Tag: industry

Section 1: My Story as a Professional Manga Artist (Part 2)

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  • This post is part of a on-going series called “Being a Professional Manga Artist in the West“. The first post is here.
  • You can buy my “Queenie Chan: Short Stories 2000-2010” collection as a USD$4.99 PDF (plus EPUB, DRM-free). Get it from Smashwords!

 

Part 3: How I Got Started – Drawing My Own Manga Series

This is where I tell the story of how I get published, in more detail than just listing all my books. I tried to keep it short, but I couldn’t, since all of this is necessary to explain the changes in the industry. Anyway, if you’re not interested, just skip it to move onto the next section: the part about contracts and how to get published, etc.

I first started drawing manga in 1998, when I was 18, after reading a volume of Watsuki Nobuhiro’s Rurouni Kenshin. I read manga as a child growing up in Hong Kong, but never drew or wrote anything until I was almost out of high school. I primarily focussed on short manga stories that I then put onto the Internet, which had a fledging community of manga and anime enthusiasts at the time.

 

Part 3a: The Dreaming Series (2004 – 2007)

Finding work in the comics tundra

In 2004, I landed my first publishing contract, writing and illustrating my own series. It was with TOKYOPOP, back then a ballsy start-up that had somehow managed to strong-arm their way into bookstores. Living in Hong Kong at the time, I didn’t even know that manga had made a breakthrough into the North American bookstore market in 2001-2002; I only found out about it through the Internet. One day, when surfing the net, I came across a manga competition called ‘Rising Stars of Manga.’ It was a competition run by TOKYOPOP to discover new manga-drawing talent in the west, with the promise of being published in print as the reward (this will eventually become known as the notorious ‘OEL manga’).

Many people seemed to think I got my foot in the door through RSOM – even my own editors at TOKYOPOP thought that. However, truth is that RSOM was only open to American citizens, and as an Australian there was no way I could enter. I only managed to make contact with TOKYOPOP a year after the competition ran, when TOKYOPOP put up an online notice calling for submissions to them. It specified international or otherwise, and that was because they were looking to produce their own original manga line.

I confess I knew nothing about book publishing at the time, and was only interested in turning my manga-drawing hobby into an actual job. Truth was, I had graduated from UNSW with a Bachelor of Information Systems in 2002, but was unable to find a job because of the dot-com bust. The TOKYOPOP offer came in late November 2003, so I eagerly shoved samples of work into an envelope and mailed it off to TOKYOPOP’s mailing address.

I didn’t know it at the time, but this scenario had two problems: (a) it’s very, very rare that a publisher will open their doors just for anyone to submit, and (b) sending a random bunch of manga pages to a publisher was a breach of protocol. TOKYOPOP had just opened their mail room to the slush pile at that time, and editor Tim Beedle was the one who fished my samples out of the little mountain they had. TOKYOPOP was kind enough to write back to me that you’re supposed to do a proper SUBMISSION, if you’re looking to get published with a publisher.

Oh, what’s a ‘proper submission,’ and how do you write one? I have a sample submission on my FAQ, so read about it here (http://www.queeniechan.com/FAQ). Submissions vary, depending on what the publishing house is looking for, but the gist of them are generally the same.

Anyway, I somehow managed to wrangle up a decent submission, and sent it back to them. It was for ‘A Chinese Ghost Story,’ an action-adventure-romance story I was working on at the time. Unfortunately, I then learned that publishers don’t always publish what you want to publish.

*****

Next Monday, I will talk about my work at TOKYOPOP.

Section 1: My Story as a Professional Manga Artist

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  • This post is part of a on-going series called “Being a Professional Manga Artist in the West“. The first post is here.
  • You can buy my “Queenie Chan: Short Stories 2000-2010” collection as a USD$4.99 PDF (plus EPUB, DRM-free). Get it from Smashwords!

 

Part 1: Introduction

This section deals with the ten years I spent working as a professional manga-style comic book artist in the west. It’s quite long, since part of my goal is to give an overview in the changes that has happened in the industry over that time. It’s meant to be a documentation of working as a manga-style comic book artist from 2004-2014, and a resource for people considering it was a career path.

I don’t want to discourage people from chasing their dreams, but I also want to honest about my life. I get emails from young aspiring manga artists online all the time, asking questions that are very hard to answer. There are tonnes of resources on drawing comics, but none about getting published as a western manga artist very much. (In fact, there’s always a dearth of information about making a living as a comic book artist, because there few people who can make that claim.)

I hope to give some more insight into that in my posts. Along the way, I also hope to answer some questions I get asked a lot, such as ‘can you make a living as a manga-style comic book artist?’

 

Part 2: My Publishing History

I suppose I should list the works I’ve had published in the past 10 years. By ‘had published,’ I mean that (a) a publishing house paid an advance for the book, and (b) the book actually ended up on a bookshelf in an actual bookstore. I self-publish on the side (like everyone else), so it’s important to make this distinction. These parts of the posts are meant to talk about the industry, and ‘industry’ typically means ‘publishing houses that pay money to sell your books to readers who buy them.’ Self-publishing will be a separate section in this series.

