Building a Fanbase
Get a Deviant Art account. Deviant Art is a social network site for artists to post and promote their artwork. Many emerging artists start on Deviant Art. To sign up for a username, provide an e-mail address and start posting. You can post individual panels from your manga, art of the characters, or publish the manga in its entirety. Interact with people on the site. Talk to people to get your name out there. Browse other people's art. Leave comments and feedback. The goal is to network so people will come to browse your art. Choose a username that is memorable. Your username should also be something you want connected with you art when you get ready to publish it.
Make tutorials. Artists and people interested in graphics look up tutorials. Post a tutorial about something you are skilled at. This can be drawing animals, shading, or using a drawing program. Many people don't know how to go from doing one-shot art pieces to full manga. Make a tutorial that explains how you developed your manga. Tutorials help build your reputation as knowledgeable and helpful. This is a good way to get your name out, but also get people to look up to you. These tutorials can be posted on Deviant Art, or other social media sites like Tumblr.
Build a website. A website gives people a place to go to check out your art and your biography. You can also link to your manga from your website when you get ready to publish it. You may want to post pages of your manga for free to entice readers to buy it. Or, if you have more than one manga, post one for free on your website and then sell another one. You can pay for domain space or try free sites. Domain space requires a yearly or monthly fee; free sites have ads. Take that into consideration before building one. Instead of a website, try creating a Tumblr. On Tumblr, people can reblog your work so that you get a wider audience. You can also create links to your social media accounts. Tumblr could be a good way for you to interact with people, take prompts, and build a following.
Post web comics for free. Before you start charging for your work, post free web comics. Web comics help get people interested in your art. They also showcase your talent. This helps people want to see more of your art. The goal is to introduce people to your art, make your name known, and have them like your art enough to buy it one day. For manga, you may want to publish panels or pages as a serial. Release a new page or panel once a week. That way you can practice your manga skills and promote yourself as a manga artist. You can post the web comics on Deviant Art, Drunk Duck, or Smack Jeeves. These three sites are geared towards hosting web comics. Post the web comic everywhere else, too. Put it on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest, or any other social media site. You want to get your art seen by as many people as possible. The web comics can be short one shots. They also can be installments of an ongoing manga. Consider drawing fanart of popular media, like movies and television shows.
Open up commissions. Once people know who you are, offer to draw commissions. Charge a small fee in exchange for drawing prompts that people would like to see. Commissions allow you a chance to make a small profit for your art work. It can also help you gauge interest in your work. Charge different prices for different levels of difficulty. Full color art with multiple characters will cost more than a black and white sketch.
Think about quality over quantity. You are trying to get your name noticed, but this doesn't mean posting art constantly. Focus on the quality of the art you post. Spend time on it, polish it off, and perfect it before posting. Posting your best work shows your followers that your work is always worth looking at.
Selling Your Manga
Print your own manga. For an aspiring manga artist, you may want to start by printing your own. This is cheaper than getting a self-publishing press to print it into a book. The money spent will only be materials. This is ideal if you want to give away your manga to promote yourself. Try a mini-comic. A mini-comic has 9 pages. The size is small, usually 4.25x5.5in. The mini-comic is good for novices who have little experience with publishing manga. Produce a larger comic book. This book can range anywhere from 25-80 pages. The size can either be 5x8in or 8x11in. This method is good for longer stories. If you are doing either of these, keep the original untouched. Don't staple it. You want it pristine so you can make copies of it for additional books.
Publish it as an e-book. There are multiple ways to self-publish your digital manga once it is finished. Programs like Kindle Comic Converter will convert your digital files into an e-book so you can promote it through digital platforms. Kindle Direct Publishing is one platform to self-publish your manga. ComiXology Submit is another platform for self-publishing digital manga. When you submit to this site, your manga goes through a quality test to ensure that only high quality comics and manga is offered for sale on their website. Kobo Writing Life is an self-publishing e-book site. Signing up for an account is free. They will create an e-pub for you.
Publish through a self-publishing press. Multiple presses let you self-publish print books. These presses let you upload your content, choose a cover, and then print copies for a fee. Some presses let you sell online so that people can order a copy from the internet and have it shipped to their home. Lulu.com is a self-publishing website that allows you to put together affordable print books. For an 8.5x8.5in full color booklet containing 20 pages, the base price is around $13. Then you can sell the book on their website. Cafe Press lets you self-publish 8x8in hard cover books ranging from 20-60 pages. The price starts at $35. Other presses, like Doujin Press, only publish manga and comics. Some will publish as little as 25, while other will publish 1,000 copies or more. This might be a route to go if you plan on selling them on your own website or in person.
Sell at conventions. Get a vendor table at an anime or comic book convention. Try selling your work there. This is a great way to talk to people about your manga, make connections, and promote your name. However, there is a lot of competition at a convention. Try selling your manga for cheap to encourage people to buy it. Don't limit yourself to selling your manga. Sell art prints, postcards, or buttons of your art work at the convention. This helps generate business and get people interested in you. If you don't have the money or time for a booth, give away manga for free. Hand out manga to people at the convention. This gets your art into people's hands. Make sure you have your website in a place people easily can find it so they can visit you.
Advertise with other artists. After you self-publish your manga, try to find other artists who will let you advertise in their manga. In return, you let them advertise their mangas in the back of your book. This helps promote your work while helping you make connections with other artists. Only advertise manga that you truly like. You want to believe in what you are promoting. Try to advertise in manga that is in the same genre as yours. If you write action-packed adventure stories, don't advertise at the back of a romance manga.
Post fliers in the local comic book store. Get in touch with your local comic book store owners. Talk to them about allowing you to give away free copies of your manga. You may even convince them to let you sell your manga in their store. Put up fliers in the comic book store that advertises your manga. Make sure it has your name, contact information, and the address for your website so people can go check out your work. Leave business cards by the register.
Get in touch with local manga and anime clubs. Many colleges have manga and anime clubs. There are also local meetup groups for people interested in the genre. Get in touch with these groups. Talk to the members about manga, art, and other similar interests. See if the club or meetup group would be willing to let you come talk to them. See if they will let you explain your process of creating a manga and getting it self-published. Give away free copies of your manga to the club members so they can read your work and get the word out.
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