test heading When we publish books here at First Second, we generally try to put some art on the spine. Why do we do this? Look at your bookshelf. Go to your local bookstore and your local library. Look at their bookshelves. 99.9% probability that the first thing you saw when you looked at your [...]
test heading (some of the books in the hallway outside our offices) I'm a big fan of publishing, as an industry. I think it's fascinating to learn about the history of how we've published books in the US (and around the world), and why people have made the creative and business decisions that have led [...]
test heading (lots of paper) "I'll do anything!" is frequently the response we hear from authors when we ask them what they're interested in doing to market their book. This is an admirably enthusiastic response! We appreciate it. It's really great when authors are willing to go above and beyond for their books. Yay that! [...]
test heading Everyone wants the best publication date for their books -- including the publisher, of course. So how do you determine what the best publication date is? A lot of that depends on the circumstances! There aren't a lot of hard-and-fast rules. And a lot of the circumstances depend on you, the author, so [...]
test heading (some books) Say you want to get your graphic novel published by First Second. What's the most important thing that you can put in your submission letter? The most important thing you can do when you're submitting a book -- the thing that will get your graphic novel looked at fastest -- is [...]
test heading (this is original art from Matt Loux' upcoming graphic novel The Time Museum!) Is it important for you to know what size to make your original art before you even start on your graphic novel project? (As with all things) It depends! Why would it be important to make your original art a [...]
test heading (this is a calendar -- it's actually the calendar on my desk) How far ahead are the graphic novels we publish planned? It's early winter of 2015 right now. (I'm writing this piece on Wednesday, January 28th, as it says in the calendar above.) Right now, authors are turning in the books (or [...]
test heading (Cory Doctorow talks to the LA Times Hero Complex about his graphic novel with Jen Wang, In Real Life) So now you're a published author! And the marketing/publicity person at your publisher e-mails to say that there's a publication who wants to do an interview by e-mail with you; here are some questions. [...]
test heading (maybe our most trivial blog post topic yet!) We print most of our four-color (and most of our two-color) books in China. The vast majority of them get shipped here on container ships, but some extremely limited quantity of them we do air-freight so we (and our authors, and some key media and [...]
test heading (this post was suggested by the excellent Ali Wilgus; this is a photo of part of one of the walls of my office) Business cards are a thing that a lot of people have! Should you make some? If you are a person who goes out into the world a lot and frequently [...]
