DoM physical book thing ideas

[CaptainSpam]

There's been, in the past, a few people asking if I was ever going to release a printed book of DoM comics.  And, consistently, I've always said I'm not going to do so unless I have some way of redoing the first chapter (currently in stunning 90dpi format!).  Sort of vital.

Now, let's assume I was going to consider just starting at chapter two, summarizing chapter one at the start, and making a printed DoM book, one chapter at a time.

I'm honestly considering coming up with some manner of DoM book.  Not that this'll be happening any time soon, mind (I'd have a LOT of cleanup to do), but I'm giving it some serious thought.  I'm still coming up with ideas and plans, but this is what I've got in mind right now:

• It'll be self-published.  I'm not going to kid myself or you, nobody's going to want to publish this for me.  Probably Lulu.  Maybe.
• There'll be an intro comic that summarizes chapter one and why that's not fully in a book yet.
• It'll start in chapter two.
• If all goes well, subsequent books will continue on a chapter-by-chapter basis.
• Break Times will probably be ignored.  Guest strips will definitely be ignored, as there'd be serious rights issues there.
• I'll be redoing all the text, as it's currently in a format I can't quickly export, mostly thanks to my stupid decision to use PSP6 way back in The Day(tm).  This'll also allow me the chance to tweak things as I go.  So no, it may not be an exact pixel-perfect representation of the comic as it stands on the web.
• The font will be the modern one (Blambot Casual) straight through.  Including back when I used Chiller.  I'll replace that.
• There will be commentary.  Hopefully on a strip-by-strip basis.
• There WILL NOT be drastically vital plot-wise information that only exists in the book.  That is to say, I won't make it so that not having the book means you'll be entirely lost on the web.  That seems like it'd be a real jerk move.  There might be really interesting tidbits, depending on your definition of "really interesting", and there might be insight and such, but the comic WILL remain entirely readable on the web.
• I might clear things up in the book if it's a bit confusing, but if it's information that absolutely can't be picked up through the strips themselves as they appear on the web, it'll most likely enter the About section.

Now, I'm definitely not planning on getting rich off this (haven't tried yet after around nine years), but you never know, might just be nice to have around.  Anyone else have any ideas?

[CaptainSpam]

Just as a quick note to anyone still reading this (which I'm convinced isn't many):

I finally DID start work on the book.  I'm 30 strips in on the re-texting operation, with 135 to go.

It's going to take some time, but at least now SOME progress is being made.

[Laura Taylor]

Awesome! Looking forward to it. :)

=^.^= Laura

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Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2012 09:53:34 -0800
From: capta...@gmail.com
To: dementi...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [dementiaofmagic:7] Re: DoM physical book thing ideas

[David Givens]

It's been about three years since I last looked at The Dementia of Magic and randomly pulled it up tonight.  I am so happy to have a Google group for this now, so I can keep up on what's happening.

Personally, I like the breaks and guest strips and would love to see them in there, but I can understand why you aren't planning to add them.  And I look forward to the author commentary (of which I hope there is a lot).

As a final thought, I would like state this: even if you did nothing but copy and paste the first chapter strips into a book, I would gladly buy it.  No, it may not have the quality of the current strip, but I also love the rough look and history of those strips. They were what drew me into your comic (before you even went to color) and it still seems a waste to leave them out.  As long as I can still read it, I would pay for a printed copy of the first chapter and proudly set it next to my other books.

Thank you for starting this group.  I promise not to let another three years go by before I check out what's happening next time :).

David

[CaptainSpam]

There ought to be a lot of commentary.  It might be a bit of a layout nightmare, but there should be quite a bit to keep you happy. :-)

The only problem with the first chapter isn't so much my art quality or my writing or whatnot, it's the fact that the original versions I've got on disk for that chapter are only ~90dpi.  So if I printed them as-is, they'd wind up either really small or heavily pixelated as I scale them up to a printable size.  This was due to somewhat shortsighted decisions on my part back then.  Oops.  Once I switched to color, I decided to keep everything in 300dpi on a just-in-case basis, but before then, nothing.  Rescanning them isn't quite an option, either, as those are all pencil-drawn and pencil-shaded, and I didn't take any measures to protect them from time and whatnot.

Of course, that's not to say I don't have any plans at all.  Maybe I'll just get them all printed in a smaller book later (Lulu's got a lot of size options).  Maybe I'll do something crazy and redraw the entire chapter in color.  Something or another.  We'll see what happens after I'm done with this one.  Here's hoping.

But, glad you're still enjoying my comic after all these years! :-)x

[CaptainSpam]

Huh.  Not sure where exactly that "x" at the end there came from.

[CaptainSpam]

Well, that's all 165 strips re-texted.  Yay!  Re-texted locally, I mean.  I didn't replace what's on the web with them.

With that done, phase two is the commentary.  I've already got a few of them done, in fact.  Anyone have any suggestions they want me to focus more on?  I'm already aiming towards history, what I was thinking (as far as I can recall), plans that may have been aborted, and comments about my art back then.  You know, the usual commentary stuff.

Just don't expect too many things from sketchbooks or whatnot.  I've got SOME I might be able to use, but I can't figure out where I put the physical copies of sketches from that far back.  Sorry about that.  A fair amount of them might even be from college notebooks which are long gone by this point.

[CaptainSpam]

Hey, it's been a while.  If anyone's still here, listen up:

It's done!  It's done it's done it's done!  It can be bought!  It'll then be shipped to you!  And then you can read it!  Isn't that neat?  It should be!

Turns out I ultimately went with Createspace.  They're... significantly cheaper when it comes to color.  Like, a lot cheaper.  So, if you want a copy of the book, it's $25 for a ridiculous 216-page 8"x10.5" tome of comics, commentary, and all-new sketches!  The following big letters have a link that'll take you right to the store:

Go order one right now!

I'll have the website updated with the link and a new About section roughly after I get the next comic ready to go.  It'll show up in the RSS feed as well.