The fine folks at Graphicly are focusing more and more on helping comic creators get their comics made, distributed, and marketed, which to me is a fantastic thing. They already have a great site where you can buy and read digital comics.

Now they’re helping creators get their comics to you more easily.

They asked me to write a blog about my experiences with digital comics, and I shared what I learned in this entry: “Going Digital with Your Comic: A Rough Map.”

Continue reading Special Guest Post at the New Graphicly Blog →

The good folks over at the FlamesRising blog, which is a sister blog to the excellent DriveThruComics site that distributes our digital comic and my novels, asked me to write two”design essays” for them recently. I have a great time doing them, one for my Contagious Magic series of books, and one for the finale of In Maps & Legends.

I just realized today that I didn’t link to them here, and thought I’d remedy that ASAP.

Continue reading Design Essays (That I Forgot to Link to Here ‘Til Now) →

I’m happy to announce the release of the Collected Edition of our digital comic IN MAPS & LEGENDS! Consider this the digital version of the trade paperback of all nine issues.

Here’s the official synopsis:

Kaitlin Grayson is an artist who finds herself compelled to carve a map that covers all four walls of her window-less spare room. One cold night, a disheveled man named Bartamus bursts into her apartment, claiming that only she can save his dying world.

For Kait, things like this happen in the books she illustrates so often, she feels like she knows what will happen next. But she couldn’t be more wrong when she and her friends step through her map and charge headlong into another world. In Maps & Legends, a former Zuda comic, is a world-spanning fantasy comic mixed with science fiction and steampunk.

This special edition collects all nine issues of this digital-only, full-color miniseries.

• Buy a PDF (60 MB) directly from UnWrecked Press.
• Digital versions also available at Weightless Books, Amazon, Comixology, Graphicly, iTunes, DriveThruComics, MyDigitalComics, and The Illustrated Section.
• Read the opening for free online or as a PDF.

Let us know what you think of our series, and as always, thanks for reading!

Back in January, I ran a blog post entitled Digital Comics: Formatting Your Comic for the Nook (ePub). Click back to that entry to learn more about ePubs, if you’re not familiar with them.

Well, it’s time for an update. Why? Well, for our digital comic IN MAPS & LEGENDS, we learned that part of the image got cut off on the new Nook Touch reader as well as on the original black and white nook.

Our new ePub template is resizable. Once again, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to VALENTINE creator Alex de Campi for sharing her ePub template with us. She did all the heavy lifting. We just did the customizing so the template worked for IN MAPS & LEGENDS.

And now we’re sharing it with you, fellow comics creators!

Continue reading Digital Comics: Formatting Your Comic for the Nook (ePub), UPDATED →

Back in January, I listed our 2010 sales broken out by distributor and what percentage of our sales came from each. I figured now was a good time to update that chart so other comics creators thinking of going digital can compare notes and maybe dive into the digital world at last.

The sales number listed below are go back from when we started back in September 2010. The numbers cover issues 1-6 of IN MAPS & LEGENDS, our combo ebook that bundles issues 1-4, and our Formatting Comics ebook.

Continue reading Our Digital Comic Downloads and Sales: Through Mid-2011 (UPDATED) →

8/18/11 IMPORTANT UPDATE: We’ve updated our Nook ePub template so it works better with the black and white Nook Readers. Our new ePub template is resizable. If you’ve already bought Formatting Comics for Kindle and Nook, just delete the old version and then download the latest version! (If you have trouble at any of the sites, shoot us an email with your purchase history or receipt, and we’ll make sure you get the updated ebook.)

Artist Niki Smith and I have been making digital comics for almost a year now (more or less — though it feels much longer than that). And we want to share what we’ve learned, so other folks can join the fun and get their comics out to a whole new set of readers.

So, we did what any creative folks would do. We made a book! An eBook, to be precise, entitled Formatting Comics for the Kindle and Nook.

While the title pretty much says it all, here’s a bit more info:

Formatting comics and image-heavy eBooks can be a confusing and sometimes frustrating task. Every e-reader on the market has a different screen size, meaning that as a creator/publisher, you have to format your comic multiple times.

In this how-to guide, we’ll be talking about putting together your eBook images for the two biggest e-readers on the market: Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook and Nook Color.

Continue reading Digital Comics: Formatting Comics for the Kindle and Nook (an ebook) →

A few months back, in my blog about “Getting the Digital Word Out” about your comic (or book or ebook or magazine or whatever), I discussed a nifty site called Project Wonderful.

I’ve had a few requests for more info about how to use the PW site to share ads for your comic or book or website, and even host ads on your own website, so here’s my take on how to best use it. Continue reading Making Project Wonderful Work for You →

Now that we’ve hit four issues (already!), we wanted to offer new readers a chance to get caught up with our special “combo pack” — a digital bundle of issues 1 through 4 of IN MAPS & LEGENDS.

So instead of paying almost $4 and downloading issues 1-4 individually, you can buy the combo pack and get those four issues as a short graphic novel. Best thing about it is that you save over a dollar buying those issues as a bundle.

Second-best thing is that you also get a snazzy new cover, which includes the all the covers from those issues.

Right now the special is for just the Kindle and the Nook.

So check it out if you haven’t already read those first issues (and remember, the Kindle and Nook also have free readers you can download for your computer or laptop, and they all display in COLOR).

And, as always, thanks for reading!

Over at the IN MAPS & LEGENDS official website, I wrote about the four — possibly five — new digital distributors we’re working with to get our comics out to more and more people. For those of you interested in creating and selling your own comics, bop on over and check it out.

That blog entry is a companion piece to these two earlier entries I did about distributors:

• A Dozen Digital Distributors for Comics (1 of 2)
• A Dozen Digital Distributors for Comics (2 of 2)

Enjoy! And be sure to keep an eye out for Issue Four of IN MAPS & LEGENDS, coming on February 2nd!

As I mentioned in my post about our downloads from 2010, Kindle downloads were our 3rd most popular format, after the Nook (here’s more about Nook formatting) and Comixology.

So I figured I’d cover how we created issues of IN MAPS & LEGENDS for the Kindle as well. Relax — Kindle formatting is WAY easier than Nook formatting. Just wanted to get that outta the way first.

While Amazon’s Kindle was the breakthrough ereader in many ways, its biggest drawback for comics creators is that it only displays in black and white. Urgh!

However, Amazon provides a handful of free, downloadable Kindle apps that let you read Kindle ebooks without actually buying a Kindle.

And guess what? Your comic will be in COLOR on those apps.

Continue reading Digital Comics: Formatting Your Comic for the Kindle →