Bug

Hello All,

Thought I’d give you guys a quick update on Bug merchandise:

T-shirts – My initial plan was to find a local shirt-making company, make a few designs, do a pre-order and make / distribute the shirts myself. But, after talking to other webcartoonists, I was advised that I wouldn’t sell that many shirts with my little bugs on them – not enough to justify the time and money anyway.

Disheartened, but not ready to give up, I looked into print-on-demand services. It sounded pretty good: I could offer tons of designs and it wouldn’t be so time-consuming. I showed other webcartoonists this new plan and they said the shirts were overpriced (and this is after I lowered my royalty). There’s no point in selling you expensive shirts that I make no money on.

Further disheartened, I’m going back to my original idea of making and selling the shirts myself. Now my plan is to come up with one design that I think would have the broadest appeal. I may come up with a few contenders and allow you guys to vote on them.

Book one – This is a little trickier.

I’ve never made a book before and there’s a whole lot to learn. Thankfully, I know a lot of great guys and gals who’ve done this before and have offered to help. But it’s still going to take me time to lay it all out. Plus, I want all future books to follow the same blueprint so they all match when they’re on your bookshelf. This has produced a lot of pressure on me to get this right the first time. That and my desire for perfection has made this whole process slow to a crawl as I measure once, measure twice, grab the scissors, get ready to cut, put the scissors down and measure a third time, go to bed, wonder if I should change the dimensions and re-measure. Stuff like that.

Plus, there’s one part of my webcomic I need to change before any books get published. It’s nothing too drastic, but it involves me and my trademark lawyer and I’ll leave it at that.

Thanks for being patient as I figure this stuff out.

Hey! Do you guys like podcasts? I gotta podcast. Matt Forcum (cartoonist of the wonderful Robot Beach) and I get our geek on every week with the Geeks of Steel podcast. Click here to check it out. Matt and I have been recording these for over a year now and we’re pretty sure that some of them are actually funny.

Also, I know I’m rather late on this but I plan to have t-shirts available by this coming Monday. It’s taken me longer than I expected to figure out exactly how I was going to do this. Originally I was going to make and distribute the shirts myself, but I’ve decided the best way to provide you with the greatest variety of designs would be to go through a print-on-demand service. This is sort of my way of “testing the waters” in the world of merchandising. I’ll keep you guys posted.