Sunday 17 March 2024

Charging for caricatures - why did I not do this before?

It was on the second day of the LFCC con in July last year that I started doing caricatures of passers by, in order to attract them to my table which they were otherwise ignoring. At that time I had to nip out to a nearby shop to get some paper at short notice. This time round I turn up with 100 pre-printed sheets with my website address on. By stoppeth-ing one of three and drawing their faces, I do a very good job of ensuring they don't pass me by, and that turns into book sales, a good percentage of the time.

But I was giving the caricatures away for free. I have felt bad about this a few times, especially when I realise my fellow artists on neighbouring tables are trying to make money by charging for doing drawings of people. And it was a conversation with fellow artist Grant Perkins on this very subject, while setting up for Saturday's one day UK Comics & Gaming Convention at Ashton Gate Stadium in Bristol, that made me realise quite what I was doing and how I really ought to change my practice.

So, as you can see above, some nifty last minute modifications of a cardboard box turned it into a donations box. Then all that was needed was a change to my spiel when approaching punters - from "let me draw you, it's free" to "you don't need to keep this, it's free if you buy a book, or a small donation in the box and it's yours, or I can keep it" (or permutations thereof, which I experimented with through the day) and suddenly I had changed what I do at comic and bookselling events.

Now I'm no longer giving my art away free, I'm not drastically undermining my fellow artists' businesses, and - revelation of revelations - I'm taking in more money. Quite a lot more money, when you do the simple maths. I arrive with 100 pre-printed pages and I use all of those and more during the course of the day. Which means, charging two quid for each drawing, I'm suddenly taking a minimum of £200 from the drawings alone, with a good few of those then turning into book sales. Re - as they say - sult.

My takings for the day are recorded and itemised here in my March Live Book Sales blog, and I can say I'm happy with them.

Oh and, for the record, only two people out over over a hundred left me their caricatures without paying for them, and they were a couple of Spanish students, so possibly hadn't quite understood the nature of my garbled proposition (or thought their drawings were crap, who knows?). The next test of my convention practices will be at Swansea in April.

My Books and where to get them:

Richard The Third Amazon - Etsy - Barnes & Noble - Waterstones
Findlay Macbeth - Amazon  - Etsy 
Prince Of Denmark Street - Amazon - Etsy - Kindle
Midsummer Nights Dream Team  - Amazon Etsy 
Shakespeare Omnibus Collection (all 3 books) - Amazon

Tales From The Bible - Amazon -  Etsy - Webtoons
The Book Of Esther - Lulu  - Amazon Webtoons
Captain Clevedon - Amazon
Tales Of Nambygate - Amazon  

Friday 15 March 2024

Selling Comics In Schools, a new market?


Have I found a new untapped market for my books? Why I haven't thought of selling my comic direct to pupils in schools before, I don't know. Well, maybe I do. I figured kids don't have cash, so it was a non starter. Then, at Leigh Academy in Dartford, I discovered something called Parent Pay, whereby the parents will pay in advance for stuff and the school will pass it on to you and, bish bash bosh, I'd sold a dozen pre-ordered books which I sign on the day.

Another factor which had dissuaded me from flogging books to kids before now was the thought that my books were a bit old for them. My first 3 Shakespeare books are very teenage, and most of the kids I'm teaching are primary school age. But that changed with Richard The Third, published at the end of October, and I've realised I have a book young kids really respond to.

So, on Monday I drafted an image to send to schools to forward to parents...

Little did I think that schools would respond so quickly. Whitnash on Thursday not only bought 18 books, and not only did that include Prince Of Denmark Streets and Findlay Macbeths as well as 13 Richard The Thirds, but they paid in cash!

See the picture at the top, the kids from Year 4 in the morning and 6 in the afternoon had come in clutching handfuls of coins and notes - nostalgia rush - and I signed as many books as I had with me (luckily I had enough Richards in the car, they hadn't warned me they'd be buying any!) and will be posting the copies of the other books today.

