• This post is part of a on-going series called “Being a Professional Manga Artist in the West“. The first post is here.
• Buy my short story collection from Bento Comic’s Smashwords storefront @ US$4.99.

 

Part 5a: ‘I Wanted 3 Days of Entertainment from a $10 Book’

Two incidents happened in 2010 that made me question what I was doing. Both involved my old high school.

Incident One was at a dinner party with my old high school friends, who I still see regularly. It involved my friend Serena (not her real name), who is a doctor working in a high-stress environment. She liked to read in her spare time, and she primarily read chic-lit and romance. She doesn’t read comics, but she bought a copy of ‘In Odd We Trust,’ because she was curious about it and interested in reading it. In our conversation, she mentioned to me that she read the book and liked it. Then, something weird happened.

In the middle of our conversation, Serena suddenly turned to my friend Lara and said something, and I paraphrase:

‘Don’t you just hate it when you buy a book for $10, and it only gives you an hour of entertainment? Normally when I read a book, it takes me two or three days.’

Lara looked baffled at what Serena said – she wasn’t even part of the conversation. The conversation then went someplace else, but the event stuck in my head. For hours after, I remembered this conversation, though it took me a few days to figure out what it really meant. When I finally understood it, I got pretty worried.

Serena was a prose fiction reader with money and time to burn, and she was used to reading prose books that gave her several days’ worth of entertainment for $10. When she read my graphic novel, she paid the exact same price for something that took only an hour or so to read, which must have baffled her. A $10 book gone in an hour is something comics and manga fans are used to, but Serena isn’t a comic reader, and doesn’t seem to care whether something is in prose or in comics. All she cared about was whether she was getting her money’s worth of entertainment from a book.

With a start, I realised what Serena was trying to say.

She was trying to tell me she felt ripped off.

She probably couldn’t bring herself to say so to my face, which resulted in that weird exchange over dinner. Truth is, prose readers are used to value for money. If they buy a book and didn’t get what they think their money’s worth is, they’re unlikely to buy it again, even if they liked the book. Sure enough, Serena never bought another one of my books again, even though she liked the first one.

This made alarm bells ring in my head. If people were counting on comic adaptations of prose best-sellers to fill their coffers, things could get troublesome very soon. Imagine a prose reader buying a YA book called Sexy Creatures for $10, becoming a fan, and then going on to buy the manga adaptation of Sexy Creatures, also for $10. The first reaction to reading the manga Sexy Creatures would probably not be ‘Oh, nice pictures,’ but rather: ‘where’s the rest of the damn story?! I paid $10 for this!!’ Remember, prose readers want stories. They like pretty pictures, but the story is their first concern.

*****

Anyway, this incident shook me, but it didn’t shake me quite as badly as the second incident, which I’ll talk about next Monday.

• This post is part of a on-going series called “Being a Professional Manga Artist in the West“. The first post is here.
• Buy my short story collection from Bento Comic’s Smashwords storefront @ US$4.99.

 

Part 5: Comics-Prose with ‘Small Shen’ (2011-2012)

In 2010, I was winding down in terms of illustrating for Dean Koontz. I was on the way to doing three books with them already, and I was looking for a change, which amazingly, did come at the right time. A nice lady called Kylie Chan approached me at a convention, and asked me to do a graphic novel version of a short story she had written called ‘Small Shen.’ It was the prequel to her best-selling Chinese fantasy series called ‘White Tiger,’ which had sold very well in Australia. I was about to draw the third ‘Odd Thomas’ book for Dean, so I had to push her back, but I eventually started working on ‘Small Shen’ in 2011, for Kylie’s publisher Harper Collins Voyager.

‘Small Shen’ was different to all the other manga I’ve done – it’s actually a mix of prose and comics. This may sound a highly unusual step, but Kylie was very supportive, and I also have other reasons to go into this mix and experiment with the format of comics. Part of the reason was because I also felt that comics, my own work included, was getting stale. The other reasons are far more complex, and it has to do with a mixture of economics and issues with production.

For folks who are wondering what “comics-prose” is, I have a few sample pages here. It’s basically a mix of prose and comic panels, arranged in a way that mixes the two together into a single, seamless, INTEGRATED narrative. Here’s some pages from “We are the Pickwicks” below.

“Comics-prose” is both comics and prose. If you ask me, it leans more towards comics than towards prose, in terms of execution (if not reading experience, which is different for everyone). For those who want to read stories told in this style, here’s more:

• “We are the Pickwicks” (10 pages)
• “Small Shen” (Written by Kylie Chan, chap1-3)
• “Legend of Zelda: The Edge and The Light (312 pages)

 

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*****

Either way, working in comics-prose has been fun and exciting, and I’ve since discovered it to be a new and complex way of visual story-telling. But first, I should FINALLY tell you about two minor events that shook me up in 2010, and how it made me question the path I’ve been on (which will be next Monday).

