Q&A with Jason Asala

Jason Asala, whose day job finds him teaching fifth grade, has been a student of the self-publishing world for about a decade now. He self-published Poe before it was picked up by Sirius in the 1990s, and last year he returned to comics after a hiatus with Nantucket Brown Roasters. Jason shared his experiences from the trenches of creating and publishing small press comics, among other topics.

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JK: On your Website you recently posted a statement saying the next Nantucket Brown Roasters comic was delayed indefinitely. Can you tell us a little bit about why the project was delayed?

Jason: Well, sales are horrid on the title. I hit an all-time low with the recent solicitation of The Third Twin. I'm not sure why it is like it is, except that I think a lot of small-pressers are in the same boat. Those that get that magical nugget of good press, in the right place at the right time, seem to do well enough to keep afloat. Those that don't, like Roasters, fade away, sales-wise.

JK: So is this the end of Nantucket Brown Roasters?

Jason: Nah. Nowhere close. I know that people use the word hiatus incorrectly, but I mean it when I say that it's on temporary leave rather than permanent. I'd sure like for it to land somewhere - Image, maybe, or somewhere else that values creator-owned works and would like to see another get established. There are still quite a few chapters of NBR that I have planned out, and I want to see it come to fruition. Don't be surprised if you see an NBR story appear free on the House of Usher website someday, just so more stories can get out there.

JK: You've been involved in self-publishing for many years, first with Poe in the 90s, which eventually moved to Sirius, and more recently with Nantucket Brown Roasters. What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of publishing your own stuff versus going through a larger publisher?

Jason: I love the idea of self-publishing. Overall, the experience has been fantastic, except for one small detail - sales. Sales have traditionally been terrible, and almost always money-losing. Very few of my self-publishing forays have been profitable. Not that I'm too concerned about that short-term, but long-term, it's a must.

Having the ability to "do your own thing" is fantastic. Choosing the format, style, subject matter, and everything else is great and a tremendous luxury. On the other hand, when you make a misstep, then there's really no one out there to help you out and maybe steer you in the right direction. With a larger publisher, they already have the knowledge to narrow down the mistakes. I had to learn that myself. That being said, I make fewer and fewer mistakes as I go along.

I would, if everything fell into place, willingly take on other people's books and try to build House of Usher up to a medium-sized publishing level. I think I now know enough to do that, but, again, everything would have to fall into place, and I don't see that happening for quite some time, if ever at all. My experience with Sirius was fantastic, and I don't have anything at all against larger publishers. They were professional, and I became good friends with many of them. Poe ended at my request, not theirs, because I felt the wheels were spinning and it couldn't build an audience past the 2,000 mark.

I've had two books now that had a core, sometimes rabid audience, and I feel I let a lot of people down with first ending Poe and then putting NBR on hiatus, but I also know that it was out of my control.

JK: Speaking of Poe, I still see postings on message boards from time to time asking whatever happened to it. Whatever happened to it? Any plans to return to the work in the future?

Jason: I sincerely would love to return to Poe. I miss it so much that it's hard to describe. That was my first, truest love for self-publishing. Even though I look back at the early issues and cringe at the art and the storytelling, that was where I cut my teeth in this industry and I owe it a lot. Yes, I want to see it come back so I can finish what I started.

I've kicked around many ideas the past couple of years, the best of which was launching a magazine called House of Usher, in the old DC House of Mystery style, with a narrator and more than one story. The stories I would use would be Poe, NBR and most likely shorter selections and one-shots that are constantly swimming through my brain. I don't know how it would go, and that's why I haven't tried it out.

It's not the commitment that I'd worry about, but instead the labeling of "anthology" that has sunk many a great book. If I knew it would sell reasonably well, then I'd put it out quarterly as a 48-pager or so and then both Poe and NBR could continue on, keeping a lot of people happy in the process.

JK: Do you have any advice for future comic creators looking to self-publish their own material?

Jason: Lots of it. Over the years, I've been approached by many people about just that. I've shared many experiences, including what I did right and what I did wrong. I wasted money on advertising through the Diamond catalog, and it never amounted to much at all. I don't think it raised the sales numbers much, if at all. Maybe 5-10 percent. I'm shocked that they even get any advertising dollars from the small and micro-press companies. The return is terrible on the investment. It's insanely expensive compared to any possible benefit.

My main advice for anyone looking to get into the market would be to have a great book, ready to go. Have three full issues in the bag, and when you send it to Diamond, send everything in a great presentation package. If they like it enough, they'll spotlight it for you, and maybe give you a write-up that will definitely drive sales up for that issue. Do everything in your power to get that. Impress them beyond words. That's a tall order, I know, but be aware that that is the only way to get good numbers on an unknown book from an unknown creator.

Also, along with that, sink time and money into hitting every single online comic site. Spend your money that way, with good presentation copies to a reviewer from each site, trying to get as much pre-release buzz as possible so that those initial numbers are good. If I try another self-published book (which is inevitable, since I have that indy drive burning within), that's what I'll do. My most recent lesson is that the Internet boards and sites are pretty powerful. I think Speakeasy's Rocketo got a lot of buzz that way. That's how I heard of it.

