Category: Publishing

  • My Last No Media Kings Post

    I’ve decided to stop using the No Media Kings imprint for my work. I started using it back in 2000, and the media context has shifted drastically: things are so much weirder now. Who knew back then that the kind of print media consolidation I was concerned about would seem quaint in the face of Facebook’s billions of users? That the self-publishing game-changer would be a kinky e-book that came in 50 Shades of Grey? That Rupert Murdoch’s machiavellian publishing manoeuvres would pale in comparison to his overtly pro-Nazi mouthpiece, Fox News?

    Originally I started NMK to self-publish my second novel Angry Young Spaceman. (more…)

  • Writing Every Day: Experiment Conclusions

    credit: Jonathan Wyke

    I’ve never written every day. When I write novels, I write 1250 words 4 times a week — each session generally taking 3-4 hours — which gets me to 100,000 words in six months. When I’m writing I write on a schedule, but often I go months without writing fiction.

    Just to try out a new approach I decided to write a complete story in an hour every day. For a month I posted a daily story to Twitter, Medium, and Wattpad. Now I’ve also published them as a free ebook in .epub, .mobi and .pdf formats with a cover featuring Jonathan Wyke’s excellent illustration above. Below I share some of my qualitative and quantitative results. (more…)

  • No Media Kings Launched 15 Years Ago

    marcbelldoesays

    Things have changed since I started No Media Kings in the year 2000. Rupert Murdoch, who inspired the name, is less of a threat to media security than the innocuous & pervasive Google and Apple. I’ve gone from writing novels, to writing for games, comics, and movies. I went from being a 20-something bachelor writing about superheroes and rocket ships to a 40-something father making a historical mystery audio drama.

    I launched NMK by giving away free ebook versions Angry Young Spaceman. Pre-Kindle and iPhone, people found it baffling. But the gift economy works — it’s come back to me in a lot of ways.

    So every month I’m going to be giving one of my six ebooks away!

    If you want to find out when the new book’s up follow me on Twitter or even better, subscribe to the blog — so we don’t have to rely on a corporation to keep in touch.

    Free in August: Angry Young Spaceman
    My book about a guy who goes to another planet to teach English, based loosely on my ESL stint in Korea. Recently the talented Marc Bell drew a few pages adapting the beginning of the story, above is a detail from it.

    “It’s a wonderful book. Unquestionably SF, it isn’t written in the usual science fiction voice, and that’s part of its charm. His prose is conversational, his characters and settings of the future Earth and Octavia are fascinating, and the story remains engaging from start to finish.” — Charles de Lint, Fantasy & Science Fiction

    Cover art and back cover copy & more blurbs here.

    Download here

    Free in September: Everyone In Silico
    Free in October: Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask
    Free in November: An Opening Act of Unspeakable Evil
    Free in December: Therefore Repent! (illustrated by Salgood Sam)
    Free in January: Sword of My Mouth (illustrated by Shannon Gerard)

  • A Graphic Division of Labour

    A lot of people find quantifying the creative process to be distasteful somehow, but I dig hour logging — I keep track of how much time I’m spending on most of my projects. It gives me a way to predict timelines for similar projects in the future, and there’s something geekily satisfying about all that addition at the end of a day. It didn’t really work well with the movie project I’m working on, too many people and too many working styles, but it worked well with Shannon and I on the Sword of My Mouth graphic novel.

    [Shannon, by the way, is currently on tour on the west coast — she’s doing a book launch at Lucky’s on Aug. 24th in case you live in Vancouver!]

    So here’s a breakdown of how much time we each spent working on the book.
    (more…)

  • Double-Barreled Comic Release

    Issues (or chapters, I guess) #4 and #5 are up on the Sword of My Mouth site for folks who’ve sprung for the $6 digital subscription or the $12 preorder. The final part of the book, #6, will be up a month from now, so subscribers get a sneak peek a month before the book’s debut as a part of the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. Plus commentary!

    It was a push to get the book ready in time, and tricky to manage as it’s a IDW / NMK single edition co-publishing dealy, but Shannon still took the time to do these hilariously amazing bio illustrations of the two of us, check ’em out after the jump! (more…)

  • Remember When Comics Were Cheap?

    How does $1 sound?

