Since taking control of his own distribution in 2000, Jim Munroe has built a small publishing business around his work--complete with podcasts, featured writers, and tee-shirts. His cross-platform media site built a community of varied interests, mixing up everybody from craft-lovers to science fictiion readers.
Just last week he posted a detailed essay about silkscreening as a promotional tool, featuring this guest-written introduction to the art:
"Artist Shannon Gerard broke out her silkscreening gear to make cool shirts and posters for her upcoming comic launch, and despite being crazy busy has shared her skills in this funny and detailed tutorial."
Before long, that essay flourished... landing Munroe's site on Make blog, generating tons of trackbacks, and bringing scores of new readers to his site through blogging cooperation. Amazed by this work, I picked Munroe for for my deceptively simple feature: Five Easy Questions.
In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing.
Jason Boog:
You have a great web community, with readers commenting on your new pieces and interacting with your work every day. How did you do it? How has this community affected your creative output? Any advice for a fledgling writer looking to build a similar community?
Jim Munroe:
What I've made is a pretty modest thing when you compare it to a lot of other communities, really.
I put a fair amount of energy into responding to everyone except the abusive assholes (I don't respond to people who yell at me from pickup trucks, either) and trying to put out information that's hard to get and useful to people via the Do It Yourself articles.
It affects my creative output in that I know there is a decent chance at least a hundred or so people will check out what I've made, even if it's odd and genre-defying -- this makes it easier to be motivated to finish experimental projects.
A book is easier than, say, the podventure, since I've got a track record with books.
» Five Easy Questions: Jim Munroe, Part Three from ThePublishingSpot
In 2004, two writers met at Eye magazine in Toronto, and decided to build their own side project. Instead of killing themselves by working alone at the breakneck pace of the Internet, Jim Munroe and Guy Leshinski combined forces... [Read More]
Tracked on: June 1, 2006 8:26 AM | Permalink to Trackback