FAQ

This section was created in response to all the email questions I get, asking about how to get professionally published, whether manga or otherwise. I’m always happy to answer these questions, except that after a while, alot of common ones keep popping up, and I thought it would be a better idea to create an FAQ page where these questions and answers can be referenced.

This FAQ section used to relate mostly to my first publisher TOKYOPOP, but things have changed significantly as of early 2011, and TOKYOPOP no longer has a publishing department. I have since re-written the FAQ, but still I can only tell you of my personal experiences with working in the manga/comics industry, and hopefully answer any other questions that relate to drawing manga/comics as well. Naturally, not every question can be answered, for contract reasons or whatever, so if I say I can’t answer it, then I’m afraid I can’t answer it. Apart from that, it’s all good.

I’m always open to new suggestions, so please email me for new questions and answers and hopefully this page can be a useful resource.

 
 

Getting Professionally Published

• How do you submit to a publisher?

Every publisher that is seriously in business will have a website, and if they’re looking for submissions, they should have a special section of their site called “submission policy“. If they do (and this is rare), then read the submission policy carefully and follow the directions.

If a publisher has no “submission policy” on their website (which would be normal), then they’re not looking for unsolicited submissions. That means they only want submissions from agents, or people they’ve met in real life and therefore know. The reason for this is because publishers don’t have the manpower to go through piles and piles of submissions from complete strangers over the internet, so they rely on what can only be said as a “network” of people already embedded, in some shape or form, in the comics industry. For this reason, there’s no clear-cut way of entering the comics industry, at least not anymore.

One way of getting into the industry is to know people. That inevitably means going to big comics conventions such as Comic-Con and befriending the right people – usually writers and editors (at least, that’s how writers and especially artists get jobs in the Superhero industry). Going to big conventions will also give you a chance to go to portfolio reviews, which are set up by certain publishers to look for new talent. If you bring your art samples to a portfolio review, there is a chance you may get tapped for work.

Another way of getting work will be through an agent. Getting an agent, however, is another matter altogether. The publishing industry these days are full of talent and competition, and getting a good agent is a trial, not least because agents are constantly being swarmed by requests and submissions themselves. Once again, getting a good agent can really depend on knowing people, which is yet more networking in the right places.

 

• I’m a writer, with not much talent for art. Can I still pitch to a publisher?

Yes, you can. However, if you’re doing original work (where you own your own copyright), as opposed to being a work-for-hire writer (you’re hired to work on a story and concept owned by other people, and given a one-off payment)… it’s much better to team up with an artist. That way, a publisher considering your original story can see the “full package” and make a judgment based on that.

If you want to submit your writing alone, that is also perfectly fine. If your story is sufficiently interesting or compelling, and you manage to snag the attention of an editor, then they will be happy to find an artist for you. However, should you decide to take this route, it’s best you have several examples of finished comics, bearing your name as the writer, under your belt. It’s a lot easier for people to evaluate your skills as a writer if you have finished comics (that you have written) to show them. If you’re some random person submitting writing without any art, editors are less likely to read your work over someone else who has finished comics for them to read and evaluate.

 

• How do you put a submission together?

This is the most common question I get, and while my sample submission is from my TOKYOPOP years, the basics of submitting to most companies involves mostly the same thing.

 

• Go to the company’s homepage and read their submission policy. A lot of companies out there don’t accept unsolicited submissions, so if they say they don’t accept it, they won’t.
• Read what’s on the page carefully. It tells you what you need for a submission.
• Write your submission according to what’s in the submission guidelines. After you’ve finished, double-check with the submission guidelines to make sure you’ve done it properly and has included all the relevant documents, and then mail it to the publisher.

 

It’s not that difficult, but for the people who still have no idea how to put together a submission at all, I’ve included an old PDF submission of mine called “TwinSide”, which should also includes a number of sequential art pages with it (which I haven’t included in the PDF file, and is here instead). I also chopped out the irrelevant parts of the submission, and you can see in the Table of Contents what I chopped out.

Note that this submission was done in 2004, and therefore extremely outdated.

