This is an open thread. It is listed in the Artists section of the site, and you can use it to talk to ITCH.
Feel free to use the comments section on this post to talk about anything relating to comics or publishing, or anything, really. So long as you’re not selling prescription drugs, your message is welcome here.
Questions, complaints and confusion are also welcome. I will answer your question and use it to improve the information on the site.
{ 25 comments }
I am a writer but I have noone to do the artwork would that be problem? Also my plot, characters, etc is all sorted out in my head but I canot seem to get it down in writinghave you got any advice please?
Hi Zan,
Thanks for your comment. I understand what you’re saying about not being able to get it down in writing, although a dark, cynical part of me wants to ask you: so, you can’t draw, and you don’t write. What DO you do?
Writing isn’t a matter of having ideas. Ideas aren’t actually the problem, loads of people have ideas, it’s doing the writing that’s hard: presenting and developing those ideas in a way that is clear, consistent, and makes the reader care about your ideas.
This is the difficult part, and it’s really too big a question to cover in this quick reply. Maybe when I put up some links to drawing and panelling tutorials, I’ll add some with some general writing advice. For now, I’ll just take a shot in the dark. Just for you. <3
Chances are that the reason you’re having problems getting it all down in writing is that you’re trying to get it ALL down in writing. Everything, your whole story, main characters, side characters, beginning, ending, and everything in the middle. If you’re like a lot of other people who would like to be writers,* your idea is so big that it would take at least a few months to write it all up.
So you sit down and try to write, but you’ve no idea where to start because all you have is this enormous wobbly writing task that could take up to a year to do, and it’s like a huge tangle of yarn that you’ve no way to untangle because you just can’t find the end of it.
There are two ways out of this:
1. Snip the yarn to give you an end. Just pick someplace to start, and start. Pick some key scene out of your story, the one that’s best detailed in your mind, and write it. A scene doesn’t take months to write, you can do it in a day, a few hours, and you don’t have to do any preparation, because you’ve been over it a hundred times, right? So just start. Don’t worry about the whole story, just get this one scene right.
Important: DON’T start at the start of the story. What you think is the start of the story probably isn’t, so that won’t help.
2. Find a smaller tangle of yarn. If this turns out to be too hard, if you’ve honestly tried but you can’t get it right, maybe this one is just too big or you’re overthinking it. Start with a clean slate. Think of a tiny little story, no more than three characters, no more than five scenes. Going for humour or horror is probably easiest. Write that. Untangle a small tangle of yarn, so you can get the hang of how it’s done.
These may help, they may not. Good luck either way.
* I’m sorry man, but you’re not a writer unless you write. It’s a skill you learn by doing, so get going already. You wouldn’t expect to pick up a pencil and just draw like a professional, so don’t expect to write like a professional if you’ve never done it before, just because you have some cool ideas. Cool ideas are good, you’ll need those. What you also need are skills. You don’t get skills from reading magical advice. You get skills by training, doing exercises, challenging yourself and working hard.
Try some Writing Exercises.
Ganbatte.
Thanks so much, I have written a little before but nothing big, so I will work hard to make my writing much better! ^^
Hello, I have always dreamed of having something published. I would want to start small, I care a lot more about having something published that looks professional than making money. I was wondering however, if you made a short manga (that could stand alone, maybe 50 pages?) and it was decent, how much do you think the artist/writer would make for profit? I know you say 5% off the sales, but I am curious what the average artist gets when you sell their work? If you wouldn’t mind sharing
Hi Allyson,
Totally fair question, but very hard to answer. Itch is really too young to say anything about ‘average’ artists, there’s really only one book so far that has existed long enough to generate statistics.
Final Blossom came out in November, and I had 100 copies printed. Over three quarters have now been sold, and I’ve recently ordered a second print. It’s a good-looking book that sells pretty solidly. The payment for the artist is fixed, it’s a set figure per copy sold. It’s pennies rather than pounds though, so if, say, I sell about 100 to 200 copies of your book in a year you get roughly enough to eat out in a decent to slightly fancy restaurant. I know that’s still very vague, but it really does depend on the nature of the book, how well it sells, etc, so it’s hard to make predictions.
