Happy Webcomics Book Launch Day!

Today is the official launch day of my book on Webcomics! I can't tell you how excited I am! This is the first textbook on webcomics, and it's only one of three books about webcomics that are currently in print! (The other two are both how-to books by Brad Guigar. Well-worth picking up if you're interested in creating webcomics, but they are for a pretty specific audience.) My book is intended to be be more broad in scope, and has more of an academic framework. I've tried very much not to write it in academic-ese, though, and it hopefully has a more approachable style that virtually anyone can embrace.

There is something of an irony in publishing a pulped tree version of a book about an exclusively digital media. I go into a little more detail on this in the book's introduction, but essentially the benefit I think this format has is that it puts all of the information about webcomics within the confines of a readily available unit. Just by the nature of the internet, there's almost certainly bound to be more up-to-date information online, but it has to be sorted and filtered from a huge collection of sources that would need continual maintenance to keep it organized at all. I tried to write the book as timelessly as I could, so it might not go out of date as quickly as the previous few books on webcomics have. (Which is one of the reasons why so few remain in print! The others are very much of their time!) I've actually been keeping up with webcomics news generally, and I am pleased that there's nothing blatantly outdated in it yet -- which is saying something, considering that I turned in my first draft a year and a half ago and I haven't been able to make any substantive changes since last November!

I'm really proud to see this get out into the world. 80,000+ words was really daunting when you consider most of what I write is in the 500-1000 word range. I'd like to think I pulled something together that's worthwhile and will contribute to people's understanding of a medium that not nearly enough people talk about! Of course, it also terrifies the shit out of me as there's a lot of people whose work I know and respect will likely read this, and I'd hate for them to walk away from it thinking, "Damn, Sean, that really wasn't all that good. I'm disappointed." Or just as bad, a bunch of webcomic creators read it and think, "What the hell?! Sean clearly doesn't know what he's talking about!" My various webcomics columns over the years never generated much feedback, good or bad, so I really don't know how this will be received. I did put a lot of work into it, so I obviously hope it's received well but, like I said, I'm also terrified it won't be.

While I wait to find out, I'm still happy to ramble on about webcomics with everybody! If you're interested in talking with me, I'd be happy to chat! I'm open to interviews, podcasts, AMAs... whatever outlet where you've got a webcomics-interested audience! (Which, frankly, should be ANY audience! If you're online, you're probably reading webcomics whether you know it or not!) Shoot me an email at sean@seankleefeld.com and we'll get the details sorted! I've spent a LOT of time thinking and writing about webcomics, and I'd love to share what I've discovered with everybody!

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