Author: Luke M.

Luke Matthews is a writer, board gamer, beer drinker, and all-around geek. He currently lives in the Seattle area with his wife, two cats, and two German wirehaired pointers.
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The 10 Books That Stuck With Me

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I haven’t been tagged or challenged by anyone to post this list to Facebook, but I found the premise interesting enough to write a post about my list. I like the concept of books that “stayed with me” more than most other memes. And, yes, I’ve listed some series here rather than individual novels, but sometimes an individual entry is inseparable from the series it’s a part of. So, here we go:

1. Where The Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls – A huge formative book for me as a kid. An adventure story of the finest order about a boy and his two favorite dogs. Growing up around dogs made this book super poignant for me.

2. Rising Sun by Michael Crichton – I read every single Crichton book in high school. This was the first one that wasn’t really a high-concept sci-fi story, instead it was a tense murder mystery set amongst the clash of American and Japanese cultures. It was basically my introduction to thrillers that didn’t involve dinosaurs or magic.

3. On A Pale Horse by Piers Anthony – One of two Piers Anthony entries on this list, neither of which involves Xanth. On A Pale Horse was the first sci-fi/fantasy blend I’d ever read, and it’s still one of the best. If you’re wondering why I don’t list the entirety of the Incarnations of Immortality series, it’s because I think On A Pale Horse stands well above the rest.

4. Neuromancer by William Gibson – I came to this book way late in life, only having read it a couple of years ago. And holy shit. It’s a book that dumps you in the deep end from the get go and explains exactly nothing to you. “Here’s an extremely complex world,” Gibson tells his readers. “Go figure it out.”

5. The Chaos Walking Trilogy by Patrick Ness – Here’s a series that stuck with me, but not in a good way. The world-building in the The Knife of Never Letting Go was some of the best and most unique I’d ever seen… then all the goodwill built by the first book is just shat away by the sequels. The third book in this trilogy has actually made me wary of all trilogies (well, that and Mockingjay).

6. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss – I was in the middle of writing my own book when I read this. It simultaneously inspired me to break out of a tough slog in the middle of my novel, and scared the shit out of me. Rothfuss’s prose is the kind of writing I aspire to, and I’m nowhere near there yet.

7. The Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham – One of the most unique fantasy worlds I’ve ever read. The concept of magician poets manifesting physical incarnations of ideas as powerful beings, then trying to reign those beings in for the sake of commerce, is just wildly fascinating to me.

8. Bio of a Space Tyrant by Piers Anthony – Holy shit, this series. Hard sci-fi with a hyper-realistic bent, following the main character from child refugee to ruler of the known galaxy. One of the most brutal, intense opening books I’ve ever read. Who’d’a thunk the guy that writes punny fantasy would’ve been capable of this?

9. The Gone Away World by Nick Harkaway – An intensely imaginative world and a fantastic, funny story set within it. I’m not sure I have the words to describe it, so just go read it.

10. The Belgariad by David Eddings – This was the fantasy series that birthed my love of fantasy. I’d read Tolkien prior, and it was fine, but it didn’t hook me. The Belgariad launched me into a love of fantasy that has, ultimately, led me to writing my own. You can try to debate the quality of Eddings’ prose and story all you want, but The Belgariad had a singular formative impact on my life, and is thus pretty much unassailable to me.

What are the 10 books that stuck with you?

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TerribleMinds Flash Fiction Challenge: Brimstone

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I’m not usually one for flash fiction challenges, but – for some reason – this one just caught my fancy. This is one of Chuck Wendig’s weekly challenges, posted over at TerribleMinds. The rules are simple: Write the first part of a story, up to 500 words, but don’t finish it. The idea is to let someone else finish it.

So, here’s the first half of my story. I’m looking forward to seeing what someone does with the second half!

A silence as oppressive as the summer heat descended as the last echoes of the gunshot fled through the alleys of Brimstone and into the surrounding plain. It lasted but a moment before Constance’s wail cut the air, rebounding off of the picture windows along the front of the Rusty Spur to die in the falling dust. Constance cradled Jeb’s head in her lap, dark blood pooling in the dirt around her knees, her falling tears cutting streaks through the grime on his lifeless face.

Acker was unreadable, his face as still as Jebediah’s. Abigail followed his stony gaze to the outskirts of town, where a cloud of brown erupted from the trail at the feet of Cullum’s horse. Horse and rider crested the rise to the north, and disappeared beyond. By the time Abby had turned back to Acker, he was gone, the front door of the sheriff’s station swinging on its hinges.

