If it’s all up in the air, fancy is good. No need to go crazy, but something reminiscent of a red letter Bible or something fitting the “tone” of Castle Vidcons. I’d prefer color to black and white, if just because of Lord Wii’s glowing stare.
Still, all in all I have to back up the guy that says whatever will do the best for you.
A cheaper book would be nice, but the ye olde parchment look is part of what defines your series, I think. I would happily buy a slightly more expensive book if it meant having full color pages.
why not both? a cheap black and white one for people that can’t afford much or aren’t willing to shell out that much money for a webcomic and a super awesome fullcolor one (possibly signed) for the people willing to shell out more cash
Depends on how much of a cost difference we are looking at here. A Penny-Arcade softcover book is like $20 brand new, $15 or less after a year or so, and my family has all of them so far. If this massive leatherbound tome is gonna be $50-$60 that’s not too bad, but more than that is getting iffy.
It needs to be in colour. The parchment look is a defining part of Castle Vidcons. I personally would be willing to pay a bit more for something that really pushes the boundaries of the Castle Vidcons aesthetic, some faux-leather, foiled-blocked bible type goodness; but this is probably unrealistic. You’d be best off doing a nice perfect bound soft cover or hard cover book with a single or 2 colour print to keep the costs down.
The comments suggesting a $50-$60 price-point however are insane. You’ll make minimal sales with a book that expensive because most people are not going to see the value in it.
Good luck and if you happen to find a cheap source of jewels go ahead and encrust the books in them, because that would be totally rad.
Whatever you decide to do with a non-collector’s edition, take pre-orders for the collector’s edition. If you’ve a range of potential collector’s edition options and don’t know which to go for, maybe take pre-orders for each variant and see which turns out most popular i.e. run the print when you have the orders.
Someone on twitter asked me what the comics would look like in black and white, so I did a few examples. http://i.imgur.com/WMrHC.jpg
Some look fine in black and white naturally, like the two images on the left. The third image is a little muddy, and so the next two are what I’d probably do to ‘fix’ it by adding in linework. The last one there has the gray fill from the original with the extra line.
Black and white wound up looking better than I thought it would. I love the sepia tone, but if it’s cheaper (and more people would buy it), black and white is a solid choice. Though I’d definitely miss Lord Wii’s glow, which might be worth the extra money for color.
I talked to a publisher and we figured the sepia on white could probably be built up easily enough in passes without being full color. I suppose adding touches of blue here and there wouldn’t be so difficult.
Limited colors would work, as long as the oldie effect isn’t too lost in the transition! I also think it’s important to keep the price low to motivate more people to purchase it, and that could be a good compromise.
I might be up for one, especially if each comic can be matched with the event that inspired it. Some of these will be much harder to understand in a few years!
Take pre-orders for the cheap and the special kind, then get them made according to that number. Not like your fans aren’t use to waiting ages for things.
Well this is how I see the perfect book :
-Lord Wii’s blue glow, other colors don’t matter beside that,
-I don’t know about the leather cover, but at least having a hard cover would be great
-sidenotes to help people relate
-6 more comics to get to the 100th ?
Keep in mind the comic relies heavily on what has recently happened in the games industry. Perhaps a date or notes for each comic would help provide the context.
I’d probably be okay with a B&W one, but the use of simple colours (even if it’s just the “golden glow” in some cases) makes those particular comics amazing. Hopefully we don’t lose too much from those pages in the transition.
In any case just shut up and take my money! I’d love to have a book of any kind to show people this comic.
I think what might be neat to have is some sort of pages in the back detailing what the inspiration was for each of the strips. The vast majority of these strips are based off current event in the gaming industry, and some are quite obscure.
A small paragraph for each one in the back to refresh people’s memory would be a boon to a compilation book such as this.
A 2-color print would be cheapest, and look best (dark tan and light blue ink on desaturated tan paper). But you still need to make a lot more comics for a book. (you have SO MUCH MATERIAL TO WORK FROM). If you double the current count, you’d be golden.
I think maybe include comments from each snippet would be a nice addition im sure everyone would be more than happy to have their name on the pages also adds that personal touch to the fans. Good idea?
Yeah, the pricing is something I’m thinking over. Keep in mind that the more books you print the cheaper you can afford to sell, and the examples some of you gave are fairly large mass-produced books which keep their costs down. I’m mainly worried with being stuck with hundreds of books that I’d never be able to sell so perhaps a smaller number and higher quality book would be the route I’m looking towards most.
Sorry! Should get a kickstarter going shortly; just going through the comics again and grabbing comments for the book and writing some commentary on why I made each comic in the first place (assuming I can remember). I always tend to leave you guys hanging, so I apologize.
Not something else as in “something different from your book”, something else as in “something else I can read cuz this is some good stuffs” kinda something.
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