Start Book One

I do not have a story today, but I am bringing an announcement about MundoMendo. As you might know, from day one the goals of Mundo Mendo have been twofold:

The first goal is to allow me to create work free of clients, deadlines and limitations. A place where only the members and I get to decide what the stories are about. A garden where we get to play a game without rules or, like Calvin so cleverly did with Hobbes, playing Calvinball — a game which rules change all the time.

The second goal is to create a series of books compiled with the stories from the site: the Mundo Mendo Book Series (not a final title, but also not far). This week I just started to set things in motion to make it happen: I briefed my dear assistant Yukiko to look for a good printer in Japan who specializes in my favorite bunkobon format. This one:

The Tokyo y Yo Lessons

I first used this beautiful size in my book Tokyo y Yo. First published in Korean by my Seoul show's organizers, then in Spanish by Spain's biggest comic publisher and then self -published the English digital version, only available as an e-book on my website.

The process of making, publishing and selling Tokyo y Yo in these different countries, languages, formats, with and without a publisher, doing all the layout, design, drawing, writing and contact with printers, dealing with ©, royalties and contracts has given me a better idea of what it takes to make books in 2025.
The book industry of today is a Bizarro World industry; things are truly upside down and difficult to even understand: publishers are in constant clash with booksellers and distributors. These 2 lasts are the ones making the most money (bizarrely!). From what I have seen, if you publish in small runs (small print batch of a few hundreds) and pay for the printers and distribution yourself, making a book can be more profitable than going through the traditional route.
I do not have numbers to back it up, but self publishing today seems to me the most profitable way to bring a book to your readers.

This is why I'm strongly contemplating self-publishing this new book and the whole series. Arrange for the printing myself, selling on my website and here on Mundo Mendo and do the shipping myself too (well, I might delegate that part).

Books deserve boxes

Only tapping from the Mundo Mendo stories I have made in the last 7 months, there is enough material for the first book. Expect me to make more in the coming years. That means a collection of collections. I can't imagine a better way to wrap them than by creating boxes where the volumes snag together.

Two totally unrelated, but nevertheless interesting, links that have been in my mind lately:

The Watterson “Rules” ~ Nick Smith

Four simple rules to guide your creative endeavors as drawn from the career of Bill Watterson, the creator of _Calvin and Hobbes_.

Nick Smith

The Doll Series by Jonathan Ames

A Man Named Doll (The Doll Series, #1), The Wheel of Doll (The Doll Series, #2), and Karma Doll (The Doll Series, #3)

Jonathan Ames