Canister X – A.P. FuchsWriter, Artist, Creator
Like the headline says, there’s a new interview with me at Captain Awesome’s Realm of . . . Awesomeness. It was a pleasure doing the interview and I got to talk about superheroes and self-publishing. Andrew Lorenz, who conducted the interview, is a great guy and great comic writer. He runs September17 Productions, which publishes the comics he writes.
To read the interview, please go here.
This site has been fairly quiet as of late. Part of it has to do with a change in personal schedule, the other part being I don’t have much to report on a platform like this blog right now. Lately, my on-line efforts/time has been spent on Twitter and in my weekly newsletter. Like my last post said, I’m having a great time writing a newsletter and am really enjoying its potential for communication with readers. It’s my current method of bringing my thoughts to the virtual page and sharing it with you guys. I suggest signing up for it–it’s free–as a means to a) keep in touch with me more regularly and, b) to receive information on things pertaining to the writing life, publishing stuff, life stuff and other stuff.
Been also juggling multiple projects so am in kind of a working season where not much is going on publicly but with stuff happening beneath the surface. It’s been awhile since I’ve had so many irons in the fire, but as it is with these things, it takes time to complete each one. So, yeah, in work mode, in figuring-stuff-out mode, and am just plugging along.
Been thinking about my publishing schedule for this year and how it might need to be changed to accommodate some other life changes that are happening. We’ll see how it all pans out, but, of course, I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, I’m going to be laying low for a while as I get things done because in the end it’s getting the work done that matters. However, I’ll still be active on Twitter and, as I’ve been pushing, in my newsletter.
Like they say, watch this space.
I’m having a blast writing The Canister X Transmission. Just yesterday I sent out the seventh issue. It’s weekly and I’m having a ball. I think it’s the idea of publishing something new each and every week that appeals to me. Unlike blog entries, a newsletter is something that is “sent out” as opposed to just posted. Sure, some people get my blog posts via email, but a newsletter is meant to go out, be read, possibly even shared.
I’d like to invite you now to sign up via the signup box on the right hand side of this site. It’s free. You can also visit the newsletter’s page at Tiny Letter to read back issues and see if it’s for you. I hope so. I try to make them interesting. They’re not terribly long either and only take a few minutes to read. I cover musings on the writing life, some fanboy and pop culture stuff, writing updates, and publishing and marketing tips.
I also got a master file going in which I write out each newsletter first. The plan? Why, make a book out of them, of course. I’m thinking of doing it annually, so 52 newsletters per collection. Might even craft a bonus newsletter that you can only get in the book.
Hope you sign up. It’s a fine method of communication and I’m having fun doing them. Likewise, if a particular issue speaks to you in some way, you can reply to it and let me know your thoughts.
Thanks.
See you on the list.
Can You Just Start A Publishing Company?
Can You Just Start A Publishing Company?
This entry was prompted because I’ve come across it more than once. Three times, to be exact, so I figure it’s worth blogging about.
Authors and starting their own publishing company.
This is the approach to publishing I strongly advocate in Getting Down and Digital: How to Self-publish Your Book. It’s my opinion that taking the time to set up a publishing business the proper way opens doors to taking your self-publishing career in multiple positive directions, on-line and off-.
But can you just start a publishing company? On three separate occasions I’ve seen authors simply “start companies,” that is, just making up a business name and start and/or plan to publish under it without registering it through the proper channels.
While the nuances of business start-up rules vary country to country, state to state, province to province, if a person wants to start a company, there is a certain way to go about it because each industry functions on different rules of trade and sales depending on where you live.
When I started Coscom Entertainment and any if its imprints, I had to go to the Companies Office downtown, fill out paperwork, explain what my business was and pay a fee. This was in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
I know from speaking with other Canadian and US publishers that they, too, had to go through a formal procedure to get their company up and running.
But I have also seen authors pull a company out of thin air and aim to start using it. I don’t know if this is simply because they don’t know any better or if it’s because of all the Kindle talk that people think all areas of publishing are free and one can do whatever they want when it comes to it. Or maybe, like most writers and artists, money is hard to come by so they want to do things as cheaply as possible and free is about as cheap as it gets. Perhaps it’s the Internet mentality because a lot of people view the Web as a “place to get stuff free” so why not start up a company for free, too? The problem with this kind of free is it’s unethical. Why create the groundwork of your career on something that’s wrong? It’ll only lead to problems down the road.
The publishing industry is changing, this is true, and things are not what they used to be–and this extends past the whole eBook thing–but other things have remained, and that is the need to properly start a business if setting up a publishing house is part of your self-publishing plan.
