I have just checked and issues 6 and 7 of Black Tower Super Heroes are complete as are suitable covers. This means that No. 6 should be out end of May as the July issue and No. 7 at the end of June as the August issue.
As for No. 8: that currently has no cover and 39 pages to it. The reason for this was that strips needed to be added to build up to The Green Skies.
That was the plan.
Quite obviously, based on The Return of the Gods: Twilight of the Super Heroes sales, people are not looking for self contained graphic novels of 300+ pages. Under the current circumstances scanning, editing and then uploading a book of a much higher page count would seem to be a lot of work for nothing. The Complete British Golden Age Collection was 400+ pages and I think it's only three copies that sold -it is the reason why it was initially withdrawn. The Hooper Interviews is 300+ pp and, unbelievably, has never sold a copy.
The low cover prices appear to not attract interest so the question I had to ask myself was whether a fourth bulky book was really a good idea?
As a comic collector the books have far more going for them than against.
These are Print On Demand books and with POD books there are no shelves or boxes full of unsold stock hanging around. Pierre in Brussels orders a book then it is printed off to him by local printers. If only he purchased that book then it is unique and collectable and even if ten people buy the same book it is a very low (very low) print run which makes it a good investment especially when you remember that when I shift this mortal coil my store is set to close permanently and my book files go with that. No more copies
There is no "to be continued" with collected books! If I publish anything in parts it is only because I have all of those parts so the Indie comics problem of "Well, we understand you are frustrated that you've waited a year for issue 3 of the 6 issue series but..." just does not exist. As a big Indie Comics and Small Press fan I have been that frustrated comic buyer many many times over the last 4 decades!
Now I cannot do a thing about postal charges. Even I have to pay postage but as no distributor or comic shops were ever willing to take Black Tower books -oh, excepting the ones who wanted freebies- the online store is the only option now that events around the world are cancelled. As I keep noting because people get confused: the books are printed in your region/country so it is local postal rates and NOT international postal rates -checking the online store from where you are shows the prices and postage types.
Cover prices are as low as I could make them. If a book is ordered the POD gets its cut and, obviously, the printers get theirs. If you order a copy of BTSH No. 4 then the cover price is £6.00. Out of that sale I get £2.09 for days of long work on it. Here is the thing though: I am based in the UK and the POD in the US so I am prone to currency fluctuations when I get my money. Also, as my last US Tax Service statement shows, any sales in the US I get taxed on (even if I get no tax benefits because I am a "foreign trader") so often a £2.09 sale can be a reality of £1.80 in the end.
Getting copies to proof read and add to my collection is not free. For BTSH No. 4 I pay the Creator price of £3.39 (Excl. taxes) and I pay postage just like all the regular folk!
What I cannot control aside, on to what I can.
Although I have not worked out how many pages per issue yet, The Green Skies, rather like Return or The Cross Earths Caper, will appear in smaller volumes after issue No. 8 of BTSH. Of course, unprecedented sales might call for a "trade" in future but being a realist I am not expecting huge sales and that is why the publication plan has changed. It means that I have to hold off on a few projects but Green Skies is the final part of the Invasion Earth trilogy started with Black Tower Adventure No. 1 back in 2010 and that has to be completed.
No, I do not need to tell you all of this and you may be bored by it all but I have always maintained open-ness in publishing and there are people out there like this sort of "inside" info!😄
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