When she entered, Acker was standing behind his desk, his service pistol unbelted and set atop it. A deep breath rose in his chest as his fingers emerged from his pocket with a small key. He bent to the drawer at the bottom of his desk and slipped the key into the lock that hadn’t seen its mate in three long years. The drawer slid open as if freshly greased, without a hitch.

“What’re you thinking right now?” Abigail asked.

Acker came upright silently, already fastening his old gunbelt in place. The afternoon sun gleamed off of the .45 Long Colt shells around his hips, and the long-barreled 1860 Army Conversion hung heavy at his thigh. He tied it off and ran the heel of his hand along the grip, satisfied with the placement.

“Acker Cambridge,” Abigail said, failing to quell the waver in her voice. “You think about this. You think hard.”

Acker’s downcast eyes never met Abby’s fierce gaze. Without responding, he reached up and thumbed the silver star from his breast. The world around them slowed to a crawl, and the sound of the star on the wooden desktop echoed like the clang of a jail cell slammed shut.

“Acker…” Abigail’s breath caught and her hands began to tremble. “Acker, no…”

His eyes lingered on the star and his fingertips traced the raised letters on its surface. Once his fingers lifted from those cold metal words, Abigail knew there was nothing left for him in Brimstone, and no turning back.

“What’re you gonna do?” she asked.

Acker raised his eyes, a visage of vengeance incarnate. “I’m gonna find him, and cut him down.” he said. “And, by God, I’ll cut down every sorry soul that stands between us.”

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On Requesting Cover Blurbs

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This article was cross-posted to ChroniclerSaga.com

Probably one of the most nerve-wracking things I’ve done during this whole publishing process is send out requests for cover blurbs to several writers and artists I admire. I’ve been ten-fold more anxious about these requests than I ever was about querying agents, because the result is more direct and tangible, and is tied more directly to an appraisal of the quality of my work – by people whose work inspires me.

I’ve read a lot of horror stories about self-published authors contacting others for blurbs and being complete fuck-sticks about it. Making demands rather than requests, getting pissy at rejections or lack of response, and just being general asshats about it. Amongst the many things that baffle me about how some authors choose to handle their publicity, this attitude makes absolutely no sense to me.

Having a chip on your shoulder about cover blurb requests serves no purpose. Another author is under exactly zero obligation to endorse your work. What I originally wanted to say here was “You need them more than they need you”, but that’s such a monumental understatement that it just doesn’t fly. More accurately: “You need them… and who the fuck are you again?”

As a self-published author, requesting a cover blurb is not a two-way street. Another author gains nothing by having their name appear on your book cover or sale page. A blurb is like a literary remora, swimming along on the belly of the Bestselling Author Shark, catching all the half-chewed publicity bits that fall out of that author’s popularity maw. While not entirely parasitic, it ain’t exactly symbiotic, either.

It’s hard (at least, it was for me) to find the right balance for requests; to be respectful without coming across fawning, urgent without being demanding. I’m not the type of person who can fanboy all over my favorite author’s shoes; I try to be complimentary without being slavish. It’s actually a quality that has prevented me from capitalizing on opportunities to get to know some of these people, because I wasn’t just constantly in their faces at cons or on social media. That’s just not how I’m wired.

So it’s a weird gray area one needs to tread in order to do this right. Approaching another author as though you should be the center of their world, even for a minute amount of time, is just asinine. As a fledgling author myself, I am keenly aware of the amount of work and time I have to put into my own writing and promotion, so it’s easy to assume that I can just multiply that by five for an established author.

On top of it all, it’s most important to keep your expectations in check (I, personally, have none). The requester doesn’t have any right to expectations. Remember that whole one-way-street thing? I’m sure I’d be disappointed if I never received any responses, but one must reign that reaction into only mild disappointment. Getting angry over rejections is the path to the dark side. Wallowing through a pit of disappointment and misery only to build a shell of self-aggrandizing indignation is just a horseshit way to go about anything in life, much less trying to get your favorite authors to read your work.

And so, I wait. Receiving a blurb from any of the people from whom I’ve requested would be like my birthday and Christmas all rolled into one, but not receiving one would be… well… a Tuesday. I feel like that’s the best possible outlook: don’t let the lows get too low, but let the highs launch like a sixteen-pounder on New Year’s. And, above all, don’t be a dick.