If you’re not sure what to do, pull out your phone book and look up your local Companies Office. Tell them what you plan on doing–publish books–and they’ll let you know what you need to do so that if your business is ever looked into, you can produce the proper paperwork that states you are allowed to run your business whether out of your home or an outside office. Likewise, when it comes tax time and you claim your writing income, claiming it under a company might work to your advantage in terms of write-offs. Talk to an accountant about this as the rules vary place to place.
In the end, if you wish to self-publish via your own imprint, part of the deal is registering that imprint with the proper authorities.
Start your career on the right foot. It can only payoff in the end.
Yesterday I finished writing Secret Project No. 1. It came in at roughly 51,100 words, which is about 1,100 more than I estimated, which is fine. I think it was Sunday that I thought of the ending and Monday I was able to put it down.
Taking today off writing-wise, though I did write the first draft synopsis for Secret Project No. 1 along with this Saturday’s newsletter. (It’s free to sign up for, by the way; just use the email box on the right of the screen.)
I hope to reveal the title to Secret Project No. 1 in the near future, and by near future I mean between now and the end of June. Might even throw the titles to Secret Projects Nos. 2 and 3 in there, too. Stay tuned, as they say.
But it feels good, takes some pressure off, and I’m able to gear up for Secret Project No. 2. Like the first one, you can watch my progress via the word-o-meter on the side of the screen. I can’t remember how long it took me to do the first one–maybe a month-ish–but Secret Projects Nos. 2 and 3 first drafts are due by the end of June. That’s 100,000 words minimum in 41 days. Totally doable as that averages 2,400 or so per day, every day. I know some days I’ll do more so I’ll be on track barring the world doesn’t end or something. July will be spent editing–both by myself and my editor–and I hope to release all three of these projects in August sometime.
As for another hint as to what the story might be about, it involves mechanical things. Big ones and small ones.
Peace.
The Axiom-man Origin and Why I Write Superhero Fiction
Note: This post was originally published on Jeffrey Allen Davis’s blog
The Axiom-man Origin and Why I Write Superhero Fiction
by
A.P. Fuchs
The Axiom-man Saga is an old story. A couple decades, in fact, as it was around then that I started to daydream about a similar hero while walking my paper route each morning. I’d get so lost in this story about a hero caught in a cosmic war between Good and Evil that I’d be done my route before I knew it and would often run house-to-house to double check and make sure I delivered the paper to the right places.
In that fantasy, of course, I played the hero. As the story grew and I got older, I ended up transferring the honor of being that character to someone else, a fictitious someone else who would one day go by the name of Gabriel Garrison.
Axiom-man began to take shape in concept throughout all my years of delivering the paper—and went by a different name, which was featured in my novel, April, written as Peter Fox (for that secret name, you’ll just have to read the book to find out). In 1995, Axiom-man received his new costume, the one he wears today. At the time, Axiom-man—originally called Trinity—and this concept character of mine were two different people. Trinity was more of a supernatural hero ala Spawn and fought demons, whereas my other hero was more down-to-Earth in nature and had very Superman-like powers. Yes, I know: Superman isn’t very down-to-Earth, but he does deal with things on this plane of existence 9 times out of 10. Anyway, as time went on, Trinity became Axiom—who was yet another character at the time—and as even more time went on and after being inspired by the likes of Frank Dirscherl and his Wraith character—who back in 2005 had one novel, a comic and a movie in the works—I decided it was time to put my long-thought-about superhero to paper. I merged my paper route fantasy character with Axiom because I always had an affinity for him, and after doing a quick web search on the Axiom name and finding a company out there with the same name, I went and made it my own by adding “man” to the end of it, hyphenated, of course, because that’s who Axiom-man really is: a self-evident truth embodied in a single person, in his case the self-evident truth of being one to do good rather than evil. From there it was an issue of scaling his powers waaaay back and settling upon three of them: strength, flight and eye beams. And when I say I scaled his powers way back, I mean way, way back. When Axiom-man debuted, he could only lift around 1000 pounds, could fly at about 60 kilometers an hour, and his energy beams only carried so much force. I didn’t want to make him too powerful thus making him always the winner and, because of his great strength, have no choice but to always pit him against ultra powerful foes. My story was to take place in our world under the idea of, “If this happened in our reality tomorrow, how would it most likely play out?” Making him with that kind of power set helped keep him grounded in reality and gave me plenty of options for enemies he could fight to sometimes win and sometimes lose against.
