Formatting a Graphic Novel

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During our Covid lockdown back in 2020, I spent a lot of time working on a graphic novel. Since I am not an illustrator, I took pictures of 1/6 scale (GI Joe sized) action figures. After editing out the backgrounds, I inserted my pictures into a digital background to create a new composite picture.

Over time, I created an alternate reality in which the Nazis won WWII by releasing a virus as Allied forces closed upon Berlin in 1945. The virus aminated the dead. As the allies retreated in horror and disarray, they took the virus with them. The world's civilizations soon fell into mayhem and chaos.

Eighty-four years have now passed since Berlin should have fallen. The remnants of the Third Reich are fighting a losing battle against the undead. In our reality, a mild mannered innkeeper has found a portal into this dystopian alternate reality. After entering the portal with two companions, the rift closed, trapping this group far away from home.



I have now created three graphic novels. I tried formatting them to create a Kindle graphic comic and found that two of them were too long to be formatted. I am uncertain as to what I should now do. I can't shorten the novels without changing the storyline. I am also worried that if I make each individual picture smaller, it will make it hard to read the dialogue.

Does anyone have a constructive suggestion?

In order to get genuinely useful answers we need to know what you have to work with.

Do you still have the original raw images?
If not, do you have a version that doesn't have the text added permanently?

You could try recutting them in order to end up with four volumes instead of three.

You could also try a combination of resizing, recropping and altering of how storylines are handled to make them fit into three volumes.

Ideally, if you have the art without the text you have the option of resizing and recropping the images without the art being impacted. You also have the option of altering the text, which might help reduce the physical space taken up without reducing how readable it is.

Altering the storylines might mean little more than changing the pacing a bit, or it might involve dropping storylines that contribute little to the primary story.

All-in-all, you have a lot more options if you still have something resembling a 'master' to work from, rather than something closer to the original intended final product.

Thank you for your reply.

I have about half of the original images. Sadly I cropped, resized, or added bubble dialogues to the remainder. On the brighter side, I have all of the original digital backgrounds and figures stored in dozens of different folders. I could use these to remake any of the pictures that I copied over.

I am wondering at this point if I should put the pictures into a PDF file to see what happens when I run it through Amazon's kindle formatter (for novels) as opposed to using the Kindle comic generator.

I am reluctant to make shorter graphic novels because I'd have to reorganize my ISBN numbers. I have previously purchased 3 ISBN numbers, one for each of these novels. I have already written up the descriptions to file with these numbers. If worse came to worse, I could redo this, but that would be a lot of work.

The storylines also ended at what I thought were good cliffhanger ending points.

I take your point about having more options if I had retained the master composites instead of overwriting them. This will be an important lesson for the future.

I can understand why 4 shorter and cut differently volumes might not be the preferable choice, especially with the cliffhangers planned out, as well as the ISBN work already being done.

I feel like no matter what approach you take, it's likely to end up being a lot of work unfortunately...



...unless this works. If this works it's probably the least labour intensive option.

I feel like any version of resizing/recutting will inevitably involve going through frame by frame.

If you can condense it to three, that seems to be the preferred route. If that's not possible, a variation on splitting into four might be to condense the main story into three and with a fourth containing some storylines that you don't want to cut out but also can't make fit. Conceivably you could even give it away to people who have the main story (supposing you're selling the main three).

It kinda depends on how broad the story is though, it would be easier to do to a story like Game of Thrones (storylines all over the place, not always obviously connected) compared to one that follows one or a few main characters.



I speak from experience in that regard, although with music rather than visual art.

I think you (much like I'm prone to) might have gotten some of the steps out of order due to having never done it before, but at least next time around you'll know what steps to save until the end of the project.

Yep. Mistakes happen. I should have backed up my original pics before I wrote over them. On the brighter side, all of this has been a great learning experience. I'm much more technically competent with creating my graphics today than I was four years ago.

That's definitely the right way to look at things. Every first attempt at a type of project will involve a lot of learning.

I made a lego movie in high school and as much as it's not very impressive, if I ever make another movie there's lessons I've already learned.

I've made some not-very good music recordings over the years, and each time I do it my process gets better.

With one of my books, which had a lot of pictures, I turned it into a PDF first, and then uploaded to Amazon (otherwise, it was too large of a file). This works for a paperback edition--not for the kindle edition. I made a kindle version without pictures.

https://www.amazon.com/Peace-Corps-Volu ... 134&sr=8-1

Another thing you might do, to advertise your book, and since you have a lot of pictures, is to make a slide show of your pictures, with you reading the story, and upload to Youtube.

I did a video of just myself reading one of my stories.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy9tdC6nb0k

Probably very few (if any) people are going to want to listen to the whole thing. But, with your pictures, you could have a very engaging product.

That's a good idea. Thank you.

The Amazon digital library is so large that a lot of people will likely never even know that I have published.

In the meanwhile, I have decided that short of redoing a couple of hundred images due to issues with sizing and captions, it would be easier to tweak the storyline so as to make slightly shorter graphic novels.

I how have 3.5 novels and am working towards finishing the 4th novel before I publish through Amazon.



I had thought about selling these graphic novels as digital downloads through Spotify but if I were to do this, I'd have to get a business license which in Nevada requires quarterly returns and paperwork. I HATE paperwork. This is the main reason I opted for Amazon. If Amazon sells, I'm only liable for the income tax. I would have no responsibility for the sales tax.

Last edited by David1346 on 10 Jan 2024, 4:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Keep at it!