The Phoenix Saga

ABOUT LAST YEAR:

Recently, we got an e-mail from a couple of guys currently in the Navy, who are interested in publishing comics. We responded that they should be prepared to flush a down payment on a house right down the toilet. Having spent some time hanging around the (sort of) ill-fated Highwater Books in our youth, there were some things we learned, that we share with people who have asked us about publishing comics:

Never publish anything without the cash in hand to pay the printers.

Don’t get into contracts on books that won’t fit the schedule, let alone your budget.

Keeping prices low is great, but too low and you’ll never get the money back to print anything else.

Funny that we couldn’t always follow our own advice. We initially underpriced our books and gave ourselves such razor thin margins that we occasionally lost money on sales because of shipping costs. Secret Acres originally intended to put out a book a quarter, which sounds like a plan, until you consider that we don’t have investors. We had to cut three books from our schedule, which kept us awake at night for months. As for cash in hand, well, throw in a divorce and a move and it was borrow or fold.

Yet we did not fold. We got picked up by a bunch of stores, Diamond be damned. Our guys were starting to show up in Best American, and on way more than a few end-of-year “Best of” lists. We were rolling full steam ahead through 2009. In 2010, we wised up and started this blog, which got us a lot closer to you than Facebook ever did. A book with our logo on it got an Eisner nomination. The future was bright, and then 2010 caught up to us.

Somehow, we’ve always had more mainstream press than comic blog hits. Chicago Tribune was no problem, but CBR? That all changed with Monsters. So beloved was this book that two people who never before noticed Secret Acres stepped up to review our next book, Curio Cabinet. Needless to say, they didn’t like it. They were quick to dislike it, and being the first to review it, they were picked up on the more popular linkblog sites.

We don’t need everybody to like everything we put out, and we aren’t in this to get rich, but we can’t really afford these beatdowns from the guys who think of Warren Ellis as “alternative.” We love everything we publish, but we’re not doing our jobs if we can’t get these comics into the hands of readers, and that doesn’t happen without reviews – and after those first two, there were no reviews of Curio Cabinet for months.

Then our best-selling book sold so well that it sold out. This was a nice moment for us, until our sales agent stopped sending us any orders for any our of books, pretty much. Stores were waiting, we were told, until Capacity was back in print to order anything. This was very interesting to us as we had a big, fat book to print at the end of the year in Gaylord Phoenix and we had to go back to press on Capacity, another big, fat book if we wanted to pay those bills. Suddenly, we were no longer immune to stories of a comics industry sales catastrophe in Q3.

So we hit the road. Apparently, all those comics news stories about 2010 being the “Year of the Show” were also correct. It was a bit a of a lonely road at times without our pals Bodega, Sparkplug and Buenaventura, but the shows saved us from the brink of disaster, and not just by putting money back in the Acres accounts.

We probably should have told the Navy guys that there’s nothing quite like having fans of the house. If Kevin Huizenga walks up to your table to thank you for publishing Curio Cabinet, you don’t go home and feel bad. If Lisa Hanawalt needs a place to sit at SPX, you blush when she asks you. When Mike Dawson asks if you’ll carry his mini-comics, you get a little weak in the knees. Watching someone pick up an Ignatz for a book you’ve published, you start to feel like it’s all going to be just fine – even if he never thanks you in his stupid little acceptance speech after whining for an entire day that he’s not going to win anything.

We did get Capacity back in print. We did get orders again, and lots of them, for lots of our books. We did get some actual book market distribution going, finally.  We did get a digital plan together, sort of. We did launch our big, fat, gay book, Gaylord Phoenix (which was particularly great for us as gay guys). We did find it fitting that our last review of 2010 was from Sean Collins, the guy who chewed us out, back in the very beginning, for publishing cat torture books like Wormdye – only this time he was calling Curio Cabinet a Book of the Year.

Even better, this Christmas, all the little Secret Elves who write and draw all the little Secret Acres books got together and made us these nesting dolls. There’s a doll from every artist we have published or are about to publish. We nearly passed out opening these. We are the luckiest publishers in the world. (Thanks to a certain friend for organizing all of these guys for such an incredible gift.)

God bless you, Q4 2010.

2011 will be an all-new, all-different story for Secret Acres.

First, the meh news – Only Skin is moving to 2012, assuming the world doesn’t end. Before you go freaking out, there will be a final issue of Only Skin for MoCCA in a couple of months, so you’ll get the ending, before curiosity gets to you. Or should we say you’ll get an ending? Trust us; Sean has some serious trickery up his sleeves for the over-sized book that Only Skin will be.

We know we said you’d be getting bit by I Will Bite You! in 2010 and this did not happen and it was part of the not so fun Q3 for us. Well, it’s happening right now. In fact, we just sent it off to the printers a couple of hours ago. You’ll forget all about the wait when you see all the pretty colors. Yes, there are colors and they are very pretty. You can check them out at MoCCA in person, but we may not be able to wait that long, either, as we are talking about an exclusive preview on a certain website.

Now we’ve already spilled the beans about our other 2011 book, but we’re going to clean up all those beans right now. Yes, it’s true, Secret Acres will be delivering Mike Dawson‘s Troop 142 to you at SPX. Now, we know what you’re thinking, and no, Secret Acres has never worked with an artist who has such a, um, history.

For the record, we didn’t poach anybody. In fact, Mike sent us his minis in the mail, like a normal person. One of us here at Acres, who shall remain nameless, checked the mail and spent a good couple days giggling at Troop 142. This one of us never made the connection that it was Mike Dawson of Mike Dawson fame – and clearly this one of us never clicked on any of the goddamn links to Troop 142 that the other of us sent him like at least ten times. Miraculously, we were all in the same room at the same time at SPX and, obviously, it all went well from there.

Furthermore, we’re going to be back on the road shortly, heading up to CCS in March to talk to the all kids at “Industry Day.” Hopefully, they will behave themselves or they won’t be getting any cookies. If getting going got us going last year, we’re going to be going from the go this year. Per our plans, you will be able to find us at MoCCA, Stumptown (if they let us in!), TCAF, PACC, SPX, APE, King Con and BCGF (if they let us in!). There may be a half dozen or so more. What can we say? We miss you guys.

Your Pals,

Barry and Leon

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