CONSTRUCT releases on September 18th on Amazon, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble.

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Formatting, and All That Jazz

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I cross-posted this article at ChroniclerSaga.com.

I am completely OCD about quality. Sometimes, that can be a bad thing. I have trouble releasing things I’m working on, especially artistic works. I’m fairly positive that this trait is what pulled me away from being an illustrator; I was never, ever satisfied with things I’d draw, and couldn’t accept the flaws in my work. When writing CONSTRUCT, this manifested itself in seven full drafts comprised of a ton of interim revisions. Had to be done.

Typos, bad formatting, terrible covers… ugh. Seeing that an author or a publisher has put absolutely minimal effort into their book’s aesthetic is off-putting, to say the least. A bit more can be forgiven in the case of self-published authors; it’s hard enough just jumping through the hoops to get the book released. But to see a minimally-formatted, slap-dash eBook from a major publisher is in-fucking-furiating.

kindle_screenshot_01The various distributors of eBooks have built systems that make it extremely easy to release your prose to the world. In developing a system centered on ease, however, they’ve sacrificed aesthetics. For the vast majority of self-published authors – and, for that matter, most big publishers translating physical copy to digital – that doesn’t matter. Ease is all that counts, and as long as the text is readable, who gives a damn how it looks?

I DO.

First and foremost, I wanted a traditional cover for my novel. The rise of Photoshopped stock images on book covers makes me die inside a little, especially for fantasy novels. I grew up on covers by Vallejo and the Hildebrandts, so I knew I’d never be satisfied with a $30 stock cover design or a Photoshop disaster. As you can see in the cover reveal I posted a couple of weeks ago, my cover artist Carmen absolutely nailed the artwork for this book, and I couldn’t be happier.

Like I said, I’m a quality nut. Once I’d made the decision to self-pub, I did a ton of research on eBook formatting, and how your formatting is affected by the various processing software provided by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and others. The almost-universal opinion of the output of these services hovers somewhere around “Meh. It works, I guess.” But even with that feedback, many self-published authors see the output of those processors and just throw up their hands, giving in to whatever minor victories they can eke out of a shitty system.

kindle_screenshot_02I didn’t want to be hamstrung by what those companies could provide, so I delved into the process of doing the formatting myself. Details, details, details. I learned how to convert a manuscript on my own, using an open source eBook management program called Calibre. Even the output from Calibre was mediocre, mostly because it requires a ton of in-depth knowledge of Calibre’s settings and features, and how they interact with the input file. I was able to get a passable result, but nothing special. I began looking for a way to do my own tweaks. I have a reasonable knowledge of HTML and CSS, and eBooks are pretty much just self-contained HTML files. I found an eBook WYSIWYG editor called Sigil, and I was off to the races.

Sigil allowed me to alter the book at the code level, and I was in heaven. I was able to futz with every single little detail, burying myself in the minutia. Everything from the placement of chapter headings to indents to line spacing to the horizontal rule at the beginning of every chapter. I refined and tinkered the living shit out of the code for this book, and I think it shows in the finished product. On top of satisfying my OCD, it was just plain fun.

How a book looks when you’re reading is important. Typos and bad formatting detract from the reading experience. Everything about a book should melt into the background except for the words on the page, and every time you run across a misspelled word or an awkward paragraph break, it pulls you out of the immersion. Even if readers don’t actively notice the work I put into the formatting, I’ll be happy if they just don’t notice the formatting at all.

If it’s invisible, I’ve done my job.

CONSTRUCT, Book I of The Chronicler Saga, releases on September 18th for Kindle, Nook, and Kobo.

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Editing Is Not Adversarial

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This article has been cross-posted to ChroniclerSaga.com.

A couple of weeks ago, the hashtag #EditorAppreciationDay started on Twitter. It primarily centered around comic book editors at first, either having been a direct response to this article on Medium.com (which was originally titled “Why Image Comics Needs To Stop Demonizing Editors Now”) or simply having fortuitous timing. From my standpoint, the article is rather absurd; a blatantly knee-jerk reaction from an editor who was obviously wound up and poised to spew that response at his earliest opportunity.

