Author: Gareth

I know what you’re thinking. “Webcomics? I don’t make a webcomic. NEXT!” You’re making a big mistake, though.

The book pictured at right, How To Make Webcomics by Brad Guigar, Dave Kellet, Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub, is not about what you think it might be. What I initially dismissed as another “how to draw” book is actually written from the point of view that the reader *already* knows that stuff, and instead focuses on development, planning, site design, community creation and management — in other words, the nuts and bolts of making a living as an Insurgent Creative. The lessons are much more widely applicable than just for webcomic creators, and are worth a look from anybody looking to make a living through digital delivery of entertainment products.

Brad Guigar (co-author of the book, and creator of the webcomic Evil, Inc.), with regular contributions from Scott Kurtz (PvP) and others, runs a website — WebComics.Com, which is a subscription-based premium service filled with massive amounts of advice as well. The subscription price is $30 per year — which is, in my opinion, well worth it, even if you don’t produce a webcomic. The yearly subscription rate more than pays for itself, just in the membership benefits alone, which include:

• A 10% discount from Transcontinental Printing.
• A 15% discount on trade-show/convention displays from Formz Displays.
• A 15% discount from Blue Line Pro — a professional’s art supply company.
• …and other deals coming all the time.

Aside from the benefits of discounts, the membership subscription gives you access to the archives, the locked members-only content, a private forum, etc. There’s plenty there for any Insurgent Creative to use. For example, just taking elements from the current “Hot” list, there’s a two-part Q&A with Robert Khoo, Director of Business Development for Penny Arcade (you might have heard of him via his role as the Show Director for PAX). This is just the first of a series of Q&As that Khoo has undertaken for the site, currently totally over 60 in-depth questions on various aspects of business development for creatives.

This illustrates an important lesson for Insurgent Creatives — instead of focusing on your particular field, look at what others are doing in their particular niches, and think about how you can apply the things they’ve learned. The old cliché for this is “thinking outside of the box”… and “outside the box” is where the Insurgent Creative thrives.

Storm the gates.
 
 
 

Today I was going to talk about how to build a fanbase, which, as I’ve mentioned before, is absolutely critical to a successful career as an Insurgent Creative. As I began to take notes on my advice, however, I realized very quickly that I was pretty much just re-stating things that I’d learned elsewhere. So, I figured that I’d just point you in the direction of the source.

Fan, Friends & Followers: Building an Audience and Creative Career in the Digital Age is a book by Scott Kirsner (writer for the Boston Globe, Fast Company, Wired and more). It features 30 interviews with various creatives, all centered around the idea of new gatekeeper-free business models. The interviews were conducted in 2008/2009, but most of the advice presented is still applicable.

You can download a PDF sample of the book at the above-linked website. It’s also available for order from Amazon (in print, or as a Kindle edition).

I was introduced to this book when Scott Kirsner did a presentation at South By Southwest in 2010. That same year, he did a similar presentation (although more detailed — twice as long — more of a workshop) for the Bay Area Video Coalition, who recorded it and posted it to Youtube in two parts:
 
 

 
 
There’s a lot to go through there — two hours of video, a 200-page book. But again, there is perhaps no other factor more important to operating without gatekeepers. Ironically, it’s even become important to creatives operating with traditional gatekeepers: At the same SXSW where I heard Kirsner speak, I attended another panel discussion on the future of publishing, where representatives of the big publishing houses said that they were most interested now in authors that (in the buzzword-y parlance of the field) “come with tribe.” In other words, authors who brought a pre-existing audience along with them. Of course, the obvious question here is: If an author already has an audience, why do they need the big publishing houses?

Storm the gates.
 
 
 

Today we start looking at tools to enable the Insurgent Creative method. This one is for the writers out there: Scrivener, from Literature and Latte.

Scrivener is a brilliant piece of software (originally designed for the Mac, but now a version for Windows is available, with another version for Linux currently in beta. ), for just for writing, but also outlining, development, research, revision and even electronic publishing. It’s categorized as a “word processor”, but would be better described as a literary project management platform, due to the over-arcing nature of the tools provided. You’re not just putting words down here. You can use the virtual index-cards-on-corkboard system for organizing and re-ordering entire sections of the manuscript. Utilize the management system for notes, metadata, and store whole documents for reference (including web pages, audio, video, images and PDFs in addition to plain text), all of which are saved in a single project file with your manuscript.

In short, Scrivener is a tool designed with writers in mind. Compared with the bloat, “helpful” additions and general cubicle-farm business soullessness of Microsoft Word, it is an absolute revelation. (And, given the widespread dominance of that program, you’ll be happy to know that Scrivener is able to export to Word format for delivery.) The software is not free, but sells for only $45 US, which is an incredible price for everything you get, and how useful it is.

There are tutorial videos available on the Literature and Latte website which walk you through the various tools available, and a robust forum for discussion and sharing tips. In addition to these official sources of instruction, David Hewson (a writer than I had a chance to meet at Thrillerfest in NYC five years ago) has released a Kindle book called “Writing a Novel with Scrivener” which walks you through the process, from set-up and management to creation and even use of the newer functions of the Mac version which allow you to directly export into Kindle or eBook format, ready to upload for sale at Amazon via Kindle Direct Publishing, Barnes and Noble’s PubIt platform, Apple’s iBooks, and more.

I cannot recommend this software enough. I’ll put it like this for my fellow writers: It is a tool designed for every aspect of the job that you do. You can use other tools, which will work, but this works better. Just as you can drive a screw with a hammer if you must… but a screwdriver is built for that purpose, and makes the job easier.

From planning, to research, to note-taking and development, to writing, to structuring, to revision and then to production — for the Insurgent Creative writer, this should be the weapon of choice.

Storm the gates.