If this carries on in all the other schools I visit - a dozen books in every school - well, that would have added up to 960 books last year. And selling them at £6 each (rather than the usual £6.99) that'd be £5760.

What could be the downside to that? Not much, except that I have a limited stock of all my books. 

The Kickstarter for each book funded a print run of 500 each. Findlay Macbeth came to the end of its 500 last month, and since then I've been ordering them 10 at a time from Lulu. Midsummer Nights Dream Team and Prince Of Denmark Street both seem to have about 20 copies each left. It will only take a couple of schools and a live event to wipe those out.

Even Richard The Third only has 300 copies left, four and a half months after I published it. Of course, these Kickstarter copies are pure profit when I sell them. But if I have to start getting Lulu copies, I'm looking at these prices:

PODS (original full version) £4.71 + post
MNDT (original) £4.50 + post
Richard (original) £4.99 + post
Omnibus edition £8.32 + post
Findlay (short version, no Shakespeare text at back) £3.80 + post)
PODS (short version) £3.80 + post
MNDT (short) £3.80 + post
Richard (short, via D2D) £2.76 + post (BUT post is from US, plus sales tax, no unknown)

So, do I commission new print runs for my main books, at a major outlay but ultimately higher profit margin, but with no guarantee they'll sell? Or do I order Lulu copies, smaller print runs, narrower margin?

I shall think on.

My Books and where to get them:

Richard The Third Amazon - Etsy - Barnes & Noble - Waterstones
Findlay Macbeth - Amazon  - Etsy 
Prince Of Denmark Street - Amazon - Etsy - Kindle
Midsummer Nights Dream Team  - Amazon Etsy 
Shakespeare Omnibus Collection (all 3 books) - Amazon

Tales From The Bible - Amazon -  Etsy - Webtoons
The Book Of Esther - Lulu  - Amazon Webtoons
Captain Clevedon - Amazon
Tales Of Nambygate - Amazon  



Monday 11 March 2024

It's Raining Evil Teachers - Comics by kids for World Book Week

World Book Day is the day I could hire myself out on twenty times over. It expands, inevitably, into World Book Week, and saw me teaching kids as far apart as Paisley, Chelsea, Leighton Buzzard, and Camberley.

Renfrewshire Libraries were the first to bagsy me for this week and, to add to the Book Week confusion, they promote my classes (and a raft of others) under the banner of Will Eisner Week, something I didn't even bother trying to explain to the kids this time around, cos I doubt there will ever be a primary school pupil who will ever have any awareness of the works of Will Eisner. 

They were two fun groups, from local schools working in two different libraries, and they came up with some good comics. This was followed by me meeting up with Frank Plowright for the first time in ages, then performing Post Office Scandal The Musical with the Socks, in Paisley Central Library in the evening. Quite the full day.


Cameron Vale School in Chelsea was the first of three schools where the kids came dressed up, because World Book Day. You know you're at a middle class school when you have two kids dressed as Tintin, three Bunny vs Monkeys, oodles of Harry Potters, and an Asterix and an Obelix. They were particularly well informed on their comics for kids, and included the novelty of me working with the very young kids (under 7), and getting away with it.


 South Camberley was another return booking, and another dressing up day. The head mentioned that I'd drawn Harley Quinn on the flipchart last year and that maybe I should avoid something so adult this time round. And who should be sitting in the front row as I begin one of the two assemblies of the day? A year 5 kid dressed as Harley Quinn. They came up with great stuff, as always.


Friday saw me making my debut at Oak Bank school in Leighton Buzzard, a school specialising in pupils with extra needs or who don't get on in mainstream schools. They came up with more marvellous stuff. One was dressed as a giant inflateable Picachu, and another was an inflateable T Rex. Such fun.

The celebrities these eight groups chose to appear in my demonstration strip were: Albert Einstein (his second appearance in the last fortnight), Michael Jackson (twice, he really is looking like being one of the year's most popular, bizarrely), Taylor Swift (twice), Nicki Minaj, Dwayne The Rock Johnson, and Justin Bieber.