The submission guidelines are different for every company, but I have included my old submission to give people an idea of the writing style and layout I used. Certainly, this is not the best submission there is, and there are far better ones out there, so please only consider it a launching pad, not the Bible.

Some tips for the uninitiated:

 

• Include a title page, table of contents and page numbers. It can’t hurt, and makes it look more professional.
• Use a legible font, always spell-check, and structure it in a way that’s easy to follow. No one wants to look at something that’s difficult to read.
• Watch your grammar and punctuation, especially if you’re a writer.
• Don’t ramble or waffle, just get to the point.
• Make sure you followed the submission guidelines properly. Being the greatest writer and/or artist in the world means nothing if you can’t follow simple instructions.
• Use your common sense.

 

• When you submit to a publisher, do you have to use proper manga paper?

If you’re showing art samples, no one cares what paper you draw on so long as the art is what they’re looking for (and you can follow deadlines and simple instructions). I should also point out that if you’re submitting something by mail (and not electronically), to never ever send original work, because you’re not going to get it back. It’ll just get mashed in the mail, and the editor will probably lose it in the piles of paper in their office.

If you want your work sent back to you by the publisher, it’s best to include a self-addressed and stamped envelope to make things easier for the publisher. If you don’t do that, you shouldn’t expect the publisher to send your submission back to you on their dime.

 

• How long does it take for a publisher to get back to me after I’ve submitted?

That depends on any number of factors, including the publisher’s priorities, how swamped a particular editor is, whether they’re looking for submissions right now, whether they’ve got something else in the works that resemble your work a lot, how exciting (or boring) your submission is… and so on. Most times you may not even get a rejection slip – if you do, consider it good manners for them to send you one, because they’re under no obligation to even contact you if they don’t like your work.

I should point out that if you want to get professionally published and you’ve yet to achieve that goal, it’s not a good idea to sit around waiting for a publisher to reply to you. Once you’ve mailed a submission to a publisher, keep on producing work, and then mailing your work to more publishers. If one of them likes your work, even if they don’t want to publish it, they may contact you to ask you to continue creating and submitting, because sooner or later you’ll hit on something they’re after.

I should mention that it took me four separate pitches before “The Dreaming” was approved by TOKYOPOP.  Rejection is perfectly normal, and not worth getting down about.

 

• How much do you get paid?

I’m forbidden by my contracts to reveal how much I get paid, but I assure you that it’s not much at all. If you’re thinking that drawing manga/comics will make you rich, think again – it’s a job you only do if you love it. Going into it expecting to make a living (at least at first) isn’t realistic.

 

• Did you have your script read by a professional editor before you submit it to a publisher?

Getting a second (or third) opinion is always valuable, but paying for one is completely unnecessary. What one editor likes is different to what another publisher will want, so tweaking your script to “appeal” to whatever idea of an editor you have in your mind is pretty much a waste of time. Unless you’re submitting to a boutique publisher who has clearly specified what it is they’re after, there’s no need to worry so much about those kind of details.

What you do need is a spell-check, a good grasp of grammar and the ability to string sentences together. If your submission has spelling errors, is poorly structured, or uses illegible font… you’re unlikely to score a job as a writer simply because you haven’t proven that you can write.

 
 

Creating Manga / Comics

• I have writer’s block. I’ve been trying to write a manga story and I keep getting stuck.

Everyone gets writer’s block at some point in time. It’s perfectly normal, and nothing to get too worried about. I’m afraid there’s no cure for writer’s block, except to go out of your house and do something new that you haven’t yet done. People with writer’s block often get frustrated staring at that blank sheet of paper (or blank computer screen), and I can’t say that it helps you overcome the writer’s block.

New ideas usually come when you experience something new in your life, something out of the ordinary. The best thing to do, in my opinion, would be to walk away from the computer and do something else for a while.

 

• What size paper do you do your work on, and what kind of paper is it?

I use Deleter brand A4 comic paper, which comes in two kinds of thickness, 110 gsm and 135 gsm. I find the 135 gsm slightly better to use than the other, since it can withstand more pencil drawing and rubbing out – but truth is, all the Japanese brands are equally good for drawing manga, since the ink rests beautifully on the page without being absorbed (and thus getting the “fuzzy line” look).

