Sometimes; at night; the future looked inside my window.

Those were the happy times. The times I used to glow on the inside. The times before they tried to lock the fun away.

(Refusing to be cryptic my ass.)

So, I offered myself two choices. And, yes, two roads diverged in a yellow wood; don´t they always.

One month was posting; frantic? frenzy? (for me at least) – The next was silence. Whiteout.

And that´s the sound of me burning the crickets you´re hearing.

Now what it actually was, was deliberation; deliberate. Thinking vs. tossing vs. turning. Deciding a decision. That´s what it was.

Now what it actually was, was me looking back at the future; and the future is me; and it looks like this. [coming the first week of march]

One thing that struck me as odd during the “review copies or no review copies” debabte over at Johanna´s is that nobody thought of something that´s a given in the music industry – at least the part of the music industry I used to inhabit – reaction sheets.

It´s really as simple as that.

If you send out unsolicited copies of your work – be it comics, records, books, gothic poetry or stuffed animals – make it as easy to react as possible. Sure, you say, the guy could just write me an email, but honestly… no.

I got a lot of unsolicited demos when I was still running my record label, and while I wanted to get back to everyone, a lot of it got buried under the strains of daily tasks, accounting and, not the least of it all, the dayjob. So more often than not I didn´t even contact people whose stuff I liked, but didn´t want to release, simply because there is only so many hours in a day.

Knowing this, one of the things I did when sending out promos of our records, was to include a little fax-ready sheet where people could simply tick off some boxes and return it to me.

Make it easy.

Also, in this age of the internet you could simply send out a PDF or have a web-form set up somewhere on a website, where the recipients of your promo material can get feedback to you in a matter of minutes.

A typical reaction sheet I sent out would have sections for the individual tracks on the record, if the DJ/reviewer liked it, how often he played it, if he liked the sound, and what the crowd reaction in the club was.

Like it, hate it, don´t ever send something to me again.

That could easily be translated to sections for artwork, writing, design, plot/story, genre and whatever else you want to know. 5-10 boxes ticked and one send button later you have your reaction, the reviewer doesn´t feel bad and everyone´s… well, at least not unhappy.

You can weed out the people who don´t like your work, or keep people in mind, who enjoy your art/writing but maybe not the genre of your story, for future output. Also, that´s how I handled it, two times no reaction and you´re off the list.

Adjust as you see fit; instant better comic industry.