My Books and where to get them:

Richard The Third Amazon - Etsy - Barnes & Noble - Waterstones
Findlay Macbeth - Amazon  - Etsy 
Prince Of Denmark Street - Amazon - Etsy - Kindle
Midsummer Nights Dream Team  - Amazon Etsy 
Shakespeare Omnibus Collection (all 3 books) - Amazon

Tales From The Bible - Amazon -  Etsy - Webtoons
The Book Of Esther - Lulu  - Amazon Webtoons
Captain Clevedon - Amazon
Tales Of Nambygate - Amazon  

March Live Books Sales - Exeter, Bristol + schools

Following a very successful Torquay Comic Con in Feb, I've signed up for two more events organised by UKCGF this month, the first being Exeter. 

Exeter is a big one, in the Westpoint Arena, which is basically a big shed. I'd been to this venue once before, years ago, with Oval Insurance, and I'd remembered it being quite warm. I now realise that was because it was July. This weekend, it being a two day event, it was freezing. But, wrapped up warmly, I kept up my technique of stopping passers by with a free caricature and trying to turn those conversations into sales.

Saturday's figures were helped by one page of Star Trek artwork, which I sold for £150. The book sales looked like this...

Exeter UKCGF Comic Con

Sat March 9 2024

Total £232.41 -  £150 Art, £82.41 books (+ cash)

Richard The Third - 6
Colouring Books - 6*
Midsummer Night's Dream Team - 1
Prince of Denmark St  - 1
Findlay Macbeth - 1

Sun March 10 2024

Total £105.42 (+ cash)

Richard The Third - 5
Colouring Books - 5*
Omnibus - 2
Midsummer Night's Dream Team - 2
Findlay Macbeth - 1

* Colouring books breakdown across both days:
Doctors Who - 4
Eurovision Vol 2 - 1
Eurovision Vol 1 - 1
Bowie - 1
Punk - 1
60s - 1 (SOLD OUT)
Royalty - 1 (SOLD OUT)
80s Superstars - 1 (SOLD OUT)

Bristol UKCGF Comic Con

Sat March 16 2024

Total £279.33 - Books + caricatures (card & cash)

Colouring Books - 8**
Richard The Third - 7
Caricatures paid by card - 35
Tales From The Bible - 2
Omnibus/ all 3 - 2
Midsummer Night's Dream Team - 4
Prince Of Denmark St - 3
Findlay Macbeth - 2
Socks Superheroes comic - 4
Book Of Esther - 1

** Colouring books breakdown
Doctors Who - 5
Bowie - 1
2020s - 1
Eurovision Vol 2 - 1

Comics In Schools:

28 Feb Leigh Academy Stratford (Parent Pay) - 12 x Richard 3rd
14 March St Josephs Whitnash (cash) - 13 x Richard Third, 4 x Prince Of Denmark, 1 x Findlay

To compare:
NICE Bedford Sept 2023 Saturday £235 (+art), Sunday £118 (+art)
LFCC November 2023 Saturday £178.80, Sunday £219.83
Torquay Feb 2024 Sat £213
LFCC July 2023 Sat £118, Sun £176 (+art)
Lakes Sept 2023 Sat £166 (+art), Sun £100 (+art)
Wollaton Library Aug 23 (after class sales) £125
Cockerton Library Aug 23 (after class sales) £124
Kettering Book Fest Sept 23 (after class sales) £119
St Ives Book Fest Sept 23 (after class sales) £101

My Books and where to get them:

Richard The Third Amazon - Etsy - Barnes & Noble - Waterstones
Findlay Macbeth - Amazon  - Etsy 
Prince Of Denmark Street - Amazon - Etsy - Kindle
Midsummer Nights Dream Team  - Amazon Etsy 
Shakespeare Omnibus Collection (all 3 books) - Amazon

Tales From The Bible - Amazon -  Etsy - Webtoons
The Book Of Esther - Lulu  - Amazon Webtoons
Captain Clevedon - Amazon
Tales Of Nambygate - Amazon  

Tuesday 5 March 2024

Post Office Scandal - Leicester, Rossendale and Paisley


I don't usually let mere mortals have a sneak preview behind the set of the Scottish Falsetto Socks, but because I'm in a good mood here you are. This is the Socks' set, on stage at Horse & Bamboo Theatre in Rossendale in Lancashire.

