Round-Up of the Year

The recent and very unexpected failure of Borders has, of course, left its mark on Fenriswulf's current production schedule. Gone (but not forgotten) is the ashcan project - small freebie (or low-priced) paperback samples of our catalogue to date, designed to sit by tills in similar locations in-store. Once we find another bricks-and-mortar outlet for books again, this project will return. (It is in fact complete, and good to go straight to the printers - but as with all print-on-demand, I will get them printed when there is actually some possibility of demand...)

Mr. Chaz has been happily busy with drawing and illustration commissions since the Spring of this year which is why not much has been happening on the new books front, and this looks likely to continue well into next year too. Fenriswulf in general is not so much on the backburner, but rather branching out. There's a possibility of new personnel appearing on the scene before too long also, so watch this space.

A new comic strip, originally conceived as a traditional 3-panel webcomic, is also due to make an appearance somewhere in the very near future. A couple of publishing collaborations may also be on the cards in the New Year, but with nothing definite as yet, we can't say too much at this juncture. More info, of course, will be revealed as and when we have it, however, with Fenriswulf becoming at least as art-oriented now as book-oriented, we're in the process of considering some projects based on visual art - such as those listed in the experimental Cafe Press store - for example, a series of T-shirts, greetings cards, or calendars (which is looking like the most likely option so far).

In the meantime, have a good holiday and we'll see you all in the New Year for what we hope to be a busy and productive 2010.

Bad Day at Borders

Wednesday night: I had the rather unpleasant task of stopping off at Dundee's Borders store for the final time. I'd heard that they were closing down very soon and were selling off stock, so had decided to reclaim all of FB's remaining in-store copies before they vanished completely off the face of the planet. The huge "Closing Down! 50% Off!" banners had attracted browsers like vultures to a dying buffalo - I have never, in the past year and a half of regular visits to the store, seen it even so remotely busy.

After I'd navigated the knots of bargain-guzzlers, I asked the staff ( pleasant and polite as always, despite the circumstances ) if I could remove my stock. The whole business was over in a few minutes - a cancelled receipt signed, a chat about the general crumminess of the timing of the closure 3 weeks before Christmas, and I left with thanks for their support so far, and an armload of Maranathas and Mandrakes. One or two seemed to have been sold, but I didn't have the heart to hassle the staff to find out for me - I only hoped the buyers were happy with their purchases.

A strangely dispiriting experience, all told. One shouldn't feel sorry for huge global chain stores, who have systematically wiped out the smaller independent and family-run shops - and I don't, really. It's the ordinary people at the sharp end of it all which makes you feel sorry. At the end of it, I have a stack of books that I can split up and redistribute elsewhere, but they're all looking for a new job at the most expensive time of the year, should an unlikely last-minute buyout not occur.

What it does mean for FW is that I should probably get off my proverbial in the New Year and seek some smaller, more varied, stockists for the back catalogue, as well as the forthcoming new titles. We shall just have to wait and see what 2010 brings...

Bad News for Borders and Bookstores Everywhere

I was very unhappy to hear the news during this week that Borders had filed for administration, having hit a very rocky trading period:

Link to UK Reuters

Of course, Borders, with their policy of stocking and promoting local writers and publishers, have been the main high street outlet for Fenriswulf Books to date. The view that the online book stores such as Amazon are responsible for this slump is probably not inaccurate - online stores have no overheads, don't need to pay expensive high street store rent, electricity, or pay staff to stand around all day when business is thin. You can order just about anything from Amazon, and not have to queue up to buy it, or wait 6 weeks for the retailer to import it from abroad.

The problem is, if Borders suffer, what about all the other bricks and mortar stores? If this was the start of a trend, then it's a rather depressing one. I'm sorry, but for all the hype over Kindle and paper-free books of the future - for all the convenience of online shopping - there's still no substitute to browsing through endless shelves of interesting book covers in a real shop, looking through real books at beautifully-printed pictures or illustrations. Sometimes a book can seem fascinating and an essential purchase until you flick through it and realise it's not really what you expected - you can't do that with most books online.

I view the whole electronic book reader concept as little more than a gimmick, and an overpriced one at that. It's really no contest, like trying to compare the experience of watching a movie like Gladiator on a portable DVD player with a 3" screen, against viewing it on an HD home cinema system with surround sound. OK for sitting on a long train journey, but pretty worthless as a long-term replacement.

On a personal note, it's a pretty lousy time of year for the 1000+ UK staff to find out that their jobs are at risk. Especially, from my point of few, those few in my local store whom I've had such great assistance from, and rapport with, over the past year or so. I do hope this isn't the end, and that Borders will continue to stay around, in some form or another, for the foreseeable future.

I certainly don't want to see the day when I have to rush in to reclaim unsold copies of books before a final closing down sale.

Slow But Sure...

...is how things have been Fenris-wise lately. Chaz has been (and still is) insanely busy with art commissions and other projects, but is currently working on an "Ashcan" project to promote the current, and forthcoming, Fenriswulf catalogue. In the comics industry an ashcan is a small, usually cheap or free sample issue designed to gather interest for a new series, and it seemed like a good idea to apply that concept to a "free sample" to be placed in bookstores. Based on the format of sample chapters of new novels given away free with Sunday newspapers, a sample of chapter from "Maranatha", a few short stories and comic strips from "A Surfeit of Mandrake" are already in place, with possible inclusion for the "Last Gas Pump" and "Sword of Lochglen" graphic novels.

