INKTOBER 2022
In a new record for me, I did a total of three (3) posts for Inktober 2022! I was going to do more, but stuff and thangs happened. V`(oo)´V
Coral necklaces (real and fake) used to be a thing in the 80s. I mixed it up with several different prompt lists again for this year’s Inktober, and this one was for #facetober day 1: “coral, red hair, sunglasses” – which of course made me think of Eva ♥
Again with just the lineart:
Orion as I saw it (him?!) at night in Galičica National Park in Macedonia, with zero light pollution. It blew my mind! There is literally the outline of his face and bow. The temperatures dropped below zero and we weren’t really prepared for that, but this was absolutely worth it.
This one was for #artober by thainaaraujoe, day 2: “pick a constellation”
Then, finally, #facetober day 9: “royal, curly hair, blooms”
Shannon (from Driftwood and Dog Island) may be the closest of my main characters to any sort of royalty (some kind of pirate royalty!), has curly hair, and is sitting in front of some tiger lilies :3
Maybe I should have been arsed at some point to connect my drawing tablet for the colouring, instead of doing it with my mouse like it’s 2001 …
And just the lineart:
Well, I’d planned on doing all the main characters from Driftwood/Dog Island like this, but it didn’t happen this time … Maybe next October I’ll draw more :3 (It’ll be hard not to beat ’22 for sure xD)
My beautiful books :3
The Driftwood book is fantastic.
It’s 37 mm fat with all its 392 pages.
I originally wanted to print it on even thicker paper (150 g Munken Print White 15, instead of 115 g), but my printer said they couldn’t do it (for a reason not specified). Maybe with the thicker paper it would have been 5-6 cm thick? :3
So I suppose it’s just as well that I had it printed on 115 g paper in the end. There are no problems with the pages shining through on the other side anyways – something I was very worried about after my earlier test prints with the inferior Lulu books.
They are printed with digital printing, and the lineart looks really nice and deep black.
Yeah …
As I’ve observed at all the festivals so far where I’ve had these books for sale, the Flotsam and Jetsam book totally steals the show!
There’s just something about the cover illustration, I guess. (Here I’ve written about how it came to be.) Maybe if I print a second edition of the books I should switch the covers?!
It’s a bit frustrating that people almost always pick up Flotsam first, and then open it and probably think, “Oh, it’s not a comic”, and put it back and walk away without ever looking at the Driftwood book. I try to place it in an eyecatching but less pick-up-encouraging spot on the table (there’s a whole science in table arrangement of books/zines), and when people pick it up I may comment as inoffensively as possible that it’s a companion book to Driftwood (but I have to be careful because comics readers are very easily intimidated!).
Of course, it’s such a beautiful book that I really can’t blame people for wanting to look at it. V^(oo)^V
It’s “only” 212 pages, but filled to the brim with lots of fascinating facts about Driftwood and how it was created, as well as tons of illustrations, sketches and short stories, many never published before anywhere.
You can order the books from Amazon with the fastest shipping:
Driftwood – Flotsam and Jetsam
Or directly from me if you want to boycott Amazon (I might sneak in something extra or decorate the envelope with a piggy sticker or two):
Driftwood – Flotsam and Jetsam
If you want to inspect them in person first, you can already buy them at the comics library Renate.
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P.S. The tablecloth is the fabric “japanese snacks!” by emuattacks, and by the lamp is a lovely piggy postcard by Ayumi Yoshikawa that I randomly found at Renate. V^(oo)^V
The test copies of Driftwood arrived from Lulu …
I’ve already decided to print most of the books with a “real” printer (and it’s those books that you will get if you pre-order now!), but I’ll make a print-on-demand edition, too, which might be good for readers in Oceania and the Americas, since Lulu Books has local printing facilities in the US, Europe and Australia.
With Lulu you can also get distribution through Amazon, so that they print and ship the books and you don’t have to do anything, and that’s another plus for my lazy self.
Lulu only makes standard sized books. I made test copies of “US Trade” (6×7 inch) books in paperback and hardcover, as well as “Crown Quarto” books (about the same format as Cerebus books). They all have shiny covers, which is a bit annoying, but there is no way to avoid it with Lulu.
The one that looks best/almost worthwile is the hardcover book. (Apologies for the crappy camera phone photos in this post …)
Also, the hardcover is the only edition of Driftwood so far where any printer has managed to center the spine. (On the Swedish edition and both of the two softcovers from Lulu, the spine is off center.) Congrats to the hardcover binders!!!!! V^(oo)^V ♥
As you can see above, the front cover is not positioned very well. That’s because Lulu’s “cover designer” is a bit frustrating, and only now that I have the actual books in front of me I can tell where the front and back cover designs need to be centered. For some reason they won’t tell you all the necessary measurements on the site. And the preview image is so small that you can’t really see anything …
Also, the covers are printed in pretty low resolution, and I’ll have to remove, or modify the colours of, some elements that have much too fine lines.
