Digital Comic Museum

General Category => Comic Related Discussion => Topic started by: srca1941 on September 23, 2016, 06:17:03 PM

Title: Amazon's POD books - and - What are your favorite Nedor stories?
Post by: srca1941 on September 23, 2016, 06:17:03 PM

Scans are great, but to me nothing will ever replace the feeling of a physical book. For a long time, I've thought about making my own reprints with something like Amazon's print on demand service, Createspace. I'm not talking about something that I'd sell commercially (although I have thought about, planned, and done some work along those lines at different times), rather I'm thinking of just some one copy only books for myself so that I can have paper copies of some of my favorite PD Golden Age books to read whenever I want. Things that nobody else is selling commercially, like Nedor/Better/Standard material to start with. Amazon seems to have a pretty decent price for something like that. I could print myself a 500 page paperback book for $35.85. That's completely in line with the MSRP and page count of Marvel's Epic line. Selling it commercially would be much higher, $60 before it would even turn a minuscule profit on Amazon, and it would lose money in their expanded distribution. That just seems a little high for a paperback, and profits would be too slim to deal with the hassles of setting up a small business, so I'm just looking at this as a personal project right now. Additionally, with such a large page count, properly restoring each page, which I'd want to do for a commercial endeavor, would take forever. I plan to do just a few simple Photoshop actions to make the pages look nice enough to read (i.e. make colors pop and remove most yellowing), put it in Adobe InDesign, make a table of contents, a cover, and send it off to print. Nothing too fancy. Ideally, I could do one every few months or so. Just whenever I felt the need/desire. Fox, Ace, and Quality volumes are also high on my list if all goes well with this initial book.

Does anyone have experience with Amazon's POD service? Is the quality good enough that this would be a worthwhile effort? I know that there are POD GA reprints for sale there, but as I said, the markup is just too high for me to want to try them. Plus, from what I've seen, absolutely no restoration work at all has gone into them. I'd rather save my money for my own books that will meet my own standards.

All that said, my next step is to pick out stories to put into my Nedor book. Superheroes (including Supermouse) are priority, but I'm open to just about anything from the company. Black Terror and Pyroman are my favorites, and I imagine I'll have plenty of them. I have a few stories in mind, but I don't want a book with all material that I've read, nor do I want to just pick things at random, so I'm asking for opinions. What, if any, Nedor stories have stuck out in your mind as particularly good or unusual, either from a story standpoint, or artistically? Depending on their length, I can probably get 40 or so stories in a 500 page book, so the more suggestions, the better. I'm wanting to stay away from anything fiche just because it doesn't look too good to start with, but if there is a really good story with a fiche fill page or two, that would be OK.

-Eric

Title: Re: Amazon's POD books - and - What are your favorite Nedor stories?
Post by: erwin-k on September 24, 2016, 12:01:22 PM

Hi Eric,


I'll start off with a question. Are you planning to use color on the interior pages? If so, there's a whole other set of processing to get the B&W reproduction looking good.


After Amazon bought CreateSpace they began to require that POD authors & publishers use that service in order to get listed on Amazon.com. Before that a huge percentage of independents used Lulu.com.


Lulu you could use just as a printing service to provide copies that you market yourself. The only way to do that at CreateSpace is/was to omit the last step in the publication process. That means that all the copies you might order are marked on the last page, in large letters with the word: PROOF.


Under my Modern Knights Press imprint I have self-published two prose books. The size is 6 by 9 inches. Both feature my second generation pulp mystery man The Voice. I also have eight books I've contributed to published by Airship-27 and three by Pro Se Productions. They are all prose titles.


My advice, as far as content for your proposed Nador collections, is simple. Anthologies, or samplers, of the line's different characters. I picked up a few issues way back when. I generally like what I saw. However, reading any number of issues here on DCM, I've found the stories to be more repetitive than I like. (I mean, did the Fighting Yank ever complete a case without being rescued by his ancestor?) Perhaps you could pick a year and month, then put all the super hero titles from that month into an anthology. Just a suggestion from my personal POV.   :)

Title: Re: Amazon's POD books - and - What are your favorite Nedor stories?
Post by: Yoc on September 24, 2016, 12:42:37 PM

Hi Eric,
Wow, good luck with your POD project - I hope you will eventually show us a preview of the cover and what you decide to use for contents.
Of course you will be using the wonderful Meskin / Robinson Black Terror stories.  And I'd include the silly Black Terrier story from Real Funnies 01.  Maybe a Jetta story and something besides Supermouse from Coo-Coo.  Pin-Up Pete was an oddball one for them.

Have fun!
-Yoc

Title: Re: Amazon's POD books - and - What are your favorite Nedor stories?
Post by: srca1941 on September 24, 2016, 03:28:00 PM

Yes, the whole thing is in color. I've done conversion to B&W line art before, it can be a bear depending on the quality of the source material and the original printing. I did most of a whole book of Black Terror 10 or 11 years ago before the project fizzled out. I had good results as you can see below, but I wouldn't even think of doing a 500 page book like that just for myself.