But the article – primarily in its knee-jerk nature – serves to illustrate a related, but slightly different, point: Enough arrogant, uneducated douchewaffles shit on editors that many of them have built up the same sort of auto-spew defense system which sent Mr. Kwanza on his tirade (I call it a tirade more due to the lack of inciting incident than the body of the espoused sentiment).

I encountered this issue most poignantly when I posted a comment on Chuck Wendig’s blog over at Terribleminds.com a few months ago. The discussion was about self-publishing, and the comments turned toward the subject of editing. Chuck made a comment about being able to find inexpensive editing services, or possibly finding editors who will trade their services. When I asked if he knew where I might find editors within my price range, another commenter butted in with the following:

“By editing, are we talking book doctors, or proofreaders? Frankly, if you need someone else to tell your story, you aren’t much of an author in my opinion. Nobody went back over Pcaso’s work and fixed his brush strokes. Indies may not be masters, but they should be able tomprovide abuyabke product on their own or they’re not very independant in my mind.”

[All errors in the above text are in the original post. Oh, the irony.]

Guys like this, unfortunately, are the people who put editors like Kwanza on the hyper-defensive. The arrogance of a stance like this is staggering, and is shared by far too many independent authors. The “gatekeeper” narrative has been threaded through so much of the self-publishing community that many authors have wrong-headedly learned to take the idea of editing as an affront to their creative freedom. As a lifelong artist – in some vein or another – I’m baffled by this attitude.

Any artist worth their salt will tell you everyone suffers from “art-blindness”. You work on a piece for so long – could be a sculpture or a painting or a manuscript – you become blind to many of its faults. For every one you catch, two will slip past, because you’ve been staring at the thing so damned much everything just seems normal, even if it’s not.

Before I sent my manuscript to beta readers, a friend of mine did a pretty extensive proofread, and tore it apart. When I sent the 3rd draft to beta readers, they tore it up, too; they found all kinds of issues. When I finished the post-beta-read revision – the 4th draft – I sent it off to my story editor, and she tore it up. The story edit resulted in my 5th draft, and I did a 6th draft before sending it off to the copyeditor, because I’m anal. The copyeditor tore it up.

Seven extra pairs of eyes on my manuscript, and every single one of them found faults. And not faults I would consider some sort of subversion of my creative vision (whatever the fuck that means), but faults causing me to say to myself “Holy shit, I can’t believe I missed that.” My story editor, Annetta Ribken, not only helped me unify the language in my dialogue and shave away excessive prose (I’m a wordy bitch), but she found weak spots in my plot which, had they been left in place, did a disservice to the rest of the story.

See, writing a book is hard. It requires constant, relentless critical thinking, and sometimes you’re not on your A-game. There were points in my plot even I felt were weak, but after cranking out 130,000 words and revising them three times, I looked at those passages as “good enough”. Until Annetta got ahold of it. When someone else looks at a piece of art you’ve decided is “good enough” and, in a professional capacity, tells you “It’s not good enough.”, you damned well best take note.

It’s not to say Annetta and I didn’t disagree sometimes. There were points of contention I argued for. There were changes she suggested I didn’t make. But in every single case, when she told me something needed changing, I had to argue with myself long before I started arguing with her. I had to take a critical look at every single edit and say “Is this up to my standards?” In most cases, I had to agree it was not, and had to look within myself to find a way to elevate it.

The same was true of my copyeditor, Jennifer Wingard. I learned more about the mechanics of prose from her copyediting passes than through anything else I’d done over the two years I spent writing the manuscript. I learned what my crutch words were (“that” and “was” need to be burned with fire), I learned the repetitive mistakes I make in sentence construction, and I learned no matter how many times I read over the same manuscript, I’m never going to find every extra space or misplaced quote or incorrect punctuation. I learned that “blonde” has a very specific meaning, different from “blond” (while seemingly basic, I had no idea).

And yet, through both of these collaborations, I never once felt like I wasn’t in control of my manuscript. At no point did the editing process feel as though either of my editors were trying to steer my story or fuck with my voice. You know why? Because that’s the whole point of being an editor. They’re there to make your work better – to make it more you. A good editor looks at your prose and works with you to find ways to solidify it without tinkering with what makes it yours.

And I learned so much. Probably the most amazing thing about working with these two wonderful women: I markedly improved my knowledge and execution of my craft because of these collaborations. There is no better way to become a better writer than to have a professional constructively deconstruct your prose. Which is why it’s such a damned shame there are so many authors out there with such an adversarial view of editing and, by extension, so many editors who’ve built this ablative armor against even the smallest hint of a slight against their profession.