And why would I be in such a good mood? Because Post Office Scandal The Musical, something I dreamt up little over a month ago, has turned out to be more popular than our other regular shows. I only wish we were doing it in Edinburgh this year, but I fear that ship has sailed.

Having had a first outing on Zoom in February, POS the M made its onstage debut on Friday Feb 23rd in Leicester. Not bad, with an audience of about twenty, but I knew it needed work. So, the next day, I spent some time in the hotel room in the afternoon editing the script, mostly changing the running order and trimming down overweight jokes. Saturday night when very well, and I video'd it.

But it was Sunday afternoon's show that clinched the performance. I got laughs in all the right places, was at ease with the show, and had really got it into a god shape. It's from Sunday's recording (with the camera off to an angle) that most of the recordings I put in Youtube are taken.


Post Office Scandal intro

Coming away from Leicester happy with the shape of the show, we then took it to the Horse & Bamboo Theatre in Rossendale, who'd booked us out of the blue a few months ago. We'd never played there before, and had the marvellous experience of audience loving it, saying it was the funniest thing they'd ever seen, and the venue managers asking if we'd come back again. A result indeed.

The following night at Stafford Gatehouse we gave them Eurovision Sock Contest, which was the show they'd booked ages ago, essentially as an overspill gig from last year's tour. And, though it went well and was very well received, I came away thinking Post Office Scandal is a funnier and more satisfying show.

Just a few days later, as part of a trip to Paisley which saw me doing two Comic Art Masterclasses in the day and a Socks show in the library in the evening, we gave them Post Office Scandal again. And, despite some technical problems which included the mic not working so the audience having to rely on my own acoustic voice (which they could hear perfectly, it being a small room), POS killed once more.

I've got performances of it scheduled for Ludlow and Bedford Fringes, but that's it. A shame it's not going to Edinburgh, but ain't that the irony of showbiz sometimes.




Monday 4 March 2024

February Book Sales


(Hev & me in the window of our hotel in Torquay, ahead of the one day event where I sold most books in Feb 2024)

Sales of my books for Feb 2024, ranked in order of takings

Live - £307.22
Lulu - £26.76
Etsy - £23.48
Blurb - £1.59
D2D - $1.20

Live Feb sales, Torquay & Bexleyheath - £307.22

Richard The Third - 18
Doctors Who Colouring - 6 
Eurovision Vol 2 - 2 
1960s - 2
Punk - 1, Euro Vol 1 - 1, Bowie - 1
Findlay Macbeth - 7
MNDT - 6
PODS - 1

Jan £32.95

Lulu (Amazon) Feb 2024 sales - £26.76 (13 sales, figure is all royalties)

Jan - £26.41,  Dec 2023 - £109.94, November - £107.53, October - £14.23, September - £18.76, Aug £33.34, July £27.60, June £29.94, May £48.33, April £52.26, March £8.56, Feb £38.57, Jan £35.25, & Dec 2022 £26.84

Sales are all UK, unless indicated:

Poopy Doo Doo Heads - 3
Doctors Who - 2
1960s Pop - 2 (US)
Tales From Bible - 2 (US)
Book Of Esther - 1 (US)
Rom Com - 1 (US)
PODS - 1 
Xmas Movies - 1

Etsy Feb sales -  £23.48 (3 sales, figure includes postage)

Euro Vol 1 - 2
Bowie - 1

Jan £44.43, Dec 23 £131.22, Nov - £152.34, October - £51.92, Sept £0, August £13.98, July £48.93, June £55.92, May £58.05, Apr £171.05, Mar £80.86, Feb £44.50, Jan £82.86

