So I just finished the process of getting the grydscaen manga “A Storm’s Coming” converted for Amazon Kindle. I previously had printed a 7 x 9.5 saddlestitch versions of it which I was giving away for free but now I have the ebook file complete with ISBN. I wanted to get that done.

I had originally drawn the manga which is based on the short story by the same name from grydscaen: tribute over a period of 2 weeks on 11 x 14 manga paper with pencil. The pages were copied down to 8.5 x 11 at a copy story and scanned into my computer. Dialogue was added in Photoshop converted and shortened from the short story and the book was put together in InDesign on a Windows 8 laptop.

The print version was done in Photoshop and InDesign and printed at a commercial printer. I did not use a comic book printer. I had to use InDesign to convert the PDF file and export it to JPG pages. I tried converting to HTML initially but that did not work. Once I had that I went to Kindle Direct Publishing and tried to upload the PDF but the ebook converter did not work correctly so I needed to find another way.

The process actually required using the JPG individual pages and the Kindle Comic Creator which I was able to download for free from Amazon. The application is a little buggy and would shutdown as I was adding pages. The manga is 48 pages so even though the app crashed about 20 times I was able to get the pages added one by one and save after each page was added which meant I could keep the file. The first time I tried it, the app crashed and killed the file. I created a front intro page and a back matter page with author bio and list of all the books in the grydscaen series. The app converted the file to mobi which allowed it to be uploaded to KDP.

Now I just have to determine how to price the thing. I wrote a blog post earlier about beta readers so I am asking my one beta reader what the price should be. The manga is black and white and a little rough so I don’t want to price it too high but I think with all the effort it took to create the thing that it should be more than 99 cents. I will have to wait till he calls me tonight and we can hash it out.

So I have a copyright on grydscaen: tribute and the stories in the anthology which includes “A Storm’s Coming.” I bought an ISBN a long time ago to use for something but never used it in the past so I decided to use it for this book and assign it to the ebook version of the manga. I had a barcode already for the ISBN and assigned that as well. I just bought a new ISBN today for the grydscaen: blue novella which I will publish late September on Amazon Kindle and is a standalone backstory concept based on Blue’s childhood and upbringing in the Psi Faction.

But back to the manga. Converting using Kindle Comic Creator was pretty easy in spite of the crashing of the app. Now I am in the process of setting up the other pieces of the offering. I had also had issues adding the Japanese version of “A Storm’s Coming” to my author page and had to call Amazon to get that setup due to the way names are listed in the language. The drawing of this manga took place over a short period of time and the next manga I want to create called “Rogue” based on the grydscaen short story and also the other new one unrelated to grydscaen called “graphic noise” will take much more time because I need it to be higher quality with backgrounds and more. I learned a lot from creating this manga and want to stretch myself farther which will include doing the illustrations for the 11 part “Rogue” story and new cover art. There will also be more episodes for the “A Storm’s Coming” anime in the future as well starting work early next year.

So what did I want to say in this blog post about converting a print manga for Kindle. It was easy. The hard part was laying out the book for print. The whole process was a labour of love and I didn’t think that I could do it but I set out to create a manga of grydscaen and I did it. It might not be award winning drawings but it was my dream and I reached it. I am proud of it. I am not a writer full time and although I have 7 books in the grydscaen series so I am familiar with the craft of writing and there are cover art and interior illustrations I don’t call myself an illustrator or manga artist usually. I mean I created a manga so I guess I am a mangaka which is still out for debate but I take pride in what I do and want to be good at it. Some of the drawings in “A Storm’s Coming” I am really proud of. Some things I still need more practice at but I will keep trying. Wish me luck. Thanks for listening.

Amazon, Kindle Direct Publishing, and Kindle Comic Creator, Photoshop and InDesign are copyright their respective owners.