Editing is not subversive or adversarial. If it is, you either a) found a really god-awful editor, or b) desperately need to get your ego in check. In most cases, it’s probably the latter.

If you’re in need of a substantive story edit, check out Annetta Ribken over at www.wordwebbing.com. Her edits are geared toward continuity and plot, and are well worth your time.

For a hardcore mechanical copyedit, get in touch with Jennifer Wingard at www.theindependentpen.com. You’re probably doing everything wrong, and she’ll show you how to do it right.

I highly recommend the services of both. They had a phenomenal impact on CONSTRUCT, and I couldn’t be happier with the result.

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Uggghhh… BOOK… Fgngn

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I… wow. I am… ffffff… In… jesus… I have a… UUUUUUUUUU…

That’s about how I feel right now. For the last year and a half, I’ve been single-mindedly occupied with pulling together my first novel, CONSTRUCT. I finished writing it in 2013, finished revising it later that year, and have spent the last 6 months working with two editors and a cover artist to bring the whole thing to fruition.

During that process I’ve also been building a website, setting up publishing accounts on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords, registering ISBNs, setting up a bank account, and pulling together the business side of getting it released into readers’ hands.

And it’s finally all coming together.

Tomorrow – August 12th, 2014 – I’ll be launching the website with my release date announcement and cover reveal. It’s a real thing now. It’s not just a time-sink, or a hobby, or a diversion anymore. It’s a full-fledged novel. A real, live book that people can read and review and shit all over on the internet. And I’m still having trouble believing that it’s anything other than a stupid personal project that’ll never see the light of day.

But tomorrow’s the day that I commit to making it real.

I just… I mean… fuguuugugug… It’s… hnnnnnnnh… I can’t…

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Text Is Locked on Construct

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Well, it’s finally done. Back in 2013, I wrote a post about how I finished writing a whole book. Today, after seven full drafts encompassing numerous major revisions and a pruning of over 18,000 words, the text for my debut novel CONSTRUCT is locked down. Finalized. Gone Gold. Finito. DONE.

I started writing CONSTRUCT in December of 2010, about a year after the death of my father. The death of my parents within three years of one another was a rough reminder of how quickly our time on earth can come to an end. After spending many years with the core idea of CONSTRUCT bouncing around in my brain, I decided to finally get it out of my head and down on paper. Well, into Word, anyway.

I only had about 8,000 words into it before things stalled in 2011. I was still motivated to continue, but wasn’t making the proper time to get it out the door. After seeing several people I know participating in that year’s NaNoWriMo, I decided to use their writing sprint rules to force myself into adding on to it, fleshing out my ideas.

It was a success. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000 word novel, front to back, entirely within the month of November. I didn’t quite follow the rules – I was adding on to a longer piece instead of creating a standalone – but the “competition” did drive me to add over 48,000 words that month, and put myself in a position where I could no longer reasonably just give up. I’d come too far.

It took me quite a while to finish the book. At about 70,000 words, I found I’d written myself into a corner, which forced a pretty major re-write. I eliminated a character, changed another, and killed an entire potential plotline. It was a rough re-write but it put me back on track, and I was moving forward again in no time.

I spent the better part of 2012 writing at a pretty languid pace, writing when inspiration came to me and when time permitted rather than forcing myself into a schedule. While it was a leisurely way to get it done, it didn’t force any discipline on me, and I let other things intrude on thought-space I should have been applying to the novel.

It was 2012, and the writing done within it, that solidified my desire to keep writing; the realization of my potential to make a real go at getting this story into the hands of readers, and extending it into the series I always knew I wanted it to be. I wanted to devote myself to it. My job very kindly obliged my desires by wearing on me, becoming more frustration than fun. So, after some long discussions with my wife and hand wringing and anxiety, I left my long-time posting at Nintendo to pursue writing full-time at the end of February, 2013.

On March 13th, I finished the first draft.

Looking back on it now, it’s pretty fucking terrible. But that’s what revisions are for. By August I had finished the 3rd draft, and after a few months in the hands of beta readers, I pumped out a 4th draft in January of this year. I shopped around for editors and, upon finding one within my price range, spent two weeks fixing up the 5th draft before sending it off. Which, I know, is kind of like cleaning up your house before the maid service shows up, but that’s just the way I roll.

