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| Home: About Us: Join Us: Requirements for Comics and Illustrated Novels Requirements for Comics & Illustrated Novels Requirements for Visual Artists If you have a question that's not answered here, feel free to e-mail us at artistswanted@bucketoflizards.com. Click on a section to see that question and it's answer jump to the top of the page. Quality | Merchandising | Completeness | Audience | Format | Contact UsQUALITY This is the be-all and end-all. The other requirements may be able to be bent or broken under the right circumstances, but this one is paramount. We are much more interested in quality than quantity. Everybody’s seen those sites that have dozens (or even hundreds) of different properties on display. You click in looking for something to read, wade through a few uninteresting, poorly-drawn properties, then leave. Sure, there are hidden gems, but there’s just too much flotsam to wade through. We're not one of those sites. We won’t put up a submissions link and publish everything that’s sent to us. We won’t publish anything that’s less than professional. We would much rather have 6 quality properties running than 100 crappy ones. MERCHANDISING Let’s talk motivation here. We all want our properties to be read by the highest number of people possible and we want those adoring fans to tell us how much they love us, but let’s be honest -- the main reason we’re in this for is money. Our goal at Bucket of Lizards Creative Studios is to have our staff and each one of our Partnering Artists making a living off of doing what we love. How do we do that? We put out quality products and market the crap out of them! Every Comic & Illustrated Novel property at BucketofLizards.com will have it’s own accompanying merchandise. Some things (like original art) will be sold directly through BucketofLizards.com. Other things (t-shirts, prints, etc.) will be sold through partnering companies like CafePress.com. We also encourage you to pursue print publishing opportunities for your book. You might think that people wouldn’t want to purchase a printed version of a book you can get free online, but I guarantee you’re wrong. There’s just something comforting about holding that book in your hands, flipping through the pages instead of staring at a lit screen. Also, if you make your story compelling enough, they’re going to want the instant gratification of knowing how it ends. That said; let me take this opportunity to tell you that we are not a print publisher. We have some leads with small press publishers and printers and we will make every effort to help you either find a publisher or print the book yourself, but at this time we cannot cover your printing costs. SUBMISSION OF COMPLETE STORY BEFORE LAUNCH In a perfect world, everybody would follow through on their commitments. If they said they’d have their story broken down into 3 books and each delivered within 3 months of one another, they’d do it. In a perfect world, The Ultimates would come out every month. This is not a perfect world. We don’t want to leave our readers hanging. Your story, as printed in your Comic or Illustrated Novel, needs to have a definite beginning, middle, and end. There are no requirements for the specific length of the book, but it must tell a complete story. This doesn’t mean the story can’t be part of a trilogy or larger series, just that there has to be a stopping point at the end of every book. Think about it like this: when somebody’s getting their "fix" of your story every week, then they suddenly stop coming for a month, what do you think the chances will be of them getting back into it -- or more importantly, buying something from us? GENERAL AUDIENCE APPEAL The image we’re trying to project is that of "good, clean fun" like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and old Stan Lee comics. We don’t want to be known either for blood-drenched, profanity-riddled titles or for sugar-coated, dumbed-down children’s books. We want to focus on smart, dramatic titles that can be enjoyed equally by people of all ages. If your property doesn’t fit this image, you’re probably not what we’re looking for. PAGE FORMAT Our books are distributed weekly (or more often) through e-mail and on websites. Due to the format we’re using, it’s very important that most (if not all) of the page is shown on the screen without requiring scrolling. Since the viewable window on most e-mail programs is wider than it is tall, your book should mirror that. Ideally, your pages will be about twice as wide as they are tall (like a weekday comic strip format), but a square format is also acceptable (ads & links will be added). CONTACT US Still interested? Think you would make a good addition to the Bucket of Lizards family? Got some more questions you want answered? Feel free to contact us at artistswanted@bucketoflizards.com and we will get back to you as soon as possible. If you have a specific property in mind, go ahead and pitch it. Send us plot, character information, scripts, finished pages -- whatever you have. Just please warn us first if you are sending more than 1mb of files. |
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