers used seem to have a problem with books over 80pp -unlike the old days there is no0 quality control checking that things are printed perfectly. It's all PDF-to-Printer's computer-to printing device then collate and post out. This is why no books are referred to as ready to buy until I check, double check and if there are any errors (pages out of sequence -the printers fault not the file used) they are corrected and I order (yeah being a publisher you do not get free "galley proofs" these days) a copy. If all is fine then the book is listed on the store front and pushed online.
With a smaller book and fewer pages the work is far less as are the problems. Amazingly Green Skies I-III with their large page counts had no problems. So there are advantages to both larger and smaller page count books. I just need to decide which I want to go for.
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