Thursday, March 14, 2019

SELF-PUBLISHING - Part 2

In 1984 my cartoon alter ego Augustine was born. Suddenly there she was, my fully altered ego. Why the name Augustine?

a) I was born in August.
b) My mother’s middle name was Augustine.
c) Augustine Road was a street next to where I lived at the time.
d) in 1979 I drew a journal titled Augustine’s True Confession (not yet the cartoon Augustine and not Saint Augustine either).


Up to 1988 I produced ten Augustine mini-comics in a series called SMALL PACKAGES. This was before digital technology therefore to produce and distribute these booklets, I used ancient processes such as photocopying, folding, cutting, stapling and sending via snailmail. 
By word of mouth and innumerable letters I managed to acquire a list of about 200 subscribers. I charged only 50 pence per booklet and if they paid in advance for a year they received a new Augustine booklet every month, more or less. After a while I increased the price to 60 pence per mini-comic.

I was overjoyed when the Augustine Adventures got rave reviews from everybody who received them. See some of these reviews.

I loved drawingThe Augustine Adventures but all the photocopying, stapling etc. became a time-wasting chore and, feeling confident, I started searching for a publisher to take over the business of bringing Augustine to the wide world so that I could concentrate on creating new scenarios for her. Well, the world of publishers wasn’t ready forAugustine I have a file of pleasant rejections, including “Love it but not commercial enough.”

Discouraged, I ended the Small Packages series at booklet No.10, Augustine Angry. What a total freaking idiot I was!I should have continued, just carried on drawing the booklets, photocopying, stapling, sending them, and by now Augustine would be a household name.

Maybe I should bring out an Augustine Omnibus? Anyone want to subscribe?


4 comments:

Vincent said...

Yes I think you should bring out an Augustine Omnibus! I'm the proud recipient of Numbers 3 and 10 and treasure them for astute wit, redolent of their time in terms of production values (reminiscent of samizdat?)

They should be preserved in some kind of Retrospective, short of making you photocopy, guillotine, staple, mail etc

Don't regret stopping in '87, let me be subscriber no. 1 in 2019.

Natalie d'Arbeloff said...

Many thanks Vincent, that's encouraging.

I liked making individual booklets for each topic but if I produce an Omnibus, it would be more affordable, practical and convenient to put all of them in one A5 size volume with seperate chapters and title page design for each.

I'll wait to see the result on 31 March of the graphic novel-in-progress awards before deciding whether to embark on a self-published Augustine Omnibus. Who knows, there might even be a mainstream publisher interested! But am not counting any chickens.

Anonymous said...

Lovely, lovely work thank you, you feed our thoughts and inspire endlessly.

Natalie d'Arbeloff said...

Thank you Anonymous...why Anonymous?