We are now at the beginning of August 2020 (I think you all know what is going on!). Since I wrote the piece about how you might get BTC&B in Europe more cheaply and then updated it nothing has changed.
Over the last 8 years I have lowered book prices to where I was giving them away. No money made. I sent books out for review that were never reviewed. In fact those 'reviewers' probably never had the slightest interest in reviewing books.
After the internet got its opening I soon found out some of the cons going on. I had published a war games and history zine and wanted to ask other bloggers to contribute. Not many blogs at all by then so I ended up on the phone calling people producing war games zines. They did not exist. With one call I found out why. One of the, uh, 'publisher's mothers answered and we got talking and she told me "Oh he only does that to get stuff for free from companies. They all do it. There isn't a magazine". A con. Operated by someone from his parents home.
Within a few days I found out how big this con was. The companies were not checking they just accepted that their products were being reviewed and those reviews were being seen by potential customers.
When I wanted to get Black Tower books reviewed I sent them to people I knew in the UK who produced fanzines or blogs. Free books -not a single review. There were two who mentioned one book quickly but "have no time to review"....as they publioshed more reviews of other peoples' books. Of course, now I know these are people running scared of the whisper network and the comic 'nice guys'. They might get the nasty treatment if they even tried reviewing one of my books. Some men just never grew out of fearing the school bully or tried to grow a set of balls.
Then I was contacted by different people from the U.S. who to;ld me that they would review my books if I sent a selection along. Fair enough. But I do not waste a lot of money buying books to send to people without checking first.
First "comics review blogger with a large following"...There was to blog set up two years before but "there is no content at present". So I checked some more. Fella had never reviewed a book in his life but I did find out that a good few publishers had sent him books but were still waiting to see a review.
Second 'blogger'....same thing.
Third blogger......ditto
So I contacted some smaller publishers who had all sent books to one or all three and as one put it "Its a scam to get freebies. They know publishers don't have time to go check". Well, they should damn well make time. These scammers had received a couple hundred dollars each of free books for their own use. Oh, one of these people was using a pseudonym and getting books to sell in his now closed down shop at high prices.
Having written two books that were drawn by others but got on to the illegal upload and illegal download sites I have to admit that I am staggered at the total number of illegal downloads. Just looking at what I would have earned from my share of a sale I would now be worth £4 million -I'm sure the artists wpould have liked their share of the profits. Before you ask I even contacyted the sites in question and offered a deal of them removing the downloads and facing criminal prosecution or paying 50 cents per download. Downloads were removed. Again, there is no excuse however you might care to twist it: if you are downloading then it is illegal and you are stealing money that creators and publishers NEED to survive. "I want to check the art first" go online and there is PLENTY of preview art. You are stealing.
I note this because 2-3 times a year I get messages for review books in pdf format with a load of faked reasons why they are easier to review than actual books. Again, fake reviewers. So why pdf of books? Illegal uploading. Ask yourself how new Marvel and DC comics are available for ILLEGAL download on the day of their release. Either the Flash is moving and scanning at super speed or someone in the company-to-printer process is doing something illegal.
Looking at the number of views CBO posts on Black Tower books get the total is in the millions. Every book received is guaranteed to be reviewed and with all the feeds from CBO that is a pretty big potential audience out there. There is Twitter, Pinterest, theFace Book groups and people re-posting items.
A few months back I looked at where you could find Black Tower books. There were online book sellers in Sweden, Germany, France, Norway, Australia, United States, the UK and so many other countries that when I posted the links to some on the BTC&B Face Book page I noted that I was genuinely astonished. Well, they are GREAT books but I was atonished because my books are not made available to these people.
The "free postage" is also an outright con. The prices they were asking for the books was NOT the cover price but in some cases £10-15 ($10-15) more than if you purchased them from the online store and paid postage. You CANNOT cheat postal charges. Also, the sites in question estimated 10-15 days for delivery so this means they would have to order from my print on demand (POD) company (which gives them a huge discount and means I get sod all) and get cheaper shipping as a business but rip off the customer.