The 5th draft went into the hands of Annetta Ribken, an independent developmental editor over at Wordwebbing.com. She took some hard swipes at the story I’d written, and helped hack into the bits where I’d faltered. There were so many places where I’d been vague, or just stupid, or worse: lazy. She never let me be lazy. Annetta helped me to clarify the bits that needed clarification, and forced me to re-work areas that I should never have let go. Places where I’d said “Bah, whatever. This’ll be fine.” were the exact spots she pointed out, saying “Come on. You can do better.” And, with her help, I think I really did.

After four passes with Annetta, the story locked in place, the book went to Jennifer Wingard at TheIndependentPen.com for the copyedit. I learned more about the technical bits of this craft from her editing pass than I think I did over the entire two previous years of actual writing. I finally learned how passive voice manifests itself in my writing, and I learned how that and was are crutch words for me that I need to burn with fire. More clarifying, more trimming, a few more re-writes.

These two women have had a humongous impact on my first novel. The first draft is hard for me to read now. It’s hard for me to imagine that at one point, those words came through my keyboard and I thought they were good. Annetta and Jennifer not only showed me where I was wrong in that assessment, but showed me that I’m capable of doing better, and for that I can’t thank them enough.

And now, it’s done. Almost four years and seven drafts later, my debut novel is a wrap.

Now the real work begins.

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Image Comics’ Perfect Hardcovers

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revival_cover_inlineI just received my copy of the Revival Deluxe Edition hardcover in the mail, and it has let me to this major conclusion: this is the perfect way to read comics.

Now, when I say “perfect”, of course I mean “perfect for me”. Other people have other tastes, like floppies or digital or Absolute editions. But for me, Image Comics has pretty much hit the nail on the head with their standard hardcover book design. What are the elements that make these books perfect?

Ten to twelve Issues. This is a perfect number. Most modern comic books run in 5-6 issue story arcs nowadays, especially at non-Big-2 companies like Image and Oni. A 12-issue hardcover trade usually covers two story arcs, roughly a year of the book. It’s a perfect slice for a day or two of reading, and makes it easy to have an annual release schedule for hardcovers. Image’s books bear this out with long-running series like The Walking Dead and Invincible.

No dustjackets. I’m an outspoken opponent of dustjackets on pretty much any book. Ostensibly, they’re designed to “protect” the underlying book by taking damage in lieu of the actual cover. That’s totally fine if I’m in 5th grade and my dustjackets are hand-made from a grocery bag. But from a collector’s standpoint, the dustjackets are just another component that contributes to the overall condition and can become damaged, and much more easily than the actual hardcover of a trade. On top of that, it they’re awkward and cumbersome when trying to read, so I end up just taking them off when reading anyway. If the dustjacket was supposed to protect against fingerprints, the purpose is already defeated. TL;DR version: fuck dustjackets.

Consistent spine and cover design. I cannot stress enough how important this is for OCD comic book collectors like me. When I’ve shelved a long-running series, I absolutely Can. Not. Stand. when the spine design changes. It looks so damned sloppy. Marvel and DC are terrible culprits in the inconsistent spine design arena. Image, on the other hand, has kept the cover design and spine design for long-running series identical, even if it might not be the best (as is the case with Invincible). And that’s all that matters to me. I don’t give a flying fuck if the newer covers are more appealing to focus groups or fit some change of theme – just keep them the same.

$30 to $35 cover price. What a spectacular price for what you get. The overall price of the trade ends up being cheaper than floppies, and in return you get (in my opinion) more value in a sturdy, looks-awesome-on-a-bookshelf hardcover. I don’t have to bag-and-board it, and they’re more durable than most softcover trades (I find a lot of softcovers to have less-than-stellar quality control). Most hardcovers of this size fall into this price point, with a few exceptions like the 100 Bullets Deluxe Editions, which clocked in at $50 a pop. Marvel seems to have moved toward releasing 5-6 issue hardcovers (like All-New X-Men) for $25. Half the content for 85% of the price? Yeowch. And yes, I know they’re cheaper on Amazon, but we’re discussing SRP’s here.

fear_agent_cover_inlineAll of these factors lead to my perfect reading conditions. Twelve issue hardcovers are easy to handle and read, unlike Absolute editions or Omnibi. While I absolutely LOVE the production design on books like my Fear Agent Library Editions or The Sixth Gun Gunslinger Edition, their sheer size does make them a bit hard to handle. The lack of dustjackets means I get a beautifully designed cover (the cover on this Revival book is *fantastic*) without the pain-in-the-ass of having to fumble with or outright remove an annoying wrapper. And at these prices, why would I want to pay $40 to $48 for the floppies, or even similar prices for softcovers, especially when even my comic shop gives a decent discount off of cover on trades?