The first and most obvious store for these would be the local Borders store, with others possibly to follow. But Fenris is still very much alive and gnashing...

Just Checking In...

Yeah, it's been a long while since I posted, the reason being (still) due to commission work having to take precedence. Paid work is always a priority, I find! And speaking of getting paid, I finally managed to reach a settlement with Borders over my outstanding pay cheque - yep, the same one I submitted an invoice for back in January - since head office don't seem able to. I've been lucky that everybody in my local branch has bent over backwards to help me out on this venture, with polite and totally professional communications at all times.

I hooked up again with my man Frang to talk about the next project for Fewnriswulf. A compendium of all the "Arf & Mo" strips that were written and drawn over a period from 1998 - 2005, which will be collected into one big daddy volume. The complete unpublished Issue 2 of the titular duo's adventures will form the backbone of the book (in graphic novel format), and will include sketches, one-off character pieces, portraits and other nonsense for the discerning lowbrow funny-animal underground comic book fan. This one will take some time to pull together, and I'm still wondering quite what to do with the Black Flag. I realise now that drawing a graphic novel in pencil was a pretty dumb thing to do, but I didn't know any better back in January 2000. Hell, back then I was still getting over the fact that the world hadn't come to an end...

Due to the projected timescale on the Arf & Mo book (which I don't expect to see completed before the end of the year, and will also have a corresponding website), I've given some thought to what we could bring out in the meantime. Work on "Venus in Saturn" is coming along beautifully, with multi-laytered plot threads weaving a story that grows more complex every time I work on it, but again, that's a loing-term plan. I don't particularly want Fenriswulf not to be able to put out new product for the rest of this year, so possibly another medium other than printed books could be next.

In a possibly related note, my band Jeremiah have just self-pressed our first full-length demo CD. Watch this proverbial space...

Catching a Breath...

...between commissions, writing, and er, new commisions...

After a month or so in Cuba, Dundee Borders' sales manager returned full of enthusiasm and I had a good chat with him about taking on comic books in future. Graphic novels with ISBNs are the way to go it seems, so I'll be looking to farm out the "Black Flag" project to a new publisher as soon as I have the time. He also helped me restock the shelves with copies of "Mandrake" and "Maranatha", and I was content to leave it at that for the meantime while I press on with the business of writing, and drawing for fun and profit.

Meantime, here's a sneak preview of the proposed cover for "Venus in Saturn", the prequel to "Maranatha", which links to my Deviantart.com account. The book is coming along nicely and has taken some startling twists and turns of late, setting up the backstory for the sequel nicely. The mind-stretching complexity of it all does, however, make me wonder if I'm capable of writing anything that isn't epic, cosmic and labyrinthine in equal measure:


Venus in Saturn: Cover WIP by ~Lord-Retsudo on deviantART

Last Gasp for Lulu

I received an email from a loyal fan of the "Last Gas Pump on the Left" comic the other day. He was pleased with the product and really enjoyed the story but was mystified by the presence of blank pages in the middle of the book. He'd sent me photos explaining the problem, and I realised then that I've now had enough of Lulu's outsourced cowboy printers to abandon them completely.

It's impossible for me to understand how a 28-page PDF file can be turned into a 32 or 36-page book with blank inserts, unless somebody at the local print depot was physically plugged into the mains power supply while setting up the print job. Even then, it's unfathomable.

As this is now the fourth serious issue I've had with Lulu, it's time to move on and take my business elsewhere. The last problem, that with the "Black Flag" pencil art printing too faint to be usable, I can almost, just about, write off - although the fact remains that identical artwork in the "Mandrake" book has printed perfectly across two separate batches.

It's not like I'm making a huge profit at Lulu either. Although a full-colour interior comic would normally be prohibitive for a tiny indy comics outfit to produce, a cover price of £3.99 is as low as I can go while still actually scratching a few pence profit for myself (in this case, about 37p per copy). Add the cost of three useless proof copies, review copies and shipping, and the "Last Gas" project has made a terrific loss to date. However, it has its fans from the days when it existed as an online strip over at Drunkduck, an enthusiastic amateur website for free webcomics (which also currently hosts the complete "Black Flag" graphic novel), and projects such as this were never about the money, anyway.

I've submitted my formal complaint to Lulu regarding this botch so my customer can be provided with a product that isn't a complete disaster, and in the meantime am considering my options for future comic works. With the "Black Flag" graphic novel still good to go, plus forthcoming comics projects "The Sword of Lochglen", "Gruoch" by Frang Mchardy and "Arf & Mo" by Frang and I, Fenriswulf will be putting a lot of comic printing business to Lulu's replacement very soon. We've already discussed getting comics into Forbidden Planet stores and other local comic shops.

The two companies who stand out at present are

Comixpress, and Ka-Blam. Ka-Blam have no set-up fee but seem overall more expensive, while Comixpress have a set-up fee (unlike Lulu) but have a correspondingly lower individual price on single issues.

For me, and Fenriswulf, I think Comixpress have the edge when it comes to print on demand comics. They have a decent attitude, though it seems both companies have their fans, and their good qualitties. A very informative web page: Comixtalk describes it in better detail than I have time to do so here.

Looking at the comments on this page, I'm also glad to see that I'm not the only one affected by the sloppy quality of Lulu's European (Spanish-based) printers. I'll begin talks with my assistant art director (Frang) soon, and once my customer has received a copy of the "Last Gas" comic he actually wanted, it'll be time to move on to the next print company.