 

*****

Here, I give a statistical run-down of my publishing history:

  • Number of books published in print: 9 (plus an anthology)
  • Number of publishing houses worked for that paid in actual dollars: 5 (TOKYOPOP, Randomhouse Del Rey, Hachette Yen Press, Fairview Press, Harper Collins Voyager)
  • Years Active: 2004-2014 (Starting from year of first publishing contract signed)
  • Number of editors worked with: 10 (Believe me, the lifespan of editors can be even shorter than that of comic book artists)
  • Number of publishers who got replaced during that time: 4 (Publishers are the people who run the individual publishing houses, and they get replaced all the time)
  • Number of publishing houses shut down: 1 (I think you all know who this was)
  • Number of movies in development: 1 (It’s ‘The Dreaming’ movie. The ‘Odd Thomas’ movie got made and released, folks. I never got to see it. Did anyone reading this see it? How was it?)
  • Amount of money made: Probably could have made more working a part-time job in another field.

*****

Anyway, here’s a list of my published works, plus pictures. Also, where you can buy them to make things easier:

Work: The Dreaming v1-3, The Dreaming (Perfect Collection)
Publisher: TOKYOPOP (2005-2010)
Purchase in Print: RightStuf.com
Purchase as E-book: Comixology

Work: In Odd We Trust (2008), Odd is on our Side (2010), House of Odd (2012), Written by Dean Koontz, Fred Van Lente, Landry Q. Walker, Illustrated by me
Publisher: Random House (Del Rey, 2008-2012)
Purchase #1 as E-book: Amazon
Purchase #2 as E-book: Amazon
Purchase #3 as E-book: Amazon

Work: Boy’s Book of Positive Quotations
Publisher: Fairview Press (2009)
Purchase in Print: Amazon

Work: Forget-Me-Not (Yen Plus Anthology)
Publisher: Hachette (Yen Press, July 2009)
Purchase as part of anthology in Print: Lulu
Purchase as part of anthology as E-book: Smashwords

Work: Small Shen, Comics-Prose format, Written by Kylie Chan, Illustrated by me
Publisher: Harper Collins (Voyager, 2012)
Purchase in Print: Fishpond.com
Purchase as E-book: Amazon

*****

Next Monday, I will tackle how I got started in the industry.

Being a Professional Manga Artist in the West

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Note: I put my “Queenie Chan: Short Stories 2000-2010” collection up on the internet as a USD$4.99 PDF (plus EPUB, DRM-free). Get it from Smashwords!

Hi all! As promised, I’m going to start writing a series of articles talking about my experiences as a ‘professional manga-style comic-book artist’ in the west. (Perhaps the proper term is ‘OEL manga-artist,’ but god forbid we bring back the spectre of the ‘is it manga or not’ debate).

Anyway, my first published work was in 2004 with TOKYOPOP, and this year marks a 10-year anniversary of life as a published author/artist. Along the way, I’ve had 9 books published with four different publishers, and learned a lot about the industry, not to mention the ever-changing state of the industry.

Both the book and comics publishing industry is constantly in flux, even more so with the onset of digital publishing in the past 5 years. Part of the reason why I’m writing these articles is because the publishing landscape has changed so drastically, the advice I’ve been giving out on my website FAQ is now useless.

The other reason is that there are challenges unique to Manga-style comic-book artists in the West that I want to address. To be honest, I’m not sure if the advice I give will apply to comic book artists who don’t draw in a manga-style. Let’s face it, while indie comickers and the superhero crew tolerates manga from Japan, they don’t want to be lumped in the same category as westerners drawing so-called ‘OEL manga’. Obviously, this can make things difficult from a professional point-of-view if you’re an aspiring manga-style artist looking to get published. Doors can literally slam in your faces, not because publishers don’t like manga, but because western-style manga doesn’t sell.

I don’t know what form these articles will take, but I think they’ll follow this general form:

  • My own experiences as a professional manga-style comic artist, from 2004 to now
  • An explanation of how the book and comics publishing industries work, and what’s currently happening
  • How to self-publishing your own stories, in both e-book and print format
  • A guide to doing ‘comics-prose’ (a mix of prose and comics, which is what I’m currently doing)

For that second point, I wish to focus on the business side of things. I get emails from manga artist wannabes from time to time, especially art school graduates, and I’ve noticed that many of them seem to have no business skills or understanding of the creative industries whatsoever. I’ve no art training myself, so I have no idea what they’re being taught in art school, but I know that it’s not enough to do deal with these changing times. These past 10 years have been a traumatic time for publishing, so I want to use my knowledge of inform people of the potential pitfalls should they manage to get a publishing deal. Especially when the pitfalls seem to be getting bigger all the time.

Anyway, feel free to ask questions in the comments as I go along. I shall try to answer your questions as much as I can. See you all next Monday.

 

...Because I might as well have some fun talking about my work as a manga artist in the west

Recommendation: Genshiken

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I’m now back from Melbourne, and staying put for the rest of the year, finishing off my book. I’m about halfway through the “House of Odd” inks, and it’s a good feeling to be close to the finishing line! I’m looking forward to finishing the inks at the end of this month.

