Otaku Links: Anime is beautiful

Otaku Links

Mushishi2_09

  • I’ve started Mushi-shi and it’s very atmospheric. I loved illegenes’ post about how in Mushi-shi, storytelling is a healing practice.
  • In defense of weeaboos. Mike shared this YouTube video with me that explains that when we make fun of weeaboos, more often than not we’re making fun of young teenagers still figuring out their identities.
  • This is why Kami-nomi became an anime fan: because every now and then, he watches a show that renders him speechless.

Screenshot via Mushi-shi, episode 2.

Fandom from the inside

Fandom

fangirls

Ever since I started this blog, I’ve been more comfortable covering other people’s fandoms. From gothic lolitas to Homestucks, the fact that these other communities dovetailed with my own interests simply made it easier for me to write about them from an informative point of view.

So until now, I’ve been hesitant to share my obsessive descent into Yowamushi Pedal fandom.

I’ve liked shows before, sometimes a lot. I was crazy about Natsume’s Book of Friends last year. But it’s always been a passive, individual, and fleeting thing. This is the first time I’ve felt compelled to join a community and create things because of how much I loved a show.

I mentioned earlier that I started writing a fanfic. I finished it, and then I wrote two more. My fics are actually very popular, which isn’t too surprising since I write all the time and I do it for a living. I worry about giving away my livelihood like this, but let me tell you, it will be a cold day in hell before somebody writes on my professional work: “I read your story three times in a row and it got better each time!” Or even more touching: “You made me feel like I was falling in love.”

I have made friends purely because of the fandom. One is a girl whose writing I have admired for years, who I never had the guts to reach out to until I saw we shared this fannish interest. Another draws fan art of my fanfics and sends me gifts in the mail. It feels very special and rare to be in such a predominantly female space online, too—most of my aniblogger friends, for whatever reason, are male.

Until now, I never realized that reporting and blogging on fandom have helped me to keep a degree of distance from it. It’s been since middle school since I felt this heart-pounding, wobbly bundle of emotions about characters. That’s what makes it really embarrassing—none of this is real. I have no right to have so many feelings about something pretend.

So I hide it. I have been deleting my tweets more often. I started a new anonymous Tumblr to keep my fandom from spilling into the rest of my life. I have a weird lifestyle/career in which my blog, Twitter, and even Tumblr support a semi-professional representation of the public image I feel comfortable projecting to everyone—my family, my colleagues, total strangers. My new hobby authoring romantic fanfiction does not mesh with it in the slightest.

I love to write about fandom. But now that it has happened to me—and it really does feel like something that happened, like falling in a hole I can’t get out of—it feels trivial. It’s like some wonderful, horrible dream I should conceal until the inevitable day when the show is over and the spell is broken and I awake, my reason restored, and say “Wow, I sure had a lot of emotions about that show. Thank goodness I didn’t make a mockery of myself by sharing them on the Internet.”

But you know, I have never been drawn to other people’s fandoms in order to poke fun at them. I think it’s incredible when people are more invested in their fandom than anything else, to the point that it drives them to create their own works. To not give myself the same understanding and esteem would be hypocritical.

So this is the giant mass of guilt and embarrassment and deep, obsessive love that has been going through my head the past few weeks. Have you ever fallen too hard for a fandom?

Actual photo of me and my friends via Yowapeda episode 29

Otaku Journalism one month later: lessons in self publishing

Writing

blog_selfpub

It’s been a little over a month since I released my first book, Otaku Journalism.

For all I don’t talk about it, I still consider writing and then actually publishing a book to be the biggest accomplishment of my entire writing career. Everything I know and believe about fandom, journalism, and fandom journalism found its way into this book, and it’s so satisfying that I can just say to people, “Want to know what I think about that? Read my book!”

The fact that anyone can publish their own book online with very little overhead is one of the most exciting developments of our time. But I also think it takes practice to do it right.

Here are some of the things I learned from my first experience in self publishing.

I didn’t make a profit

Well, it’s too soon to say I won’t. What I mean is I didn’t make my money back in a month.

With traditional publishing, the ideal scenario is that a publishing house will give you an advance, and you use that to live on while you finish up your book. With self publishing, not only is there no advance, so the hours you put into the book are essentially unpaid, but you have to eat all the costs of putting out a book by yourself.

For me, that came out to a little less than $1,000. I paid for 14 hours of Lisa’s time to edit the book, and 10 hours of Kevin’s to illustrate the cover. Even though they gave me discounts for being a friend, they are both professionals and their work doesn’t come cheap.

