Last week, I was writing this while six pages deep into my remake of Bet Your Sweet Bottom, and today, I’m at 13 pages. It’s been great. I’m really enjoying working on it. I planned a lot of pages in my thumbnails as having three rows of panels, and as I look at my giant canvas, it hits home how unacceptable that is, so I’ve been improvising new panels as I draw. I’ll have to go back later and figure out what dialogue or narration actually goes there, and how to balance it with the flow of the story. Going through and knowing what the page is doing and what it needs feels really nice.
So I have three pages, a cover, and some currently unplanned back cover illustration until I’m done, and then it’s off to Office Depot or wherever to get it scanned in. I’m pretty close to the time I’ll have it finished and ready for print, which means I’m also pretty close to having to decide what to do with it. I want to sell this book, if only to learn how to sell things, since that’s the future career I have in mind. I currently don’t know where or how to do that. In general, the prospect is bringing up a lot of thoughts that freeze me in place because they feel insurmountable.
A coworker suggested that I put it up for print-on-demand with Amazon. I really don’t want to work with Amazon (to the greatest extent Amazon Web Services allows). I mean, ethics aside, I get intimidated by the scope of Amazon and worry few people would find my zine. A print-on-demand service could still be a god way to go, though. That’ll be fresh research for me. The way I’m imagining that to work as I type is that it would be a site that holds the digital file and allows others to print it off at home. There’s probably places that do that, right?
The other main option for online distribution would be me printing off a copy and mailing it to whoever wants it. That feels more appropriate to me, since it feels somehow improper to ask someone else to fold and staple my zine. There’s a lot of infrastructure there to figure out. The easiest place to start with the actual sale would be to add a shop to this site, which I can look into today. Otherwise, I’ll have to research other online shops and services. Is this where I get a Patreon? I’m unsure because that would require I have something to give patrons every month or so, at least. I’d need to rethink my plans for the future if I got into all that. I also would want to figure out how to do mass mailings. I’m not expecting a lot at the beginning, but my head jumps to the prospect of writing out hundreds of addresses on envelopes. It would be worthwhile to find any easier alternative, like some kind of automated system to organize the addresses into a cookie cutter form and print them on stickers.
That has me thinking about the equipment that would be beneficial to buy. I already want a new laser printer so I can print at home. The printer itself could change how I make my art, since I’m currently planning on an inability to print to the edge of the page; if I could find a printer that could do that, everything would change for me. Depending on the size of the scanner glass, I may also have to look into a separate scanner that can scan pages of any size. I have a long arm stapler already, so I just need to get a bone folder, and I’ll have my zine making basics. I could probably use a new computer, since my current one has trouble with running Affinity (I didn’t have the specs in mind when I bought this one). I should also look into all the different accoutrements for tabling at events. If I did a Patreon or similar service, I’d want to look into having stickers or buttons to offer, you know, little tchotchke things. That could mean getting a Cricut and button press, too, if I wanted to do it all in-house; otherwise, I’m shopping for merch making services. Definitely would have to look for someone to do shirts if I wanted to offer shirts.
Most of this stuff feels very abstract and in the distance right now. I just want to focus on what I’m doing at the moment. While I can research and plan for any number of those scenarios, I will shortly have a printed zine in front of me, physically. I want to find places where I can sell it in person. Partly, this is because I do not like social media. Another big part of doing anything like a Patreon is that I’d have to become a big time social media person, since I’d need a following and eyes on my stuff. I’ve never known how to be popular on social media, and quite frankly don’t often enjoy using it. Scrolling through memes is fine for me, but having to actively use social media is a slog of the highest order, one that I’ve never learned how to do better. I have a full-time job and make art; I don’t have the time, temperament, or skills to also be a social media maven. So part of me would much rather be the cool indie artist person who you can only find at events. Not that that’s sustainable for me, either. I can’t imagine finding enough success off zine sales to even afford convention tables, at least not any time soon, and imagine the amount of days off work I’d have to organize.
Of course, another big part of the social media issue is that I’m not convinced that’s a sustainable career, either. I know people who have done it, and they started either when social media itself started or during its heyday. But we’ve all seen what’s become of every major social media platform. Good luck to Bluesky in their quest to recreate old Twitter, I guess, but those days are largely behind us. We want the community aspect of social media, and most of them aren’t good at that anymore. I think most people are getting the idea that the “make a career selling your art here” model was always a scam to trick you into making a reason for people to go to their platforms, free of compensation. I’d like it if someone could convince me that there is a path forwards, because I would like a way to get people online to see my work, but anyone that could convince me started in the old days, when things were different. I don’t like feeling like the doomer, I just also don’t see the current social media landscape as a viable place to build an art career for a beginner. Newer platforms are likely a better place to start with, but they’re also using the “tried and true” models from older platforms, and will likely end up the same way in even shorter time. It’s almost as if we shouldn’t have based the internet on data mining and ads, huh? Like, the obvious thing where we should have been paying for it the whole time, because there’s no such thing as a free service?
Sigh. Art and commerce, huh? Looking at my options, I have a pretty good idea of the direction I’ll probably start down. There’s a ton of research ahead of me to find my starting place, and then some investment in that future. I may have to shift gears for what exactly I make and how I’ll make it. My graphic novel, for instance, could become a zine series, if for no other reason than it’s more immediate and cost-effective. I can always change my mind and try something else, too. This is just how my life goes a lot of the times. I couldn’t convince myself to do this on purpose, so I charged into a project on enthusiasm, with vague back-end desires, and now I’m staring down the barrel of actually pursuing my future art career. I’ve never started a job or gotten an apartment actually feeling ready for it, and it took time to accept them as realities. This zine, no matter what, is going to be a trial run; whatever I do with it, whatever I learn, that’ll help me decide on next steps. One thing at a time.
Weekly Art Blog 3/2-3/9/2025
Life in the Gutters 