Anyway, the biggest problem is their 90g paper. It’s extremely thin and transparent:
The US Trade paperbacks are all printed on cream coloured paper, but that one is just as transparent. And perhaps Driftwood looks somehow crappier on this yellowish cream paper, maybe because of the colours of the cover.
What makes the hardcover worthwhile in spite of the crappy paper is that it’s a hardcover, so it looks nice and feels durable. It opens up easily enough so you can read the pages properly. (The spine is glued, though, not sewn.) Also, it doesn’t feel as disappointingly thin for a 400 page book as the softcovers. :op
Of course, Lulu seems to be notoriously careless at handling the books, and some scratches and bumped corners are almost mandatory.
The Cerebus sized softcover is by all means nice because it’s the same format as Cerebus because it’s a bigger format, and its more square dimensions fit the format of the comic better. But it’s “only” 4.29 € less expensive to make than the hardcover (12.55 vs. 16.84 € for one copy – of course, that’s all quite a lot compared to non-POD printers X_x), while the softcover makes it feel a bit cheap, and the spine creases easily.
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P.S. I’m printing most of the books with Pozkal in Poland. They do digital printing for small editions (like my 100-300 copies), custom format, some choice in paper, with quite affordable prices. But if you only ever need a dozen or so copies for yourself, and want to sell your books mainly online, Lulu might be a better option (as long as you’re okay with their paper). Among POD services they are not bad at all. (I personally just have pretty high demands because I work with comics publishing companies and I’m a perfectionist …)
Driftwood English edition crowdfunding campaign is on!
Now that Driftwood is finished, I’m printing it as a book. It was already published in Swedish last year. But the English edition is even better. Heh.
I’ve also put together the book Flotsam and Jetsam, with all the side stories, lots of sketches and illustrations from all the 17 years I’ve been working on Driftwood, and deleted scenes. There are also articles about what influenced me to create the story and the characters, and notes about interesting details such as Eva’s mysterious breast expansion between chapters 6 and 7, or how telepathic powers aren’t really a supernatural thing in my experience.
Anyways, the actual cost of printing the two books is 2220 €. I have some money put away … although I put it away in order to cover for medical and other emergencies if such should ever happen to me. But who cares about that when you can print comics!!
However, you can help me with the funds by pre-ordering the books.
You can also get both books as digital copies in PDF format. Handy if you don’t like to be burdened by too many worldly possessions and don’t mind reading books on your computer, or if you’re not quite sure if you like it enough to get a printed copy.
I’m also making T-shirts that will look like this:
“No leashes, no masters” … I’ll post actual photos after I get the test shirts. They’ll be printed with Spreadshirt, and available in women’s fitted sizes, women’s plus sizes, and men’s sizes. (And guaranteed no American Apparel sexist crap!)
Drivgods nu även i den vanliga storkapitalistnätbokhandeln
Drivgods fanns tills nyligen bara i Epix egen nätbokhandel samt hos Staffars Serier. Men nu finns den även att inhandla hos Bokus, Adlibris och andra stora nätbokhandlare. (Det är en medveten policy hos Epix att fördröja släppet till nätbokhandeln – i kampen mot storkapitalistnätbokhandeln, för biblioteken och småkapitalistförlaget – inte ren inkompetens.)
I skrivande stund saknas mystiskt nog mitt namn i posterna hos de stora nätbokhandlarna, så man får söka på “Drivgods” för att hitta boken. (Samma sak med Giftets flod av Gilbert Hernandez, som verkar ha lagts upp samtidigt.) [Uppdatering: Nu verkar det ha fixats!]
För mig personligen gör det ingen skillnad var du köper boken, jag får lika mycket/lite royalties per såld bok oavsett vilket.
Men som man ser kostar den mindre hos Epix och Staffars. Köper man enbart Drivgods är den klart överkomligast direkt från Epix, för 295 kr plus 15 kr frakt.
Fast det finns nog scenarier då det lönar sig att beställa via Bokus och dylikt ändå, exempelvis om man beställer många böcker från olika förlag samtidigt, och tycker att det är bekvämare att handla allt på ett ställe. Flera av de stora näthandlarna erbjuder dessutom gratis frakt, vilket kan jämna ut det hela.
Men ja, erkänt jobbigt i valfrihetshetsens frimarknads-Sverige med dessa rörliga bokpriser och varierande fraktvillkor!
Om allt bara känns jättedyrt kan man så klart även låna Drivgods på många bibliotek i hela Sverige – var den finns kan man kolla in till exempel hos Bibliotek.se! Och om den inte finns på just ditt närmaste bibliotek kan du be dem att köpa in den, till glädje för hela din kommun. :3
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Apropå bibliotek, jag fick just reda på att Drivgods är bland de 284 barn- och ungdomstitlarna (av c:a 1700 utgivna titlar i år) i Barnbokskatalogen från Kulturrådet, och även bland de 100 utvalda titlarna på Barnbokskatalogens affisch. (Tillsammans med många andra fantastiska böcker, som t.ex. Det är en gris på dagis.) Katalogen kom ut i september, så jag vet inte om den fortfarande finns ute på biblioteken …