    Sword of My Mouth #1, the first part of the follow-up to my post-Rapture graphic novel Therefore Repent!, is now in stores and this weekend at TCAF. #1 will be the only print edtion — issues #2-6 will be digital only, after which the complete story will be collected together and published as a printed graphic novel. So if you’d like to get them as they’re released bi-monthly through this year, you have two options — you can subscribe to the complete series in a digital format for $6 or pre-order the printed graphic novel for $12 and get a free subscription to the digital issues as well as some other goodies.

    In a time when the economy and other forces are making the print pamphlet model unsustainable for many indies, we’re excited to see how this will work. The digital format isn’t going to replace the print book, but it’s an interesting format that allows for cheaper prices and more direct interaction between creators and readers — one we hope to foster by adding commentary.
    (more…)

  • The Time Management For Anarchists comic

    Emma focuses on the task.Marc Ngui and I have just finished a 22 page comic book adaptation of the workshop and flash animation I made on how to be productive without having, or being, a boss.

    Starring Emma Goldman and Mikhail Bakunin, it’s a totally weird animal: part how-to, part polemic, part coming-of-age story, part interview, and Marc’s matched it with his whacked-out imagery and trippy colouring. I’m really excited to see what people think when we launch it next month. Check out more info and the cover after the jump.
    (more…)

  • How to Become a Famous Writer

    Ariel Gore gets the word out thereI’ve always prided myself on the fact that the DIY publishing articles on this site have a certain lack of, shall we say, bullshit. And normally, a book called How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead would smell a little funky to me. However, Ariel Gore, Hip Mama mag creator and indie culture maven wrote this book, and like all her books (I’m particularly fond of her memoir Atlas of the Human Heart) it is excellent. As well as sharing her own considerable experience, she interviews folks like Ursula K. Le Guin, Dave Eggers, and even me, and manages to pack more wisdom and practical advice than I’ve ever seen in a book of its ilk. (It had an extremely high nods-per-minute ratio.) She even gets the folks she interviews to give “assignments” at the end, making it a writing class unto itself. Plus it’s extremely readable — I intended to skim to find something to excerpt but I found myself sucked in and reading most of it. Below is one of my favourite sections in the book. (more…)

  • One Creepy Dawg

    Dog's Blank Eyed StareSo I’m putting together the catalog copy and cover mockup for my upcoming graphic novel, Therefore Repent!, and Salgood’s done another killer job on the art. My favourite comment so far: “When I looked closer the dog’s eyes seem to be, uh, overflowing with evil.” I told Salgood about it and he said he just drew a blank eyed stare and people read it as demonic.

    Keep reading to check out the cover it its full glory, wingèd helmet and all…
    (more…)

  • Therefore Repent!

    Click to see page from Therefore Repent!I’m excited to announce that my fifth book will be a graphic novel: Therefore Repent! is set in the Chicagoland area after The Rapture and continues the story started in the 24 page webcomic I did last year with Michel Lacombe. Salgood Sam is illustrating this one and and we’re working towards a summer 2007 publishing date — check out a rough page from it here to get a taste of his amazing talent.

    In the tradition of The Book of Revelation, it’s a pretty wild dark fantasy tale filled with demons and swords and blood. (more…)

  • My Evil Comic Book

    Mummy and Raven and Dog, tooSo what would you do if the Rapture, the biblical end of the world as foretold in Revelation, came to pass? Raven and Mummy go on a roadtrip! To read the 24 page comic for free go here.

    The backstory: a year ago, when An Opening Act of Unspeakable Evil came out, I posted one entry a day to the faux blog. On it was an online poll that asked readers if they thought the character Lilith was really a demoness or just delusional: I said that I’d write a spin-off story depending on how the vote went. Of the 500 people who weighed in, 55% of you thought she was unholy rather than unhinged.

    Supernatural, then.
    (more…)

  • The Bold Explorers

    Raven and Mummy on the move.Susan and I are doing some exploring of our own — we’ve got two European shows coming up in London and Berlin. Currently we’re in Montepellier for her biochem conference, amazed that the French Mediterranean is in fact that fabled place of palm trees and terraced cafés.

    But The Bold Explorers actually refers to the comic Kate and Bruce start making together at the end of An Opening Act of Unspeakable Evil. A comic that is currently being drawn into being by the fiendishly talented Michel Lacombe. Check out the cover, and keep your evil eye cocked for it — it’ll be released in October.