Image just nails it. Other companies have followed suit in design, but not in price: IDW’s collection of The Cape looked spectacular, but was $50; the same goes for Icon’s Criminal collections. I wish that everyone would adopt the same size, style, and price as Image’s hardcover collections, because if they did, I would never read comics any other way.

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Image Comics’ Perfect Hardcovers

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revival_cover_inlineI just received my copy of the Revival Deluxe Edition hardcover in the mail, and it has let me to this major conclusion: this is the perfect way to read comics.

Now, when I say “perfect”, of course I mean “perfect for me”. Other people have other tastes, like floppies or digital or Absolute editions. But for me, Image Comics has pretty much hit the nail on the head with their standard hardcover book design. What are the elements that make these books perfect?

Ten to twelve Issues. This is a perfect number. Most modern comic books run in 5-6 issue story arcs nowadays, especially at non-Big-2 companies like Image and Oni. A 12-issue hardcover trade usually covers two story arcs, roughly a year of the book. It’s a perfect slice for a day or two of reading, and makes it easy to have an annual release schedule for hardcovers. Image’s books bear this out with long-running series like The Walking Dead and Invincible.

No dustjackets. I’m an outspoken opponent of dustjackets on pretty much any book. Ostensibly, they’re designed to “protect” the underlying book by taking damage in lieu of the actual cover. That’s totally fine if I’m in 5th grade and my dustjackets are hand-made from a grocery bag. But from a collector’s standpoint, the dustjackets are just another component that contributes to the overall condition and can become damaged, and much more easily than the actual hardcover of a trade. On top of that, it they’re awkward and cumbersome when trying to read, so I end up just taking them off when reading anyway. If the dustjacket was supposed to protect against fingerprints, the purpose is already defeated. TL;DR version: fuck dustjackets.

Consistent spine and cover design. I cannot stress enough how important this is for OCD comic book collectors like me. When I’ve shelved a long-running series, I absolutely Can. Not. Stand. when the spine design changes. It looks so damned sloppy. Marvel and DC are terrible culprits in the inconsistent spine design arena. Image, on the other hand, has kept the cover design and spine design for long-running series identical, even if it might not be the best (as is the case with Invincible). And that’s all that matters to me. I don’t give a flying fuck if the newer covers are more appealing to focus groups or fit some change of theme – just keep them the same.

$30 to $35 cover price. What a spectacular price for what you get. The overall price of the trade ends up being cheaper than floppies, and in return you get (in my opinion) more value in a sturdy, looks-awesome-on-a-bookshelf hardcover. I don’t have to bag-and-board it, and they’re more durable than most softcover trades (I find a lot of softcovers to have less-than-stellar quality control). Most hardcovers of this size fall into this price point, with a few exceptions like the 100 Bullets Deluxe Editions, which clocked in at $50 a pop. Marvel seems to have moved toward releasing 5-6 issue hardcovers (like All-New X-Men) for $25. Half the content for 85% of the price? Yeowch. And yes, I know they’re cheaper on Amazon, but we’re discussing SRP’s here.

fear_agent_cover_inlineAll of these factors lead to my perfect reading conditions. Twelve issue hardcovers are easy to handle and read, unlike Absolute editions or Omnibi. While I absolutely LOVE the production design on books like my Fear Agent Library Editions or The Sixth Gun Gunslinger Edition, their sheer size does make them a bit hard to handle. The lack of dustjackets means I get a beautifully designed cover (the cover on this Revival book is *fantastic*) without the pain-in-the-ass of having to fumble with or outright remove an annoying wrapper. And at these prices, why would I want to pay $40 to $48 for the floppies, or even similar prices for softcovers, especially when even my comic shop gives a decent discount off of cover on trades?

Image just nails it. Other companies have followed suit in design, but not in price: IDW’s collection of The Cape looked spectacular, but was $50; the same goes for Icon’s Criminal collections. I wish that everyone would adopt the same size, style, and price as Image’s hardcover collections, because if they did, I would never read comics any other way.