Let me make it clear: my books are orderable from the online store which offers preview pages and there are three different postal rates offered fronm non tracked, tracked and special delivery. Now, the POD has printers around the world so it is not a case of payiong for international shipping -one reason I dropped the "UK" from Black Tower is because, apparently, it's the biggest Indie publisher in Europe, but also people thought they would have to pay international shipping costs. You pay the LOCAL postage rates so in some cases far less than people in the UK.
If you find a problem with your book -miss-print/damaged or whatever (none so far)- then you can contact the POD and, looking at your photos of the problem, they'll replace the copy. No extra charge. If they act "uppity" then you can always contact me and I can have a word with them. Not happened at all since 2009 so....cautionary tale coming up.
About 1-2 years ago I got a Face Book message from someone who had ordered one of my books but after 3 weeks it had still not turned up. I checked Orders and found nothing. I explained this to him and he told me the title again and that it had cost him £30 ($30+) with the free shipping. My thought then was "WTF??" No such thing as free shipping because any seller is going to have a price that covers shipping but hides that by using this phrase -Ebay especially).
I got back to the man who was in the UK and asked for details. He told me "I grabbed the chance to buy it after seeing it on your online store as it was post free!" Basically, the book, which on the online store would have cost him £20 at most with postage, had been ordered from a third party online bookseller. That seller had to wait for the book to be printed and despatched and there was a delay after that on their part.
I'll explain this as I did to him. The online bookseller 'orders' a free copy as a 'trial' and therefore I do not get one single penny. The POD hope is that the book sells and more orders come in. I am not consulted at any point. The seller gets the book printed free and post free. It does not even register on my orders page. This means that if there was a problem -do not get in touch with me because it has nothing to do with me. I am robbed of the very small profit from a sale and they buyer is robbed of £10-15.
After a month the said buyer emails: "Got the book today and it's absolutely brilliant -art and print wise!" I was going to be rude but would it help with someonbe who could look at theonline store (as he did) and check postage prices but then orders from a third party who rips him off? Doubt it.
Black Tower books use Prime Quality Printing which means that you get very black, crisp printing on 60 gsm Ivory White paper stock. For a black and white comic that is the best you can get. The prices you see are the absolute minimum you can get because you have the printers fee and POD company fee. Black Tower Super Heroes is 80pp at £6.00 and I get £1.55 from each sell. To make a good profit, for an 80pp book of that quality you are looking at £10 per copy.
When I hear from people who have read the books that "I neverrealised the printing was this good -I thought it was just photocopied!" I really want to scream. Another one I've heard is "Do you have a printer in your pocket? How can you publishin that quality so cheaply?" I do despair at times.
Someone did ask why there is a blank page at the end of some books. Hey, I'm a comic collector, too. As there is no printing on the inside of covers the fronticepiece or first page, usually has a title page so no ink rubs off onto the white inside front cover. I looked at how I could stop that happening, and it would take years for that to start, with the inside back cover. Yes, I'm that big a loon I worry about these things. Blank page -problem solved. There was also the idea that this blank page could be used for a freebie illo at events. So there is yoyur explanation.
Not only am I such an idiot that I will enlarge pages to 200 or 400 times to clean up any page ink blemishes that a buyer will probably have noticed but I look at everything from cover design, how one strip fits in between two others (you do not want high drama followed byu three humour strips then another high drama): I do what British weekly comics used to do and mix the drama, humour and short text stories so that it is a nice clean read.
The online store tells you everything you need to know from book size, paper quality, binding method as well as giving you preview pages and you can check the postal costs -if you move the book to Cart then go through to shipping costs you'll see the options -it does NOT mean that you have to buy the book you only do that when you choose to Make Payment. So don't panic and think it means you have to buy when you check those rates.
I have had a couple offers to sell books in comic shops in Europe that involves me paying for books and shipping costs and getting nothing back -unless the books sell at the price the store owner decides on and then they may ask for more -again free, their price and then "we'll decide the percentage to offer back from sales" -that is just hoping creators/publishers are desperate enough to take the deal and ...go broke.
In reality, how it should work is simple: a store owner checks the online BTC&B store and sees a book or two books they like. They then order copies and decide how much they are going to sell them for instore OR they contact me, order (paying!) and I can send them the copies at a reduced rate so they can price the books instore. They then point the books out to customers and....there you go.
