Everybody knows - that ever tried to get a personal project of the ground, write that album, finish that novel, etc. - that the production side is only the beginning. The REAL work, and the bit nobody enjoys, comes at the SELLING stage.
I've been a proffessional illustrator, sometime writer, and recent publisher for 20 years, and I know from experience it's actually almost madness to attempt such a thing these days, where we all have a blog, and our own personal interests to share with like-minded souls. In many ways we're all publically writing the story of our lives on the net, and as we do so the need for entertainment becomes more specialised and individualistic - unless we chose to join the critical baying of the bullies and the newly-voiced-bullied in the vast destructive firestorms that spring up periodically online. We can find everything we want now to privately mould our entertainment to our own taste on every level, and speak to they that share such tastes. It's a revolution - though clearly I'm not the first to point that out - and it's amazing and frustrating all at once. Amazing because we have so much individual choice. Frustrating because so many people still persist in buying what the media (read "big business") tells them they should.
As with so many indi publishers, we have no budget for marketing, nothing we have ever produced has made money, but has been done out of the need to maintain a forum for certain forms of the highest quality art that no longer gets the notice it deserves. We're trying to save something that's rapidly vanishing in this quickly homogenising world. We're championing highly specialised and individualistic work that will be lost otherwise - much as this site does. This is work to marvel at, and work to understand, and work that isn't pure eye-candy popcorn entertainment, but born of the genuine artistic intent and soul of it's creators.
Mam Tor's next book is Matt Coyle's astonishing "Worry Doll" (download the 15 page free PDF and check it out: [link]
(4.3 MB PDF File)
There was a GREAT feature today in the Daily Mail also:
[link]

Excerpt:"Coyle's work is groundbreaking. The imagery in Worry Doll is so far ahead of anything out there in terms of visual sophistication that it suggests a new way forward for the genre .. maybe a new genre altogether. "In a perfect world of graphic novel publishing, I'd publish these images without any words," Coyle says.
The text, which he wrote only after all the images were complete, is mostly dialogue. At times it reads like a dialogue between a patient and a therapist; at other times it might be two accomplices. Sometimes the dialogue refers to the page alongside it, sometimes it does not.
"It sounds confusing, and it is," says Coyle. "I wanted it to be a challenging read. Like the pleasure in not-knowing in David Lynch's films, much of the pleasure lies in the confusion of the images, and being in a strange, nightmarish world. But I can assure you that the book has a clear logic, and follows the clue-puzzle format of the detective story.
"Eventually," he says, "the whole thing does make sense if you want it to."

Matt has been working on the book for 6 years, and the pages have taken up to a month to create in black and white, and with incredible detail. It's the kind of independent artistic endevour that the current media (though, in his case the Telegraph have made an exception!) don't generally take an interest in. It's intensely personal, very dark and disturbing, and utterly fearless. I was amazed he couldn't find a publisher, and ended up coming to such a tiny outfit as MamTor. But this is exactly the kind of work we should be seeing more of, and not just in the fine art world. We need it to get into popular culture, otherwise we're doomed to mediocrity and homogenised rubbish as the template for creativity.
I wish I had an answer to the question I posed at the beginning. Most likely this book will struggle to get more than a thousand sales, despite the above coverage and general goodwill. It's tough, and it makes carrying on in this line of art and creativity a very hard choice at times. Commercially it's highly unpredictable, and critically unforgiving. But we do it, in the end, because we must. Because we love it.

Go check out Matt Coyle for yourselves. You won't regret it.

Worry Doll goes on sale in Feb, and is available in all good bookshops, comicshops, and [link]

Here's some feedback from a few of the comic industry pros:

"Disconcerting, enchanting and mesmerising all in one... an incredible
achievement."
.. Jock (The Losers, Faker)

"An amazing piece of work."
.. David Lloyd (V for Vendetta, Kickback)

"After seeing Worry Doll my only worry is that I'll never sleep again. Wonderfully creepy stuff."
.. Steve Niles (30 Days of Night)

"Surreal and thought-provoking, a beautifully-drawn evocation of insanity, a disturbing visual poem from the edge of reason: Worry Doll is the work of a master craftsman. "
.. Bryan Talbot (The Tale of One Bad Rat)

"I've just read the Worry Doll and I'm totally creeped out! It's an amazing piece of work on so many levels, and despite the subject matter I find it totally refreshing..."
.. Doug Braithwaite (Universe X, Justice)