His backstory and mythology were left unaltered and kept the same as the character I thought about growing up, still the product of a nameless messenger having visited him and granting him his abilities without explanation. As the story goes on, Axiom-man finds out why he received his powers and how he is caught in a cosmic war that has raged since time immemorial.
The reason Axiom-man made his debut in books rather than comics was because, at the time I brought him to market, I knew of superhero fiction but didn’t think to do it independently. Frank Dirscherl’s The Wraith and Knight Seeker by Eric Cooper showed me otherwise. Axiom-man was originally a comic book character and I even drew a 21- or 22-page comic with him when he was called Trinity back in high school. I still have it somewhere and might publish it one day as a kind of behind-the-scenes thing. Anyway . . .
By doing superheroes in prose, I was able to work alone, could tell the story exactly how I wanted it, and because I was already self-publishing other fiction at the time, had the system in place to get Axiom-man out there.
You know, even though Axiom-man was my first official superhero release, I look over my fiction and every book I’ve written is a superhero novel in some way. Take A Red Dark Night, for example. It’s about a summer camp under siege by blood creatures. One of the protagonists, Tarek, is superheroic in nature, wears an otherworldly outfit complete with a cape, and shoots blue fire from a gauntlet on his forearm.
My epic fantasy book, some quarter million words long, called The Way of the Fog, is about a group of people who get superpowers in a medieval/fantasy-style setting.
My zombie trilogy, Undead World, deals with the supernatural, time travel, and each character is superheroic in how they act, even archetypical in some cases, with comic book-like good vs evil action.
Zombie Fight Night—aside from an aged Axiom-man making an appearance in there, is full of comic book characters monster-wise, everything from werewolves to vampires; to robots to pirates; to ninjas to samurai; and beyond, all battling the undead.
The Metahumans vs anthology series is, obviously, about Metahumans aka superheroes fighting a themed foe throughout each book.
As mentioned, my love story, April, is about a comic book writer who’s fallen in love, and what does he write? Superhero comics.
Look, Up on the Screen! The Big Book of Superhero Movie Reviews is about . . . well, I guess I don’t have to explain that one.
The list goes on.
I think it’s only fitting that superhero fiction in its truest form—an actual superhero storyline—became a part of my repertoire. It seemed inevitable considering my love for the genre. Ever since I knew what a superhero was—at three years old, I think—I’ve been hooked, and not a day in my life has gone by where I haven’t thought about them, theorized about them, fantasized about them, pretended to be them and more. I even wear Superman and Batman onesies to bed for crying out loud!
Calling me a geek is an understatement, but I don’t care. Geeks make the world go round and fanboys are the ones providing people with entertainment. Superhero fiction just happens to be my main venue for doing so.
And where is Axiom-man going from here? Well, thus far, 7 prose books have been released along with a few comics and short stories. The whole saga is planned to be 50 books long, so I’m coming up on being 20 percent finished. The good part is the story is pretty much all mentally written. I had 9 years or so of delivering papers to get the story right, after all.
What I’m enjoying about the superhero fiction format is I’m able to do things with my characters that comic books don’t allow, at least, current superhero comics don’t allow. I’ve long advocated—and still do—that the comic book is the greatest storytelling medium to ever come down the pike, with books being a close second. Why? Because it’s the one-two punch of pictures combined with narration, whereas prose is a text-only medium. I still believe that, but being that at this stage in my career I’m primarily a writer versus a writer/artist, I’m sticking to books and the book medium is capable of telling superhero stories in a way comics haven’t as yet, namely getting inside a character’s head. Very few comic writers have succeeded in that in the past. Superhero comics are far too picture-heavy these days, with flashy computer coloring jobs, flimsy stories and scant dialogue. I miss the old days where there were almost equal amounts of text and pictures. At least with The Axiom-man Saga as it stands now, I can bring the reader dense characters where every thought and feeling is brought to the fore and, hopefully, pull the reader into the characters’ shoes in a way that superhero comics don’t. That’s my main goal with this: bring the reader in so that they feel they are experiencing my fiction versus just reading it. I’ve yet to read a superhero comic where this has happened. I have, however, read superhero books where this has occurred, Batman: Knightfall by Dennis O’Neil being a major favorite of mine and my first foray into the superhero fiction world.
What also sets The Axiom-man Saga apart from any of the current superhero offerings is that it’s a cross-medium superhero story that encompasses books, comics and short stories, all part of the same continuity. This has never been done before, and putting new spins on old things is one of the things I’ve always striven for in my fiction, especially in this industry where things are pretty copycat and cookie-cutter (we all know of certain authors that seem to turn out the same book over and over again just under a different title, right?).