As it is store owners do not do this. They only want Marvel, DC or Image. Even self proclaimed "Independent Comics stores" do not do this.
The text books are the same in many ways. I have written 10 books -one a 300+pp comic book creator interviews- one on wildlife (canids since outside of comics I am (I'm not the one claiming this) "a noted naturalist" with my name on technical papers. The others are books on "World Mysteries" such as Some Things Strange and Sinister, Strange and Mysterious Animals, UFO Contact? and so on.
This means that I keep my eye on the book publishing scene as well as comics. Often to the point where people in that business ask me for advice (free of course!). I see one Independent book store after another write or talk about not finding "quality and well thought out books" on these subjects. Hey -my books take in 40 plus years (40??!!!) of research and investigation and are fully reference and fully illustrated -sometimes (a few times actually because I DO the work) presenting images thought lost for more than 100 years. Photos -the lot.
I have contacted the shops in question -no responses. Are they scared of ordering outside of a main distributor? Well, my POD states:
"...with distribution to over 40,000 retailers, schools and libraries"
Over the last 8 years I have lowered book prices to where I was giving them away. No money made. I sent books out for review that were never reviewed. In fact those 'reviewers' probably never had the slightest interest in reviewing books.
After the internet got its opening I soon found out some of the cons going on. I had published a war games and history zine and wanted to ask other bloggers to contribute. Not many blogs at all by then so I ended up on the phone calling people producing war games zines. They did not exist. With one call I found out why. One of the, uh, 'publisher's mothers answered and we got talking and she told me "Oh he only does that to get stuff for free from companies. They all do it. There isn't a magazine". A con. Operated by someone from his parents home.
Within a few days I found out how big this con was. The companies were not checking they just accepted that their products were being reviewed and those reviews were being seen by potential customers.
When I wanted to get Black Tower books reviewed I sent them to people I knew in the UK who produced fanzines or blogs. Free books -not a single review. There were two who mentioned one book quickly but "have no time to review"....as they publioshed more reviews of other peoples' books. Of course, now I know these are people running scared of the whisper network and the comic 'nice guys'. They might get the nasty treatment if they even tried reviewing one of my books. Some men just never grew out of fearing the school bully or tried to grow a set of balls.
Then I was contacted by different people from the U.S. who to;ld me that they would review my books if I sent a selection along. Fair enough. But I do not waste a lot of money buying books to send to people without checking first.
First "comics review blogger with a large following"...There was to blog set up two years before but "there is no content at present". So I checked some more. Fella had never reviewed a book in his life but I did find out that a good few publishers had sent him books but were still waiting to see a review.
Second 'blogger'....same thing.
Third blogger......ditto
So I contacted some smaller publishers who had all sent books to one or all three and as one put it "Its a scam to get freebies. They know publishers don't have time to go check". Well, they should damn well make time. These scammers had received a couple hundred dollars each of free books for their own use. Oh, one of these people was using a pseudonym and getting books to sell in his now closed down shop at high prices.
Having written two books that were drawn by others but got on to the illegal upload and illegal download sites I have to admit that I am staggered at the total number of illegal downloads. Just looking at what I would have earned from my share of a sale I would now be worth £4 million -I'm sure the artists wpould have liked their share of the profits. Before you ask I even contacyted the sites in question and offered a deal of them removing the downloads and facing criminal prosecution or paying 50 cents per download. Downloads were removed. Again, there is no excuse however you might care to twist it: if you are downloading then it is illegal and you are stealing money that creators and publishers NEED to survive. "I want to check the art first" go online and there is PLENTY of preview art. You are stealing.
I note this because 2-3 times a year I get messages for review books in pdf format with a load of faked reasons why they are easier to review than actual books. Again, fake reviewers. So why pdf of books? Illegal uploading. Ask yourself how new Marvel and DC comics are available for ILLEGAL download on the day of their release. Either the Flash is moving and scanning at super speed or someone in the company-to-printer process is doing something illegal.