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Floppies, Trade-Waiting, and Guilt

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For the last few months, I’ve been in the midst of a dilemma.

I’m a huge comic book fan. I read a ton of books – almost all of which come from Image right now. I have a list of subscriptions at my local comic shop, and about every six months or so, I’ll pick up a hardcover trade collecting the very issues I subscribe to. With the number of books I read and like, I’m usually picking up a couple of trades every month, and that’s not including back-catalog stuff that comes out in a format I like.

It’s getting expensive. Pretty much everything I read now has a $3.99 cover price. And now, with the July solicits from Marvel, a number of their books are pushing upward to a $4.99 cover price. If this price increase takes hold on a wide scale, it will officially price me out of buying single comic issues.

My dilemma, though, is trying to figure out whether that’s actually a problem or not.

Over the last several years of hosting the Trade Secrets Podcast, my on- and off-air conversations with my cohorts on the show have taught me a lot about myself as a comic consumer. One of the biggest revelations is that I don’t really enjoy consuming comics in serial form. If it were up to me, monthly comics wouldn’t exist, and everything would be a 12-issue hardcover collection.

But see, the business model of the comic book industry makes that untenable. Like ratings for a TV show, a comic book’s success or failure is solely determined by monthly sales. If a book doesn’t sell enough copies, it gets canned, which means that it’s even less likely that the hardcover trades I love so much will even get produced. And, even worse, a canceled book never gets to finish telling the story that it set out to tell.

The entire industry, from publisher to distributor to local comic shop, is based around these monthly sales. I can get a discount at my LCS as long as I maintain a certain number of monthly subscriptions, which helps me when I want to buy trades. A 20% discount on trades keeps my comic shop competitive with Amazon, on most accounts, and when all things break equal I’d rather support my shop.

The issue (ha ha) is that I don’t want to get singles anymore. My problem with floppies is three-fold: 1) they’re fucking expensive – I currently spend about $60 a month on single issues, and that total has been as high as $150+, 2) I’m effectively getting double-dipped by buying single issues and then invariably buying a hardcover collection, and 3) it’s just not the way I like to consume the stories anymore.

Why is it a problem? Because the entire industry and comic community is built around making me feel guilty for not buying individual issues. I’m inundated with tales of how my favorite book will get canceled if I don’t buy it monthly, and how my comic shop relies on those monthly sales and orders to stay afloat. I’ve seen fans and creators alike use the term “trade-waiter” as a pejorative.

Not only this, but the business model at the LCS level doesn’t support – from a financial perspective – my desire to read books in trade form. If I were to cancel my subscription box, I’d lose most (maybe all?) of my discount on other items – namely trades. I can’t set up a subscription box solely for trades (holy hell that would be fucking fantastic). So, by not subscribing to the floppies, my comic shop is basically driving me to buy my trades on Amazon or CheapGraphicNovels, where I can get a 30%-50% discount.

That’s nothing to sneeze at. The average hardcover – my preferred format – costs me between $30 and $50. Getting $8-$10 off of a $30 trade when I’m buying 2 or 3 a month rounds out to a huge cost savings for me in the long run. And, if I’m not getting double-dipped anymore by being forced to buy floppies, I end up saving myself – quite literally – over $1,000 a year.

But that’s not what the industry wants me to do, and even though comic companies make a significantly heftier margin on trades than monthlies, the majority of the community would have me believe that the industry would fall apart if everyone wanted to consume comics the way I do. Hence the guilt-trip.

On the one hand, I absolutely love my comic shop. I love buying things from them, I adore the people who work there, and I really enjoy the time I spend there. On the other hand, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to afford the associated cost of maintaining the industry status-quo. I’m broke, and single issues are just too damned expensive for me now.

And I think I’ve reached a breaking point. All the guilt is making me tired, and I’ve realized that I don’t like feeling this way. When I think about all the parts of being a comic fan – from reading and talking about comics to attending conventions to spending time at my comic shop – I’ve come to the conclusion that the only part that’s massively important to me are the stories. I want to read comics, and I want to read them my way – which, for me, means shifting to trade-only consumption.

I’m not sure when I’ll pull the trigger on changing my buying habits. I’ve been babbling about it for months, but there are still several books that I’m sort of “in the middle of” when it comes to individual issues, and I don’t want to give up on them yet. But soon, it’ll be time to give up on floppies, and leave that side of the industry to other fans.