Whether Axiom-man becomes this wild success or remains under the radar, for me it’s about writing the superhero story I always wanted to read, the one I’ve always thought about, and the one that, when my time on Earth is done, is the one I’ll be remembered by. It’s meant to be a career piece, a giant story with a beginning, middle and end, the story of a superhero, his life, and what that means to the world around us.
I invite you to come along for the ride.
Hope you enjoyed this little insight into the Axiom-man origin.
Publishing Isn’t Free
Publishing Isn’t Free
Raising Capital for Your Book
by A.P. Fuchs
(from Getting Down and Digital: How to Self-publish Your Book)
Publishing books costs money. Like the saying goes, you’ve got to spend money to make money. There’s no way around this. Thankfully, desktop publishing has dramatically cut that cost down and instead of having to spend thousands of dollars up front like in the old days, you can publish your book for less than a couple hundred on the low end, or a thousand or more on the high end.
This book shows you how to publish your book for around $200, give or take a little depending on what you hire out when producing your book and where you live.
Keeping up with the spirit of this book, which is starting out with little to no money like I did, let me make a few suggestions as to how to raise that $200 if you don’t have it saved already.
– set aside a set amount every payday so you can publish your book in a timely manner
– if things are indeed tight and nothing can be spared, then consider getting a temporary part-time job to cover the expenses of book publishing
– if your book is complete, write up a synopsis of your book and take pre-orders from family and friends. This may be tricky, however, if you don’t know how to price your book. See the section on pricing for more info
– have a yard sale
– start a Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign at www.kickstarter.com
– sell off your unwanted CDs, books, records, etc. to stores that specialize in those items
Of course, there are many other ways to fund your project but the above are a few suggestions. After all, publishing isn’t free.
About to settle in to do some more work on Secret Project No. 1. As of this writing, it’s sitting at roughly 39,300 words, which, according to my word count-o-meter, means I’m 78% percent done. I’m hoping to finish this book by Monday at the latest, hopefully sooner.
It’s coming along well. I’m taking things scene by scene while keeping a general direction in mind. This book is a definite departure compared to my usual stuff, which is good as I think it’s important for writers to try new things. I hope you’ll all agree it was a good move come publication time.
I’ll drop another hint as to what I’m cooking up here in the North . . .
It involves armed forces.
The Most Overlooked Step of Self-publishing or The Three Types of Writers
The Most Overlooked Step of Self-publishing or The Three Types of Writers
Choose Your Target
You need to know where you’re going before you can figure out what you’re doing. A simple—even obvious—principle, but one often overlooked by writers and artists looking to get their work out there.
I made the mistake of jumping right into this business and publishing my first book, A Stranger Dead, via a vanity/subsidy press. Next thing I knew, I was in the hole around $2500US and never made my money back. Back then, because of the US-to-Canadian-dollar exchange rate, you could add about 40-45% to that bill, so I plunked down somewhere around $3,625 Canadian for a book that went, well, nowhere. I think, all told, I recouped maybe a couple hundred bucks and that was it. Of course, a couple hundred is better than zero, but had I known that jumping in without stopping and researching and honing my craft, I would’ve come up with a different plan, especially since I was trying to make writing my livelihood. This was not proper self-publishing.
Yet many jump in. They believe the self-publishing Kindle hype and jump in. They pay someone to publish their book and jump in. They hook up with a small press without knowing its history or who’s behind it, and jump in. The list goes on, and heartbreak and frustration often follow.
The problem with jumping in and not knowing how to swim is that you drown.
Like all journeys—and believe me, publishing is a journey and not some place you can just get to by stepping out your door and, poof, there you are—you need to figure out where you’re going first. And this destination is different for everybody.
It’s based on goals.
There are a few categories of people when it comes to the publishing business and though money is involved, it’s not all that’s involved.
The first thing anyone needs to do before they embark on any creative journey in regards to getting their work out there, is to decide what their end game is. No way around this.
Don’t go any further without establishing this. Without it, it’ll be like being in the middle of the ocean and not knowing which way to swim to get to land. You will quickly tucker out as you try different directions, get frustrated, even mentally broken in some cases and, eventually, you’ll pack it in.
There are three general categories the writer falls into. Find which one you’re in and you’ll make your life easier going forward.
The Hobbyist: this person creates solely for fun. Money is not the main motivator and they usually give away their work for free or sell it for very, very little, the main drive simply to have a good time with their art and that’s it. They might also not even distribute their work and just fill up a hard drive or journal with their stories solely for their own amusement.