It’s good to experiment with different kinds of paper and different kinds of drawing material, though I would suggest against using sketching paper if you’re going to a dip pen. Pen nibs are very delicate, and they would easily get caught in the fibres of sketching paper (and thus ruining them).

 

• What is “dpi”, and what resolution do you scan your work in at?

“DPI” stands for “dots per inch”, and it’s the quality/resolution of an image when it’s been scanned into a computer. It calculates how many pixels there are in a single inch of an image. 72 dpi is the norm on the Internet, while 300 dpi is the standard for printing all colour pictures. For my own work, since it’s in black and white, a higher dpi is required, so the lines come out clean and crisp. I think 600 dpi is adequate for good print quality for black and white (and also greyscale) art, but 1200 dpi is what most publishers ask for. However, going higher than 1200 dpi is completely unnecessary for a black and white image – not only does it take up extra memory, but there isn’t that much difference in image quality at those levels.

 

• What do the terms “bleed”, “trim” and “safety” mean, in terms of manga pages?

These are terms related to print, and you have to be careful of what these proportions are if you’re going to print your work. Firstly, “Safety” means the area of the page you draw in where you put all the important details and dialogue. Anything outside this area is in danger of being too close to the “trim” margins, where the page is cut.

The “Trim” area is where the page actually gets cut off. Supposedly anyway, since the printers sometimes cut a few mm off where they are supposed to cut. Though they rarely cut an entire centimeter off, this inaccuracy is the reason why you need a “Bleed” area. The “Bleed” area extends beyond the “Trim” area, so that if you have a comic panel that extends to the very edge of the page, make sure you draw beyond the “Bleed” margins, so that when the printer cuts the paper, there won’t be any white space left if the cut is a few mms off.

 

• What about the left and right inner margins of a page when it appears in printed book form?

Publishers rarely specify this particular statistic – they mostly concentrate on the “Safety, Trim, Bleed” margins. I personally like to add a 0.25″ margin to a page, depending on which side of it is the inner side (ie. the part that is in the spine of the book). But there are no particular specifications for that – it varies from creator to creator. Some creators don’t bother with this.

 

• I want to ask an question: What do you think is the “key” to success in manga?

It depends on how you define “success”, I suppose. Are you talking about financial success, critical success, or just being able to create a story that people like and will read to the end (this is harder than you may think)? I’ll talk about each anyway.

Financial success is a bit of a crap shoot. It’s hard to say what creates a “hit”, because certainly quality isn’t the major issue. There’s plenty of hit manga that are good, but not better than other equally-good manga that don’t seem to have the same exposure, the same fanbase, the same sales figures. I would say that generally-speaking, the biggest Japanese hits tend to come from Shounen Jump magazine, and involves action-adventure of some kind. Perhaps it’s marketing, perhaps it’s the age group. Perhaps like Harry Potter, these kinds of stories manage to translate well regardless of who you are.

Critical success is also a mixed bag. “Critical success” doesn’t mean the same thing as it used to, because these days a “critic” is just as likely to be someone who has a blog and writes their opinion on things they like or dislike. In Japan itself, there’s still a number of awards that are given out and they are usually a good measure of quality, but just because you didn’t get an award, it doesn’t mean your work isn’t good. With the proliferation of webcomics these days, a lot of good work isn’t awarded simply because people haven’t heard of it. Self-publishing has really changed the dynamics of publishing.

If you’re just asking about how to create a good manga story, well, that’s an easier question to answer. What makes a good manga is the same thing that makes a good story, in just about any medium. You start off with a good seed idea, and you start off with some good characters, and you create some good character dynamics so that these characters interact with each other in interesting ways. In manga especially, character development is important, since manga is serialised fiction. In movies you only get 2-3 hours, so you can get away with just a strong plot, but in serialised entertainment, you need to have strong characters to keep people reading. Without the human element, the story can’t sustain itself for all that long, even if it’s an interesting story.