Blurb Feb sales - £1.59 (4 x Eurovision Vol 1)

D2D/Ingram Feb sales - $1.20 / 2 sales

1 x Esther, 1 x MNDT

Jan $5.44, Dec 23 $19.69, Nov $34.57, Oct - $90.48, Sept - £0, August $4.23, July $7.39, June $6.03, May $1.86, April $1.52, March $2.46, Feb $0, Jan $4.10

My Books and where to get them:

Richard The Third Amazon - Etsy - Barnes & Noble - Waterstones
Findlay Macbeth - Amazon  - Etsy 
Prince Of Denmark Street - Amazon - Etsy - Kindle
Midsummer Nights Dream Team  - Amazon Etsy 
Shakespeare Omnibus Collection (all 3 books) - Amazon

Tales From The Bible - Amazon -  Etsy - Webtoons
The Book Of Esther - Lulu  - Amazon Webtoons
Captain Clevedon - Amazon
Tales Of Nambygate - Amazon  

Thursday 29 February 2024

"Don't Tell Him Pike" - February Facebook ramblings

 

Feb 5: “Don’t tell him, Pike!”

The race is on amongst Private Eye Magazine cartoonists to be the first to draw a "St Peter Pearly Gates 'Don't tell him your name Pike'" cartoon.
Update: Turns out "Pearly Gates" and Ian Lavender are trending on Twitter. And I thought I was being so original. (I posted this about 3pm I think)

Feb 4: Doing my regular scour of the “Dogman shelf” yesterday I, too, spotted that David Walliams had joined the market for kids graphic novels. There were also a clutch of new all-comic-strip titles I hadn’t seen before, most of them reprinting dog US titles from the last decade (Rollergirl was one). I just hope this market hasn’t got saturated to collapsing point, just as I’m hoping to break into it. (Says the guy who got into Marvel in the 90s just before its bubble burst, and was in the final issues of Oink, Warrior and Sounds)

Feb 2: This morning’s rabbit hole: There was a US sitcom called Hot In Cleveland whose writers included Laura Solon (Sitcom Trials 2002) and - and here was my surprise takeaway - Rachel Sweet.
Recognise the name? Rachel Sweet was signed by Stiff records when she was 16, and had a one off hit with BABY in 1979.
Which obscure one hit wonders from your childhood have you discovered the surprising thing they were doing 45 years later?


Jan 31: Oh dear, Traitors Australia, what did you do to yourself?
Just watched series 2 ep 1 and it’s totally lost it. Series 1 was great, with a great range of characters and a good sense of humour. This time they’ve modelled it on the naff US version and packed it with reality stars and OTT “look at me” influencers, actors, wrestlers and other not-real people.
Watching this so soon after the exemplary UK series 2 makes this second Aus series nigh on impossible to watch. You just keep wanting to punch their annoying faces.
I fear we won’t be watching episode 2. Can you imagine having said that after an episode of the British Traitors?


Feb 11: Fun for Bristolians and South Welsh alike, this video (found this week) shows Gene Pitney travelling over the then newly-built Severn Crossing.
It’s our local bridge and we’ve been enjoying spotting what’s changed since then (circa 1967 we’re guessing).

Feb 12: I was today years old when I discovered Uncle Colm from Derry Girls was the comedian I saw doing his brilliant slide show with owls in a pub in soho 40 years ago


Feb 16: Things I learned today: classic single cover (& ad in the NME which is where I saw it) was based on an obscure advert.

***
Feb 5: Aaah, just discovered that Steve Brown, aka Glenn Ponder from Knowing Me Knowing You, has died.
He is commemorated in our house whenever Strictly is on. When they cut to Dave Arch and the house band, we chorus "Glenn Ponder!" Not interesting, but true.