The Part-timer: this person is interested in making money with their work, but thanks to either a working spouse or a job they love, their craft isn’t a career-goal for them. Regardless of the money involved—but there has to be some as they are, indeed, looking at their art as a “part-time job”—the main motivator is to use their art to put food on the table in conjunction with other sources of income.
The Full-timer: this person aims to make their art their sole livelihood and so work their butt off to obtain that. Some find success right away, others take years, even decades. The amount of money it requires to achieve this varies on lifestyle and personal desires.
Each of the above involves taking a different path. Though “all roads lead North” isn’t true for this biz, there are many roads to achieve each of the above goals, most of them being a case of finding what works for you and running with it.
However, generally speaking, the roads look something like this:
The Hobbyist: with money not really an issue and/or motivator, this person will either invest their own funds into their project, put it out themselves, distribute however and whenever, or simply throw everything up on the Web for free and call it good. They might publish with a small press and if the book is a flop, it’s a non-issue for them. Also, as previously mentioned, publication might not even be pursued and the stories are kept private in journals or on a hard drive.
The Part-timer: money being a consideration, this person will either get involved with a small-to-medium-sized press, make a few hundred dollars to a few grand a year, and are more than happy with that.
The Full-timer: with their livelihood at stake, this person will aim to find incredible success with a traditional publisher, whether big, medium or even small, depending on the number of copies sold. Though lifestyles vary, $20-25,000 minimum would probably be required to live off of if you are single in today’s economic climate. To secure this kind of advance for a first-time author is difficult, but not impossible. First-time author advances range from $100-10,000 in general (and depends on the size of the press), but with a good marketable book and a good agent, getting $20,000-plus up front isn’t farfetched. While the high-end first-time author advance of $10,000-$20,000 may or may not be enough to live on, it does give you access to a publisher’s resources and distribution channels, their brand and connections, and, you never know, your book might take off thus putting you in demand and getting you a higher advance for a second book. There’s also the possibility of signing a first-time author multi-book deal (i.e. $30,000 for 3 books at $10,000 each).
All three of the above can also take one final path: entrepreneurship, in other words, self-publishing, which is the main focus of this book.
Each goal can also be achieved self-publishing-wise based on one’s entrepreneurial model.
You can also mix-and-match, meaning you can shoot to be a part-timer but end up scoring on the publishing roulette wheel and still net a full-time income on the side.
In the end, goal-setting is priority one. It’s the first step. You’ve got to know which way your feet are pointed before you can walk out the door.
I’ll emphasize it again: you must do this if you are to save yourself weeks, months or even years of frustration and spinning your wheels. Self-publishing is no easy feat despite how it may look. What goes on behind the scenes is definitely a journey and a lot of work, but it can pay off for you, dear reader, as well. After all, isn’t that what self-publishing’s all about? Bringing stories to readers?
I think so.
Comics and graphic novels are super important me, and they molded my storytelling and writing-style very early on in my career. There’s so much you can do with comics that you can’t do in any other medium.
Nowadays, the comic book industry in general is in a state of flux, with eComics and webcomics pushing the standard periodical comic book to the wayside. Graphic novels are a big thing now, with comic companies like DC and Marvel tailoring their story arcs to be collected later. To a point, they’re kind of shooting themselves in the foot in that if the reader knows the periodicals will be collected later for a cheaper price anyway, why buy the more expensive single issues and wait 30 days between each installment? At the same time, graphic novels are a fast-growing market last I checked so if they weren’t profitable, the comic companies wouldn’t do them and only provide one option.
In Europe, it’s mostly graphic novels in terms of publication, and I personally think this is where the overall comics industry is headed.
For me, as much as I enjoy the single issues–especially in the world of minicomics–creating book-length comics adds a level of prestige to the literature that their single-issue version can’t offer even though, technically, each single issue is, nowadays, a chapter in a book-length work. At the same time, these “collected editions of story arcs,” aren’t really graphic novels per se, but collections, and there’s a difference. That’s another discussion altogether so perhaps we’ll do it another time.
I usually have a graphic novel on the go reading-wise and add more to my collection when funds permit. Lately, I’ve been getting more and more into alternative comics as they carry more life, soul and authenticity than the current mainstream comics.
Anyway, here’s my collection. A couple of them are my wife’s, and some are not in these pics because they are by our bedside or elsewhere in the room (remember I said I usually have one on the go? So does the Mrs.).
I thought about taking them all out and arranging them for you, or clearing up the mess around them, but since I’ve always advocated writing should be about honesty, so should what I put on this blog so unlike my showcase pics of my own published books and comics, these are true bookshelf pics as per what Fridays on this blog is for.
Enjoy.