Also, another piece of advice is to keep an even head about you, and don't get too overexcited about anything, good or bad. Realize that it will cost money to self-publish, and only after time will you reap rewards, if any. That reward may be outside of self-publishing, too, so don't limit yourself to just the indy model. A good friend of mine, Brian Clopper, reminded me that the amount of time that you spend on the bottom mirrors the amount of time you spend at the top. So, I've put in about 10 years at the bottom, so I'll be rewarded someday with a lengthy stay at the top, using all the knowledge that I gathered in my attempts to establish myself.

JK: Your first novel, the Great Wormwood, is available now. What is it about?

Jason: The Great Wormwood is really my pride and joy. It's about a kid who gets stuck in a completely foreign place called the Underworld, and he has to find a way to get back out. Fortunately for him, he gets mistaken for a long lost legend (the aforementioned Great Wormwood), so his life is spared. Unfortunately for him, he has to hunt down and capture a creature known as the Hob before he's allowed to go back to the surface.

It's for the "Harry Potter crowd," except there's no wizards and talking hats and such. It's written so that adults and middle-schoolers would like it equally. Three teachers so far have read it to their classes, and they (the kids) have loved it! I have to say, though, that it's probably more of an adult story that's disguised as a young adult book, because there are many levels to it, and I think it's very well thought out and intricate. Much more so than the average juvenile book. Longer, too, at about 400 pages. So far I've had incredible feedback from it - the best, in fact, from any project I've ever done.

JK: How was writing a novel different from your comic work? Was it more or less challenging to tell the story completely in words versus words and pictures?

Jason: Writing a novel was a lot different from doing comic work. I loved every minute of it, and I long to be able to do it full time someday. It also taught me how to write better comics, with the planning that had to go into it and how so many things are woven throughout. I think that the novel is harder, because you can't show anything with illustrations as you can in comics, and you can't drown out the story with too much detail, which can easily happen. The two types of storytelling are so different from one another that it's hard to compare. The sheer length of the novel was more daunting than any comic project has been.

I'm currently working on the sequel to The Great Wormwood, called The Fig of Justice. It'll take a while to finish, though. Probably two years at my current pace.

JK: Did you consider doing it as a graphic novel?

Jason: Nope. I have waaaaay too many graphic novel ideas, so I didn't need Wormwood to be one. I have planned writing a novel for many years, and I finally got the chance.

JK: Are you still teaching? As a teacher, do you have any thoughts or even experiences you could share on using comics in the classroom? And did you share your comics with your students?

Jason: Yes, I am still teaching. I love every minute of it, and I look forward to going each and every day. Even though I mentioned that one day I'd like to be writing full-time, I sure would miss the classroom. Maybe after a few more years I'll be ready to leave, because it is draining, but I don't want to leave right now.

Even though I'm really open to my students, I haven't shared much of my publishing endeavors. I don't think Poe is all that accessible to fifth graders, and I would be in an awkward position of having students ask to buy my products, or go to my website and purchase them (that has happened a few times, mostly due to Google searches or the like). That makes me feel very uncomfortable.

I did, however, read The Great Wormwood to my class last year, but I first wrapped the cover. They didn't know I wrote it until after the majority of the book was read to them, and only because another teacher accidentally blabbed. It was one of the most rewarding times in my life, though, because they were sooo into the book, and were just absorbing everything as I read it. They were flabbergasted when they found out that I wrote it, and so was I due to their incredibly positive reaction throughout.

I've done a couple of short comic book lessons throughout the years. One of them was reading and then creating a mini-comic. It was a lot of fun, but the curriculum in our district is so packed that I never really find any time for a long project like comics.

JK: You mentioned on your site that you had another comics project you were shopping around to publishers ... how is that going? Can you give us any details on what it’s about?

Jason: There's a series that I'm currently developing that has to do with L. Frank Baum's Oz. I've always been a fan of the stories since I tore through them in fifth and sixth grade, easily reading a dozen or so of the novels. It's a different take, though, more akin to Gregory Maguire's Wicked than anything Baum wrote.

Also, it's an homage of sorts to Mignola's Hellboy. I've been such a tremendous Mignola fan for many years, and the series is in honor of his storytelling on his flagship book. The world of Oz is very rich, once you get past the 50 percent that's completely silly and doesn't need to be used. I'm planning on having some of the shorter stories in the series to first be posted on the Usher website by mid-winter. If it sees actual print, then I'll be thrilled, but that's probably a long way down the road.

I've broached other publishers, inquiring about publishing possibilities. The market's tight, and I think I should complete a project, or at least quite a bit of one, before I should assume that any publisher would even be interested.

I've had a busy year so far. My wife and I have our two girls, one that started school this fall, and one that is about sixteen months old and is a complete, crazy handful. It's hard to get anything done when we're home, actually, because she's very high maintenance. By next summer I should be able to cobble together something to show to other publishers, and then I'd be able to split the summer between hammering out the Wormwood sequel and getting a good start on a comic story. Or, possibly, I'll be working on other NBR stories for another publisher. Next summer seems so far away, and I guess anything could happen.

For more information on Jason's work or to buy his comics & novel, check out The House of Usher Website.

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