In a recent article for SLJ, Henry Herz asked “Why Anthologies?” Great question that I can now answer, having embarked on an adventure with 33 other graphic novel creators to produce a middle grade, crowdfunded graphic novel.

Why did I sign up to be part of this? Well, I’m part of Kids Comics Studio, a membership program of Kids Comics Unite (KCU). When Janna Morishima, a literary agent and owner of KCU, proposed the idea, my first thought was “how are we going to pull this off?” Followed by, “I’ve got to see how this works.”

So, I signed up and it has been a wild ride. Or should I say wild “journey.” That, after all, is the unifying theme for our anthology.

Aside from my curiosity about how it would all work, I was excited to learn how to crowdfund, and even more excited to work with an illustrator. I’m an author-only, and alas, lack the skills to draw the images I see in my own head, so I was very excited to work with an artist. Watching an artist translate my words into their own visual version has been so fun and amazing, which I’ll be writing more about soon.

For now, I want to focus on how we even got started. As you know, the publishing industry is fraught with peril—or at least a lot of gate keepers, budgets, and deadlines.

A lot of stories never make it into the hands of readers that probably should, which is why self-publishing and crowd-funding have become popular ways to bypass the keepers of the gates to get products directly into the hands of those who want them.

But, the publishing industry also does a lot of things to make a book really shine. As a group, we wanted a stellar product, but we also wanted to crowdfund, so we basically had to become a publishing house staffed with volunteers that held ourselves and each other accountable for deadlines and quality.

That’s where the various committees came in. The Publishing Committee was the hub. Each committee had a representative there to keep information flowing between the groups and to make the decisions affecting the whole anthology.

The Editorial Committee brainstormed and selected the theme, then provided quality control for each stage of the process.

The Design Committee covered all the aspects of getting the anthology printed—paper, size, printers, cover, etc.

And the Marketing Committee, the one I’m on, is responsible for finding ways to tell you all how amazing our anthology is going to be.

Marketing is the largest of the committees with several subgroups: a newsletter and blog team, a graphics team that also handles social media ads and helps all our branding stay consistent across platforms, a documentary team that produces video content, and a crowdfunding team that produces the landing pages and other content we’ll need once we hit launch day (which is April 22, 2025, by the way, so keep that in mind). We also had a research team early on that helped us gather the info we needed to create our marketing plan.

As you can see, it’s a lot of work. Imagine doing all that on your own. This is just one reason why I’m excited to be working with so many talented creatives. Not only do I have a chance to dust off my marketing background, but I also get to learn other skills from a wide range of experiences.

There’s so much power in working together as a community toward a common goal. This anthology has expanded each of our audiences, increased our confidence in marketing ourselves, and expanded our abilities to create a finished product from start to finish. It’s a little miracle, and we could all use more of those these days.

Not to mention how all of this is making a better book for you to enjoy. I love Herz’s description in his article that anthologies “are the literary equivalent of a buffet dinner.” So true, each one of us brings our own flavor of stories to the table, which will make for a literary feast for all our readers.

Oh, and did I mention that one of things editorial and marketing did together was to brainstorm a title? Well, we found one: Let’s Go!: A Kids Comics Studio Anthology

The title sums up all the work we’ve done so far. We didn’t really know how to do everything, but we knew that we had enough collective expertise among us, plus an idea of what we wanted and what it would take to get there, then we just went for it.

And we’re still going strong. Has it been easy? No. Has it been frustrating at times? Yes. Has it been worth it? A million times yes. So hop on, buckle up, and join us on our journey.

Let’s Go!

P.S. Check out this amazing interview with agent Janna Morishima on our blog: https://kidscomicsunite.com/planting-seeds-for-a-comics-anthology-an-interview-with-kcu-founder-janna-morishima-part1/

And sign up for our newsletter: https://kidscomicsunite.com/anthology/newsletter/