From Black Terror #16:

(http://s26.postimg.org/7rsyvddh5/BlackTerror16_BlackTerror105.jpg)From Black Terror #25:

(http://s26.postimg.org/j6u1dqf7d/Black_Terror25_Black_Terror108.jpghttp://s26.postimg.org/j6u1dqf7d/Black_Terror25_Black_Terror108.jpg)From America's Best Comics #6:

(http://s26.postimg.org/k1bzm0xo9/Americas_Best06_Black_Terror07.jpg)-Eric

Title: Re: Amazon's POD books - and - What are your favorite Nedor stories?
Post by: srca1941 on September 24, 2016, 03:35:21 PM

Here are the kinds of images I'm using for my color reprints:

The same Black Terror #16 page:

(http://s26.postimg.org/8mk3v5apl/02_BlackTerror05.jpg)From America's Best Comics #2:

(http://s26.postimg.org/6th76tpix/01_ABC02_BT07.jpg)From Startling Comics #27:

(http://s26.postimg.org/qdvq9lq49/02_SC27_FY10.jpg)-Eric

Title: Re: Amazon's POD books - and - What are your favorite Nedor stories?
Post by: srca1941 on September 24, 2016, 04:50:11 PM

Quote from: erwin-k on September 24, 2016, 12:01:22 PM

Lulu you could use just as a printing service to provide copies that you market yourself. The only way to do that at CreateSpace is/was to omit the last step in the publication process. That means that all the copies you might order are marked on the last page, in large letters with the word: PROOF.

Good to know. That means I need to be sure to leave the last page blank. Otherwise, that doesn't really bother me. These are just for reading a physical copy after all.

Quote from: erwin-k on September 24, 2016, 12:01:22 PM

My advice, as far as content for your proposed Nador collections, is simple. Anthologies, or samplers, of the line's different characters. I picked up a few issues way back when. I generally like what I saw. However, reading any number of issues here on DCM, I've found the stories to be more repetitive than I like. (I mean, did the Fighting Yank ever complete a case without being rescued by his ancestor?) Perhaps you could pick a year and month, then put all the super hero titles from that month into an anthology. Just a suggestion from my personal POV.   :)

I'm planning company or genre themed anthologies for my books. It just makes more sense from a reading standpoint to get as much variety as possible, and because of the sheer amount of GA material out there that I want to read.

I went ahead and plotted out the contents last night because I was so excited about the book (and still am). Rather than trying to be ordered and logical about it, getting in x-number of Black Terror stories, or putting everything in chronological order. I just went somewhat at random, deciding what character I wanted next and finding a story that looked good, or randomly picking a book from my Nedor folder and including the first story that stood out to me. The only special planning that went into it was saving the good post-war stories for the last 150-ish pages and making sure the story order worked to fit in double page spreads. I also tried to avoid original issues I had in my collection, or AC reprints that I have, even though they're black and white and these will be color. I think I did select a few from Bill Nolan's Pure Excitement Comics, but that's OK. I wanted as much new stuff as possible and I tried to get at least one story of most of the superheroes. A few minor ones got left out, but I'm sure I'll have a vol.2 at some point, and a vol.3, and 4, and... Actually, I figured out that with 500-ish page books, it would take over 35 volumes to fully collect Nedor's superhero books (sans Supermouse). Anyway, here is the list of what I came up with for the first volume:

 

1	Black Terror	America's Best Comics #2
2	Fighting Yank	Startling Comics #27
3	Pyroman	Startling Comics #20
4	Doc Strange	Thrilling Comics #33
5	American Eagle	Exciting Comics #33
6	Black Terror	Exciting Comics #33
7	Wonderman	Mystery Comics #4
8	American Crusader	Thrilling Comics #26
9	Hale of the Herald	Thrilling Comics #26
10	Four Comrades	Startling Comics #23
11	Fighting Yank	Startling Comics #25
12	Woman in Red	Thrilling Comics #10
13	Liberator	Exciting Comics #15
14	Doc Strange	America's Best Comics #11
15	Supermouse	Coo Coo Comics #7
16	The Sphinx	Exciting Comics #12
17	Black Terror	Exciting Comics #44
18	Pyroman	Startling Comics #38
19	Grim Reaper	Wonder Comics #6
20	The Oracle	Startling Comics #20
21	Text - Fighting Yank	Fighting Yank #4
22	Fighting Yank	Fighting Yank #5 - Story 1
23	Captain Future	America's Best Comics #5
24	Pyroman	America's Best Comics #8
25	American Eagle	Exciting Comics #31
26	Four Comrades	Startling Comics #27
27	Doc Strange	Thrilling Comics #49
28	The Ghost	Thrilling Comics #49
29	Commando Cubs	Thrilling Comics #41
30	Black Terror	Exciting Comics #12
31	The Mask	Exciting Comics #2
32	Ace Buckley	Startling Comics #7
33	The Scarab	Black Terror #20
34	Captain Future	Startling Comics #36
35	Black Terror	Exciting Comics #50
36	Miss Masque	Exciting Comics #53
37	Doc Strange	America's Best Comics #27
38	Supermouse	Supermouse, the Big Cheese, Summer Holiday #1 - Story 5
39	Black Terror	Black Terror #19 - Story 1
40	Miss Masque	America's Best Comics #30
41	Fighting Yank	Startling Comics #45
42	Black Terror	America's Best Comics #30
43	Fighting Yank	Fighting Yank #26 - Story 3
44	Doc Strange	Thrilling Comics #64
45	Phantom Detective	Thrilling Comics #61
46	Pyroman	America's Best Comics #24
47	Black Terror	Black Terror #27 - Story 3
48	Fighting Yank	Fighting Yank #25 - Story 1
49	Black Terror	Exciting Comics #67
50	Text - Black Terror	Black Terror #26
51	Black Terror	Exciting Comics #64

I'm kind of disappointed that I didn't get in some late-40s stuff like Pantha, or Lance Lewis, but again, there's always vol.2. I wanted to give more priority to the early-mid 40s material since less of that has been reprinted.

-Eric

Title: Re: Amazon's POD books - and - What are your favorite Nedor stories?
Post by: Yoc on September 24, 2016, 09:24:45 PM

Phew, that's a lot!  Show us a cover when you got one Eric.
Good luck!

Title: Re: Amazon's POD books - and - What are your favorite Nedor stories?
Post by: bminor on October 03, 2016, 07:05:48 AM

Wow! Looks like a tremendous amoun of work!
Good luck!