Looking at the number of views CBO posts on Black Tower books get the total is in the millions. Every book received is guaranteed to be reviewed and with all the feeds from CBO that is a pretty big potential audience out there. There is Twitter, Pinterest, theFace Book groups and people re-posting items.
A few months back I looked at where you could find Black Tower books. There were online book sellers in Sweden, Germany, France, Norway, Australia, United States, the UK and so many other countries that when I posted the links to some on the BTC&B Face Book page I noted that I was genuinely astonished. Well, they are GREAT books but I was atonished because my books are not made available to these people.
The "free postage" is also an outright con. The prices they were asking for the books was NOT the cover price but in some cases £10-15 ($10-15) more than if you purchased them from the online store and paid postage. You CANNOT cheat postal charges. Also, the sites in question estimated 10-15 days for delivery so this means they would have to order from my print on demand (POD) company (which gives them a huge discount and means I get sod all) and get cheaper shipping as a business but rip off the customer.
Let me make it clear: my books are orderable from the online store which offers preview pages and there are three different postal rates offered fronm non tracked, tracked and special delivery. Now, the POD has printers around the world so it is not a case of payiong for international shipping -one reason I dropped the "UK" from Black Tower is because, apparently, it's the biggest Indie publisher in Europe, but also people thought they would have to pay international shipping costs. You pay the LOCAL postage rates so in some cases far less than people in the UK.
If you find a problem with your book -miss-print/damaged or whatever (none so far)- then you can contact the POD and, looking at your photos of the problem, they'll replace the copy. No extra charge. If they act "uppity" then you can always contact me and I can have a word with them. Not happened at all since 2009 so....cautionary tale coming up.
About 1-2 years ago I got a Face Book message from someone who had ordered one of my books but after 3 weeks it had still not turned up. I checked Orders and found nothing. I explained this to him and he told me the title again and that it had cost him £30 ($30+) with the free shipping. My thought then was "WTF??" No such thing as free shipping because any seller is going to have a price that covers shipping but hides that by using this phrase -Ebay especially).
I got back to the man who was in the UK and asked for details. He told me "I grabbed the chance to buy it after seeing it on your online store as it was post free!" Basically, the book, which on the online store would have cost him £20 at most with postage, had been ordered from a third party online bookseller. That seller had to wait for the book to be printed and despatched and there was a delay after that on their part.
I'll explain this as I did to him. The online bookseller 'orders' a free copy as a 'trial' and therefore I do not get one single penny. The POD hope is that the book sells and more orders come in. I am not consulted at any point. The seller gets the book printed free and post free. It does not even register on my orders page. This means that if there was a problem -do not get in touch with me because it has nothing to do with me. I am robbed of the very small profit from a sale and they buyer is robbed of £10-15.
After a month the said buyer emails: "Got the book today and it's absolutely brilliant -art and print wise!" I was going to be rude but would it help with someonbe who could look at theonline store (as he did) and check postage prices but then orders from a third party who rips him off? Doubt it.
Black Tower books use Prime Quality Printing which means that you get very black, crisp printing on 60 gsm Ivory White paper stock. For a black and white comic that is the best you can get. The prices you see are the absolute minimum you can get because you have the printers fee and POD company fee. Black Tower Super Heroes is 80pp at £6.00 and I get £1.55 from each sell. To make a good profit, for an 80pp book of that quality you are looking at £10 per copy.
When I hear from people who have read the books that "I neverrealised the printing was this good -I thought it was just photocopied!" I really want to scream. Another one I've heard is "Do you have a printer in your pocket? How can you publishin that quality so cheaply?" I do despair at times.
Someone did ask why there is a blank page at the end of some books. Hey, I'm a comic collector, too. As there is no printing on the inside of covers the fronticepiece or first page, usually has a title page so no ink rubs off onto the white inside front cover. I looked at how I could stop that happening, and it would take years for that to start, with the inside back cover. Yes, I'm that big a loon I worry about these things. Blank page -problem solved. There was also the idea that this blank page could be used for a freebie illo at events. So there is yoyur explanation.
Not only am I such an idiot that I will enlarge pages to 200 or 400 times to clean up any page ink blemishes that a buyer will probably have noticed but I look at everything from cover design, how one strip fits in between two others (you do not want high drama followed byu three humour strips then another high drama): I do what British weekly comics used to do and mix the drama, humour and short text stories so that it is a nice clean read.
