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  1. James Terzian

    James Terzian Member

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    Novel Novel to comic

    Discussion in 'Genre Discussions' started by James Terzian, Nov 15, 2018.

    I had finished my Novel several years ago and I have just put out a comic for preorder. I was going to publish it as a chapter to chapter. Is that still a good idea or should I break it up depending on length of my chapters. Or do I do it as a full Graphic novel. My novel is 300 some pages and chapter one is 20 but the comic of Part 1 is 22 pages. I did not see anything for comic so I put it here.
    Thanks
    My book is The Lord of Shadows Rises
     
  2. DeeDee

    DeeDee Contributor Contributor

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    Have you had a look how other comics (in your genre) are being sold? That will also depend on where you are offering it for sale, too. On your website, it's okay to offer chapter by chapter, especially if you have an established fanbase, mailing list etc. If you're selling on something like Amazon, then as a reader I won't bother with a chapter, I'd go for something that's a whole work. That's mostly because if I pay chapter by chapter, I'll probably end up paying way too much for the whole comic in the end, much more than the ones sold in the bookshop and written by established authors.
     
  3. Malisky

    Malisky Malkatorean Contributor

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    There are no specific rules on how to promote a story in an illustrated book. You can have it a graphic novel or in volumes or even chapters. Chapters together, create a volume. All the volumes together (from start to finish) create a graphic novel. A professional comic artist could guide you upon how to promote it best, since comic artists also know about visual storytelling. He or she will have to read the whole book first, make some rough layouts and see how it's fit to be presented. If it's too short, there's no need to sell chapters independently, but perhaps it can be divided into two or more volumes. If each chapter is long enough or can even be divided into parts, then maybe you can even sell chapters independently, although in order to do that, this means that every week or every month you would have to produce a chapter and be diligent towards your readers. Every week I'd suggest when it comes to chapters or at least biweekly. The good thing about chapters, especially when a project is ongoing, is that it's "momentarily" cheaper, thus more reachable for the reader and furthermore, psychologically works somewhat as a weekly delight (if you get them hooked of course). You can also monitor easily how your progress in sales are going, before investing a whole lot of money for producing a whole volume or novel, that might not sell. You also build the tension! Chapters do sell a lot.

    Volumes are of course more expensive, not only due to the context but also due to the more expensive materials it's made of (beautiful hard covers, better binding and paper quality) and of course a full novel even more. The thing is though that most people that read comics, might not always have so much money to invest into buying a novel, especially when they don't know much about it's context. It all depends on your vision and speculation of course, since I haven't read your book so I can't envision in the least how it might be divided, but my two pennies are that IF you can promote them in chapters it's more preferable. If you see this picking up, after all the chapters are out, put them together in a beautiful volume, with some extra content maybe. If you have created a fan base they will most probably want to get their hands on it. Then continue with more chapters until volume two can be created and so on and so forth.
     

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