PDF making! for people who hate doing this (Patreon)

I really don't like putting PDFs together, I've got so much chaos and having to order it is a little deflating, haha. Anyways I'm just going to share some tips on how I make the process a little easier, just some shoptalk for ya~

STEP 1: Procrastinate

   wait no don't do this

STEP 2: What are you going to do with this PDF

   Obviously you're gonna put it somewhere online, that's the point of PDFs. But right now you should ask if your PDF is going anywhere else. I personally don't know! But I can see a future where I get mad at myself for not formatting this to be easily printed, since that has happened in the past. So I'm going to format it to be print ready, using a template from a printer I'm likely to go with if I choose to print this professionally. I like and have used Ka-Blam for printing many times over the years, but Smartpress is good too... for ease of RGB setup (and because I like them), I'll pick Ka-Blam.

STEP 3: What's going in it/ how long is this thing gonna be

  Oh no I have to put content in this. Okay, time to prioritize my objectives

• make this content worth looking at, for a viewer. This means making sure the content is interesting/ entertaining, and not just stuff I want to put in
• make this content illuminating. This means addressing any common areas of interest, questioning, debate, etc. I've been keeping track of what readers seem most interested in, and it tends to be focused around Thrip (general) and Kalla, as well as changes that happened in the script during my hiatus. And people also do like to read background about characters, or "where are they now" sorts of deals, so that info will be appropriate for this kind of thing!
• make it long enough to be worth the reader's attention
• make it adhere to current branding or branch off in an appropriate way
• make it readable
• make it cute? like, appealing

 I also have to make sure that if I do print this, that it won't be some absurdly long or short document. Since most printers only print interiors in multiples of 4, I'll aim for something reasonable; 12/16/20 pages is my estimate for being long enough to have everything I want in it. I can always nail down this number as I go but it seems okay from where I'm standing. 

 STEP 4: Write some stuff down so I don't forget it immediately

   Again, trying to keep things loose so I can modify as I go, but this is what I'm starting with

STEP 5: Parameters

    This is mostly for visuals, but it helps to get some big parameters set. Things like: fonts, maximum and minimum font sizes, primary colors for text/ bg/ content fonts/ header fonts etc, formatting design decisions, etc. Thankfully I have a starting point, which is a version of the comic I printed last year for Worldcon, and some design decisions I made for the soft- and hardcover books. I think I'll likely carry these colors throughout, because it's a) easier and b) I already know I put thought into this months ago, so I'll just bank on old Der-shing being about as clever as present Der-shing. Mocked up a quick cover following these guidelines.

  Still have to get my shit together for interiors but at least I have a good idea of where I want to go just based on this. 

STEP 6: GET TO WORK

   I am on this step right now lol. I've decided to follow the concept notes above but to keep everything pretty loose so I can increase or decrease the number of pages I need organically! Since I know kinda what I'm going to work on now I just have to go through my extremely chaotic folders and look for the content I wanna pull. 

Next time: interior pages, how to edit your writing to make sure you're writing with intent and not just writing blind, and some (very basic) thoughts about exporting pages.  

To be continued...