Is my graphic novel project DOA?
(Art by Ralph Barrientos, Lettering by KamThings)
I'm an unpublished writer. About a year back I wrote a 140 page dark fantasy graphic novel script, with the intention of submitting it to agents. But as I was learning more about the industry, and posting my query letter for reviews, I started getting some worrying comments that suggested the project wasn't viable in the first place, that no agent would pick it up because no publisher would consider it. Not for the content itself, just the circumstances around it. So I got cold feet and never sent out any queries. So the script has been gathering dust ever since.
Thing is, I'm still really proud of it, it's some of my best writing yet, and I'm thinking... if I already have the script, and I paid an artist and letterer to make gorgeous sample pages, I might as well query it. But even that would take time and effort, so if the script is completely DOA it's not worth it. But now I can't get that thought out of my head, so I figured I'd ask around to see if anyone has more insight.
Here are all the things that might work against the project:
- I hired an artist to make the sample pages. His work is incredible as you can see, and he's on board for the full project if it gets picked up, but of course that means the publisher would need to pay enough to satisfy his rates (which are very generous at $75, but still, apparently that's not a given in the industry). At least, he was on board last we spoke, I'd have to ask him if his schedule would still allow this.
- There's technically a co-writer and co-owner of the IP. I came up with the story and wrote the script, but the world and most of the characters were created by someone else. We don't want a joint writing career; they're not even really a writer, this is the only IP we really want to collab on.
- On that note, while this graphic novel works as a standalone, we still want to do more with the IP later. This was technically written as a spin-off to a larger story that doesn't lend itself very well to the graphic novel format (we were hoping for a comic/manga series, but realistically it's probably gonna end up being a series of Visual Novels).
From what I understand, the industry doesn't like any of these things.
The current plan was to eventually turn this script itself into a Visual Novel and just make it ourselves, but that'd require extensive rewriting, and I think it'd probably be a weaker version of the story than what I have currently written. There'd be a few advantages I suppose, but one of the draws of the story is you not being quite sure what's going on in the main character's head, which would be fundamentally changed in a VN. The atmospheric feel would also not quite get across. Plus, I'm not entirely sure we'll ever get around to being able to make those VN's, which is yet another reason I'd like to get this script out there - if that massive and ambitious story never materialises, at least a small piece of that universe and those characters would see the light of day.
So yeah, how screwed are we from the get-go? Is it worth a shot?