I know 20 – 60 pounds a year isn’t in proportion to the work that goes into a 50 page manga, but at this stage it’s the best I can do. Because it’s April, I recently had a look at the figures for Itch over the last financial year. Over the last year, I spent twice as much as I earned on Itch, meaning that currently, it’s a moderately expensive hobby. That said, the losses for the second half of the year were much less than for the first half, so I guess that means that despite the difficult economic situation, my ‘profits’ are actually rising. ^.^ Whee! I wave a little flag.
I hope that went some way towards answering your question, thanks for dropping by and maybe I’ll hear from you again.
Thank you very much for the fast response! And yes, you answered everything very truthfully and I appreciate that
I hope to get a tablet in a month or two and when I do I am going to start working on a short manga that I have planned out, and I will definitely keep you in mind and hopefully get back in touch with you 
I’ll be sure to keep up to date with ITCH and maybe even purchase one of the mangas for sale and see what it’s all about! Thank you again and best of luck with your business!
- Allyson
Hello, hello! I’ve revently been browsing your site, and I just thought that a nice friendly “Hello” would be in order after I had everything done with. Yeah, should have done it first, but eh. >_>;
You’ve got a nice bit of information here, and its nice to see that you’re able to personally answer the questions and concerns some of the people around here have. I know, it’s probably because it’s just a small publishing company (For now!!!), but it’s still good to see! Though…the last question was last month sometime, so I’ve got to wonder if you’re still walkin’ around out there!
Now, here’s the real question:
So i’ve been wondering ever since I stumbled upon this little spot here…what if you don’t have an Artist? Ha ha. If even some of the bigger companies don’t have the people or time for this, I’m afraid to see what kind of answer I’ll get here! I don’t mean any disrespect by that, as you can probably tell. But just incase, I found it better to tell! So would you need to provide your own art, or by some miracle could an artist be assigned to someone who just wanted to write? Hya ha ha.
Just a question! Hope you get back to be soon!
Take care, and I wish you the best of luck with this site!
Hajeba. Wait, WAIIIT!!! I was wrong!? Gah! Ha ha ha…now I feel horrible! I thought the last response was about a Month ago, not a few days ago!
Oh well.
>_>
Ha ha. Dude, relax, it’s only me.
All right, the short answer is this: if you don’t have an artist, I may help you find one, but I make no guarantees.
Finding an artist to work with is hard; many artists have their own stories to tell, and if they don’t, there are more writers on the market than artists, so they have their pick. This is not because their skills are harder to get or more important, but because they’re more obvious. You can tell how good an artist is by looking at a couple of their drawings. Telling whether a writer is any good is much harder.
You can pitch to ITCH as a writer, and if you impress me, I can call on some of my artist friends to see if anyone is interested. For best results, I suggest you write a number of pitches (say 3 – 5) for short comics. Include a full script for one of them, so we can see you actually doing the thing.
Vary your genre and type of story to broadly cover what you do, or what you’re interested in doing. Also include a link to your website or blog if you have one.
Good luck, and feel free to ask further questions if you have them.
Hi I’m from tpf and have to this thread to transfer the question i asked there to here.
“Selling you a story? What does that mean exactly? What format of script are you looking for?”
There are many ways to write a script and many do a format of their own. Some do it in prose, some describe panel by panel or a list of events with dialogue in between or some other format.
What are you looking for? It would make things alot simpler for us and you if you made an official submission format for excerpts.
From what I can tell from Zan and what you say, a writer can pitch you a story?
I can draw a little and have done a few concept artwork (I’m just up-skilling myself to beyond just a person all about the words but it’s not like i can draw a comic) to aid possible collaborative artists and to heighten the chances of getting a character design that I’m partial to.
But my main point is, a person can pitch with just a story concept?