The online store tells you everything you need to know from book size, paper quality, binding method as well as giving you preview pages and you can check the postal costs -if you move the book to Cart then go through to shipping costs you'll see the options -it does NOT mean that you have to buy the book you only do that when you choose to Make Payment. So don't panic and think it means you have to buy when you check those rates.
I have had a couple offers to sell books in comic shops in Europe that involves me paying for books and shipping costs and getting nothing back -unless the books sell at the price the store owner decides on and then they may ask for more -again free, their price and then "we'll decide the percentage to offer back from sales" -that is just hoping creators/publishers are desperate enough to take the deal and ...go broke.
In reality, how it should work is simple: a store owner checks the online BTC&B store and sees a book or two books they like. They then order copies and decide how much they are going to sell them for instore OR they contact me, order (paying!) and I can send them the copies at a reduced rate so they can price the books instore. They then point the books out to customers and....there you go.
As it is store owners do not do this. They only want Marvel, DC or Image. Even self proclaimed "Independent Comics stores" do not do this.
The text books are the same in many ways. I have written 10 books -one a 300+pp comic book creator interviews- one on wildlife (canids since outside of comics I am (I'm not the one claiming this) "a noted naturalist" with my name on technical papers. The others are books on "World Mysteries" such as Some Things Strange and Sinister, Strange and Mysterious Animals, UFO Contact? and so on.
This means that I keep my eye on the book publishing scene as well as comics. Often to the point where people in that business ask me for advice (free of course!). I see one Independent book store after another write or talk about not finding "quality and well thought out books" on these subjects. Hey -my books take in 40 plus years (40??!!!) of research and investigation and are fully reference and fully illustrated -sometimes (a few times actually because I DO the work) presenting images thought lost for more than 100 years. Photos -the lot.
I have contacted the shops in question -no responses. Are they scared of ordering outside of a main distributor? Well, my POD states:
"...with distribution to over 40,000 retailers, schools and libraries"
No excuse not to order books. I do wish libraries showed more interest since you can find the "trash" books in them -the same books the Indie stores say they have but want to get "better quality" ones to replace.
If any comic store owners or Independent book store owners read this then I would ask them to please check out the online store and see what there is. You may find something you can sell to your valued customers.
To the general comic book readers or readers with an interest in mystery books covering UFOs, ghost, cryptozoology etc I would ask them to check out the online store. Everyone can do their bit in supporting true Independent publishing -and the store owners might get a free menytion in future titles.
Give it a go.
About Black Tower and me:
EUROPES LARGEST INDEPENDENT COMICS PUBLISHER founded 1984 Between 1984-1994 I worked freelance as a writer/artist/editor/agent in comics as well as comics journalism for MU Press,Blue Comet Press,Fantagraphic Books,Eros Comics,Dorne,Fleetway,IPC and others in the United States,UK and Europe.
During this period I also produced large numbers of single panel gag cartoons for agencies in Germany such as Boiselle-Lohmann and Baaske Agency –these going to magazines and publications around Europe. I also worked as a freelance editor in comics and publications ranging from wildlife,astronomy and science fiction magazines.
From 1984 to present I've been self publishing comics as well as publications on a wide variety of subjects under the Black Tower banner. I have also produced packages of work for companies in India,Hong Kong and China. I have also been working as an industry advisor for smaller companies in countries such as India,Canada,Singapore,China,Europe and the US
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/hoopercomicsuk
Sometimes, I wish evolution had provided so that everytime someone lies, dependant on the severity of the lie, there is a reciprocal electric shock . . . maybe not. It would just be nice if there was a natural comeuppance so that there would be no consequenceless lying, or maybe a lie detector built into the computer keyboard, or the chair, at least so there's a warning at the other end. So when a guy says that he'll review your books, a appendant note says that he's a low-down creep who'll do nothing of the sort. Maybe, however, it would be - as Douglas Adams pointed out about telepathy - if every lie were highlighted in such a way, it would cause many a more bloody conflicts and place us far more rapidly on a path to extinction than we are already.
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