• This post is part of a on-going series called “Being a Professional Manga Artist in the West“. The first post is here.
• The discount period is over, and the price has returned to normal. Buy my short story collection from Bento Comic’s Smashwords storefront @ US$4.99.

 

Part 4c: Manga Bit-Parts of Media Empires

The Yen Press story is significant. When I first did ‘Odd Thomas’ with Dean, it was one of the first times something like this has been done. By ‘something like this,’ I mean a best-selling author taking one of their best-selling series and doing a manga/graphic novel version of the work. The ‘Odd Thomas’ books I did were prequels, not adaptations, but it didn’t matter – the point was that ‘Odd Thomas’ was a brand, just like Dean Koontz is a brand-name author, and brands have customers that are eager to buy more of that brand.

After the success of the first ‘Odd Thomas’ book, however, it seemed that publishers realised that there was money in making manga adaptations of best-selling prose stories. The prose fiction market was far larger than the manga market, far more established, and with far deeper pockets. What better way was there to make money, than to make manga versions of prose best-sellers and sell them to a pre-existing fan base? It was safe, risk free money – much like how movie studios make movies out of books or comic book superheros. These were ready-made audiences with money, and much easier than developing a new property from scratch.

Again, I was aware this was going on, but perhaps I didn’t realise it would become common. With the GFC and piracy, getting original manga published was becoming harder and harder, as publishing houses could not take new risks on an author when there were better, safer money to be made elsewhere.

 

 

I had originally started off illustrating for Dean Koontz in the hope that it would also help my career, but due to the economic crisis, it hasn’t been the case. It seems the GFC has permanently changed the way publishing houses did business, but there are two other reasons too, as I discovered in 2010.

*****

Next Monday, I’ll be back to talk about changing the way I did comics. After my stint illustrating for Dean Koontz, I would be working for another best-selling author – but this time, I wasn’t doing “comics”, but something slightly different: “comics-prose”.

• This post is part of a on-going series called “Being a Professional Manga Artist in the West“. The first post is here.
• Buy my short story collection from Bento Comic’s Smashwords storefront @ US$4.99.

 

Part 4b: Dean Koontz and the ‘Odd Thomas’ series (2007 – 2010)

Working with Dean was a real honour, and also a great learning experience. We did three graphic novel prequels to his ‘Odd Thomas’ series, one of which was co-written, the other two where I worked as an illustrator to scripts written by comic writers. I must say that while Dean was very nice and very easy to work with, he and I didn’t gel together as writers, and I felt much more comfortable working from scripts by other people.

The ‘Odd Thomas’ books gave me an opportunity to work with other writers, and to adapt a comic script into manga format. It was the first time I’ve had the opportunity to do this, and it was eye-opening – not just of the process, but in the way that comic book writers differed from each other. I worked with Fred and Landry and they were both great, but I must give praise to Fred Van Lente, who apart from being a very visual writer, is also quite talented. I learned a lot from Fred.

Anyway, I got to improve my drawing and get paid for it, and I also took up another illustration job during that time. In 2009, I worked with Steve Deger from Fairview Press, providing art for a ‘Book of Quotations’ he was publishing. I must say that this was the best-paying job I’ve ever had, and it was amazing for that very reason. If you see Steve, please shake his, because not only did he give very good pay, but he was also utterly professional in my experience.

 

 

That same year, I also worked with Hachette imprint Yen Press, drawing an original short story for them called ‘Forget-Me-Not.’ It was the first time in years (possibly ever) that I was able to draw a short story that I’d actually pitched, as opposed to drawing ‘on spec’ or working as an illustrator. The story was about a ‘Scent Merchant’ (read it here: http://www.queeniechan.com/manga/forget_me_not/1/), and it was published as part of their Yen Plus anthology in July 2009.

Yen Plus was Yen Press’ attempt to copy the anthology format of the Japanese manga market, and seeing the bulk of their books were manga, this seemed a wise move. Unfortunately, the magazine market was dying, and with the rise of the twin spectres of digital publishing and piracy it was just too pricey to keep Yen Plus as a print magazine. Yen Plus eventually went to digital subscription format in 2010, but finally shuttered their doors in December 2013. Along the way they had several important innovations, such as same-day release for all worldwide regions of their titles, so it was a good run. I still have my copy of the July 2009 issue of Yen Plus, which I treasure.

*****

Next Monday, I’ll be back to talk about more changes that happened in the industry, during the 3-4 years I spent working as an illustrator. After that, I’ll go into what happened in 2010.