In praise of Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning.
If you ever need to compare two films who've tried to do the same thing with wildly differing results, might I suggest Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning (which we watched this weekend) vs Indiana Jones & The Dial Of Destiny (which we watched a month or so ago, and which I roundly criticised at the time).
Both have a central maguffin that is entirely irrelevant (a key and a dial, respectively); both feature car chases in the middle of busy cities, with our heroes (a male female couple) in amusingly small vehicles, which have among other things to drive down steep staircases; and both feature big fight scenes on trains.
It's almost as if Mission Impossible saw the Indiana Jones effort (which they can't have done, being made & released at the same time), shook its head and said "no no no, THIS is how you do it".
Where Indiana Jones had palpably unconvincing CGI stunts throughout, Mission Impossible pulled off the trick of making you genuinely believe the events were happening before you. Or at the very least leaving you asking how did they do that?
A lot of this is down to the extensive use of genuine stunt actors and explosions, coupled with Tom Cruise's famous attempts to do as many stunts as he can (obviously not all of them but, let's face it, more than octogenarian Harrison Ford could be expected to).
It's also down to attention to detail, especially when it comes to the internal logic of the scenes and the stunts. When Mission Impossible's characters fight on top of a train we are regularly and skillfully reminded of the dangers of being up there, whereas Indiana Jones, at one point, just stands there and stares up at the sky, ignoring all oncoming bridges, as if to double down on the whole "we're only in a studio, you know" vibe of the movie.
The humour is another big success of Mission Impossible. Christopher McQuarrie, the director and writer, knows that the film's premise is silly and that its set-pieces are, well, impossible. So he kind of hangs a hat on it by making the characters complicit in their understanding of the ridiculousness of it all, without undermining the drama. Indiana Jones tried to be funny and ended up seeming witless.
Oh and the Orient Express sequence is one of the best comedy drama stunt set-pieces I've seen in a movie in recent memory. It's right up there with the stunts in Spielberg's early Indiana Jones movies and Jurassic Park, for the originality of the ideas and the meticulousness of the execution. I think I even detected a sly dig at Christopher Nolan's Inception which, if I'm right, was a nice reminder of how much better this film is than that one too.
The only downside of Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning as that someone made the disastrous and hubristic decision to call it "Part One" and to make it part of a pair of films. Given that it under-performed at the box office, having been conceived in the glory days of pre-pandemic film-going and released in the post-pandemic desert of the streaming world, this has doomed its successor to always being referred to as "Dead Reckoning Part Two, oh..." when viewers finding it on TV and streaming realise it's a movie they can't watch without seeing its predecessor, so don't bother.
Very highly recommended indeed. You're welcome.


If you're a school, library, festival or art centre who had my Comic Art Masterclasses in 2023, then this new book should be of interest. It's called Poopy Doo Doo Heads and comprises 120 full colour pages containing every single comic cover I drew with kids in my classes from Jan to December 2023. It costs just £12.99
lulu.com/shop/kev-f-sutherland-and-kev-sutherland/poopy-doo-doo-heads-kev-fs-comic-art-masterclass-annual-2024/paperback/product-v8k9wd6.html

I released a version of this in December (called The Killer Children) through a different publisher, which cost nearly twice as much. This new version has come down to as cheap as I can get 120 full colour pages to be.
Feel free to double check with me whether your comic covers are in there before buying, but they should be. (The previous version also had a lot of copyrighted characters removed so I could sell it on Amazon, but this has every Peppa Pig, Shrek, and Thomas The Tank Engine in there intact).


My Books and where to get them:

Richard The Third Amazon - Etsy - Barnes & Noble - Waterstones
Findlay Macbeth - Amazon  - Etsy 
Prince Of Denmark Street - Amazon - Etsy - Kindle
Midsummer Nights Dream Team  - Amazon Etsy 
Shakespeare Omnibus Collection (all 3 books) - Amazon

Tales From The Bible - Amazon -  Etsy - Webtoons
The Book Of Esther - Lulu  - Amazon Webtoons
Captain Clevedon - Amazon
Tales Of Nambygate - Amazon  




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