I’ve sold fewer than 100 copies of the book so far and I’ll need to sell double that to make my initial investment back. I’m still really excited that Otaku Journalism has found its way into the hands of nearly 100 different aspiring geek reporters, but I may have spent too much to make it.

DIY is the way to go

Which brings me to my second point. If you’re putting out your first edition of your first self-published book, maybe you don’t need an editor or a fancy cover.

I thought I was being frugal when I formatted the edition myself—which is surprisingly easy to do if you know a little bit of HTML. That would have cost me another $300 or so to get done. But as much as it kills me to say, I probably shouldn’t have paid ANYTHING the first time around.

I can’t imagine Otaku Journalism without Lisa’s edits or Kevin’s art. But maybe I ought to have sent it out there in the rough first, just to see how it would do. My entrepreneur role model, Jen Dziura, talks a lot about starting business ideas on zero dollars. Then, I could use my profits (which would have been a few hundred dollars by now!) to fund a flashier second edition.

A business venture is a success only if it makes a profit. So perhaps it’s a better idea to save your money and perfectionist tendencies until AFTER you see if it’s going to be successful.

Promotion is a full time job

I thought my hard work was behind me when I published the book on Amazon. I was wrong.

I wrote to nearly 30 blogs about promoting my book. Seven of them responded. I got my day job to tweet about my book. I did a two-hour Ask Me Anything on r/anime.

Maybe you’ve heard about something called “passive income,” where you do work in advance and then earn money while you’re asleep. Books are often held up as a great way to set up this type of income stream. Pardon me, but this is bullshit. I have had to do something active in order to earn every sale (not to mention writing the book in the first place).

There are a billion other great books out there, and people aren’t going to find Otaku Journalism by themselves. I have to let them know it’s there. And this job will never be over!

In conclusion, self publishing takes time, money, and effort. I hope this doesn’t scare anyone away from doing it for themselves, because it was a seriously rewarding accomplishment—and I’m hoping to do it again, just as soon as I think of another book idea.

Do you have any questions for me about self-publishing? Let’s chat about it in the comments.

Otaku Links: Here, have some fanservice

Otaku Links

all_hail_virtual_boy

  • I was feeling guilty spending my time writing fanfiction instead of some kind of “higher” creative calling, and Aja reminded me of her fabulous essay on the topic: I’m done explaining why fanfic is OK.
  • What do you do about your significant other’s waifu or husbando? This is probably the worst advice possible! John and I frequently threaten one another with intents to buy sexy body pillows at anime conventions.

Screenshot via Tomodachi Life, the Nintendo answer to The Sims that I’m dying to play.

Why I’ve finally decided to study Japanese

Fandom

nadeko_studying

April has been a month of self improvement spurred on by anime.

I’ve run three 5k races (and about 25 miles of training for them) at some of my fastest times ever.

I wrote my first fanfic, followed closely by my second. It’s not high art, but it’s the closest I’ve gotten to creative writing in forever.

Now, I’ve signed up for classes to right my biggest regret and finally learn Japanese.

I’ve wanted to learn Japanese ever since I got into anime in sixth grade. My friend Kailer and I would reverently copy down words in kana like they were incantations. (Kailer took Japanese in college and though she’s modest, she is excellent at it now. My college didn’t offer it, so I took Italian.)

I’ll be taking classes at the Japanese Language School, part of the Japan America Society of Washington DC. I’m lucky to live in the city where it’s only four Metro stops away—so the real question is why I haven’t started sooner.

I am plunging immediately into Japanese 101 instead of 101 Prep, which covers just the alphabet, so I am determined to memorize the hiragana and katakana alphabets entirely before class starts at the end of April. I’ve been spending a lot of time using My Japanese Coach for DSi and these incredibly helpful alphabet matching games.

The downside to all this is that now I’m that kind of weeaboo. The kind The Onion was talking about in Report: 58% Of World’s Japanese Speakers White 23-Year-Old American Males. I’m sure the Tumblr social justice community would roll their eyes at me if they knew. If there’s a “right” reason to want to learn another language, it shouldn’t be, “so I can read more manga.” I think this is actually one of the main reasons I’ve shied away from learning Japanese—because I felt guilty for wanting it for the wrong reasons.

On the other hand, it’s hard to learn a language without a goal you honestly want to reach. It would have been noble to learn Italian to “better understand my family’s heritage.” But the real reason I learned it was so I would have a good time when I lived there one summer.

This is not going to be easy, and I still can’t tell “chi” and “sa” apart no matter how many exercises I do, but I’ve never felt more motivated. The ability to watch all my favorite anime without subtitles awaits me at the finish line.

Screenshot of Nadeko from Bakemonogatari. No idea what she’s studying for!