While I’m at it, I’m making another manga recommendation, this time for something a bit different to what I usually read. If I must describe it in a sentence, I will call it a “character-centered dramedy about Japanese Otaku culture” – aka Genshiken. Otherwise known as “the Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture”.

 
 

Genshiken (Kio Shimoku)
(9 Volumes, though it’s continuing in a 2nd series)

NB. “Otaku” is the Japanese word for “fan”, denoting anyone who is an obsessive fan of anything. In this instance, nearly all the characters in Genshiken are Otakus of manga, anime and video games. In English, the word “Otaku” mostly refers to manga/anime obsessives, though in Japan it’s used in all instances that involve crazy fandom.

Genshiken was published by Del Rey in English, and boy, am I glad they translated it, because this would otherwise have completely flown under my radar. For some reason, while I’ve seen much more obscure fare in Chinese translations, I’ve not once seen this manga in Chinese stores. Which is… strange. Perhaps it’s too culturally-specific for Chinese audiences to care, whereas English readers will consider this study of Japanese Otaku-ism as a very “hip” reading experience. Mind you, if you’re looking for a window into the lives of Japanese Otaku, this is a very accessible and very well-written series.

 


 

Plot
The main character of Genshiken is freshman Kanji Sasahara, who finally fulfills his long-held dream of joining an Otaku club. The club he joins is called “Genshiken”, short for “the Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture”, filled with a variety of interesting characters who all share a common obsession – Manga, Anime and Video-gaming. For Kanji, it’s his first time openly hanging out with like-minded people, and he forms a bond with them, eventually learning to accept the parts of himself he was always ashamed of. Especially when he sees the antics of other members who join after him – including fanboy Kousaka, who despite being a hardcore Otaku, is very, very good-looking (and very, very strange).

 

 

Kousaka attracts a “normal” to the club, a strong, opinionated young woman called Saki Kasukabe, who has had a crush on Kousaka ever since they grew up in the same neighbourhood. Running into Kousaka again in her freshman year surprised Saki, but she was appalled when she discovered what he was now into. Undeterred by the weirdness of the Genshiken folks, Saki pursues Kousaka relentlessly, trying to “normalise” him, to little success. Saki’s trials and tribulations with Kousaka becomes the story’s second thread, as she is lead on a crash-course through cosplay, conventions, video-gaming, figurine-collecting and other staples of the Otaku lifestyle.

 
 

Why I Recommend this Story
Genshiken’s genius lies in its accessibility, which sets it apart from other manga about Otaku culture. People reading this blog will know what an “Otaku” is because I explained it above, but generally when you talk to other people about “Otakus”, you get 3 possible reactions: (a) incomprehension, (b) interest if they are American and into manga/anime culture, and (c) a vaguely-disgusted look if they’re Japanese and not interested in manga/anime. You see, Otaku-culture may be Japanese in origin, but these people are considered social outcasts in Japan.

 

 

I actually sorta agree with Madarame here (skinny guy with glasses).

 

 

Unlike other countries where Japanese pop culture has taken root, Japanese Otaku are like Trekkies or Furries – they are looked down on by the general populance as unbearably geeky and socially-challenged. Genshiken is well-aware of this, and instead of telling the story from the perspective of a down-trodden fan, it tells the story of a “normal” who has stumbled into this gathering of freaks and geeks, and due to reasons outside her control, is forced to (grudgingly) hang-out with them, and even try to understand them. Saki Kasukabe and her clashes with her Otaku “friends” is what gives Genshiken a lot of its human comedy, and to Kio Shimoku’s credit, he never softens Saki, and never makes her into a would-be fan who is just waiting to be converted by the “right” anime. At the end of the series, Saki is still resistant to Otaku culture, but she is now willing to overlook and accept what was once so irritating to her. Likewise, all the other characters grow and change throughout the series, and it’s rewarding (and a little sad) to watch them survive their university days and enter the workforce.

Genshiken has a great sense of its characters, who are a varied bunch. Many of them feel like “types” you would encounter at a fan convention, and their interactions has a feel of the “real” about it. Certainly the creator has spent a great deal of time hanging out with Otaku, and if you’ve done the same, you would probably smile in recognition at some of the scenes. The environments also have a wonderful sense of the clutter that such people would collect in their obsessive hunt for the right “doujinshi”, and the meeting room for the Genshiken folks is rendered in loving detail – possibly from a photo of such a meeting room in real life. The dorm rooms of its members, the shops in Otaku central Akihabara, the mass gathering-place of Otakus on their yearly pilgrimage – these are all drawn with a level of care that underscores how much of this series is grounded in the real (if not exactly reality).

 

 

Like all good things, Genshiken does come to an end, a satisfying conclusion at a short 9 volumes. I wonder why the series isn’t longer, because I certainly would have liked to see what the characters did when they became fully-functioning adults (as full-functioning as these kinds of people can be). Perhaps that’s why there’s a second series, separate to this first one, that follows these characters while making room for new, younger members. Personally, I haven’t read it, but I would be looking out for it if it were available in English.