Another question comes to mind. What are the very limits in age ratings and content explicity?
hi willie, just wanted to ask, have you received my sumbmission pitch to your company. i have sent the sumbmission through your sumbmission email address. have you recieved it?
Also i have taken your advice about doing a serious manga, and i have a produced an 8 page teaser manga called Dreaming Glory. I did this specifically for the pitch that i made to submit to your company, to showcase my serious storytelling abilities.
You can view the work in the submission pitch that i sent you or you can view it at the sweatdrop forum website where i posted up a thread called Dreaming Glory.
Hope to hear from you willie.
thanks.
Hi Shuhel. Yes, I did get your submission, thank you! I will review it when I get some free time, which will be approximately in the year 2012. Nah, just kidding. I’ll look at it soon and let you know what I think.
Cuperos, I’m taking your question back to the Tokyopop Forums, it might be easier to talk there. But to your main point, yes, I do accept submissions from writers looking for artists, and may help you find an artist.
Hi.
I’m thinking about submitting a pitch, but I just wanted to ask: is there a specific art style you’re looking for? I know you said you were looking more for romances and dramas, but does the art need to be in a manga style?
Hi there, Ms Spork.
Although I call my comics ‘manga’, I use the word very loosely. I’m not after any particular style, although I’m partial to some styles of manga, I also love art by some European or American creators. So just draw in your own style, or a variation thereof that fits the story well.
Thanks for your question.
Hi willie. i received your email response for my submission and i totally agree and understand where your coming from. I really appreciate that you have responded to my submission and the advice and feedback you have given is fantastic. So yeah, i guess all i can say is i will keep drawing and learning to improve and hopefully one day get that break that i need. So thanks for your time, i will always be putting up work on sweatdrop so you can see my progress and i hope you do find someone that meets your requirements. thanks once again, speak to you on sweatdrop.
Hey Shuhel,
Thanks, I’m glad we’re cool. Keeping up the practising is really all any of us can do. Good luck, and I hope you’ll find that break you’re looking for. Don’t overestimate the difficulty of self-publishing though, it’s how a lot of us got started, and you’ll learn a lot from it.
Ganbatte!
Hi Itchpublishing.
I’ve been wanting to submit my finished comic story, but I am having trouble sending it because the files are too large even when compressed into a .rar file. How can I fix this problem? Thank you.
Hi Jaeil,
You can reduce the file size in several ways. For a submission, you don’t need to send high resolution files, you can save a smaller sized copy (say, 600 pixels in width) and save it as a jpg. That way, you’ll have neat, small files that you can e-mail without problem.
If your comic is really long, maybe you can send the first 5 pages and tell me about the rest in your e-mail? Hope that helps, look forward to seeing what you’re working on.
Thank you for that tip. I made the file small enough to email.
Hello!
I’ve stumbled upon your website when I was reading through the Tokyopop forum pages. I’m very excited and interested in submitting!
Do you have any preferences of guidelines for page sizes (real or digital)?
Hi Alcander,
Cool, I’m glad you’re interested. If you’re emailing me a submission, I’d prefer a “web preview” size for pages, say 400 to 600 pages in width. If we’re going to work together, you can send me the full resolution versions later.
If you’re asking how big you should make the pages when drawing, well, a lot of ITCH books are A5 size, but some are slightly smaller. As long as the size is consistent, if you’re drawing a whole book we can just have it cut to whatever size you used.
Hope that helps, thanks, Willie
Hi Willie!
Thanks for the zippy reply! I’ll get started with putting my proposal together! I guess I’ll email it to you, since that seems to be the most convenient way of communicating!
Thanks again,
Alcander
^_^ Excellent.
And yes, e-mail is fast and convenient.
Hi, I’m a writer who would like to publish a short comic [i.e. a convention floppy]. What would be the ideal number of pages if I would like you or your artist friends (or anyone who is interested) to draw the story?
Also, will there any objection to male/male content?
On a different note, are there any opportunities for editors at ITCH?
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