Villainy, Chaotic Gods, & Self Publishing - An Interview With Aneeka Richins
/Written by Neil Greenaway
Aneeka Richins at Phoenix Comic Fest 2018. (1)
Aneeka Richins sits in rarefied air as a creator. In 2010 she started writing and drawing her own webcomic, Not A Villain. In 2012 she ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund a Not A Villain graphic novel and, in the same year, released the first novel in her prose series - Chaos Gods: The Wanted Child. By the time I sat down to chat with Aneeka at Phoenix Comic Fest 2018, she had just released the third novel in her Chaos Gods series and was only a week away from successfully funding the fifth graphic novel in the Not A Villain series. And eight years in she still does it alone, handling both the writing and art duties in her comics (and even illustrating the covers to her novels). I was eager to listen as she spoke about her growth as an artist, the changing publishing model for independents, and the struggles that come with original IP.
Chaos Gods: The Wanted Child - by Aneeka Richins.
Neil Greenaway: First, you have two series here: a prose and a graphic novel series. Are they connected?
Aneeka Richins: No, they are completely different.
NG: Cool. Can you give us a rundown on what each universe entails?
AR: The Chaos Gods series is set in a world of nine gods and the main character, Ki. To save her parents she has to train a hero destined to kill her.
Then Not a Villain is a graphic novel series set in a virtual reality world. The main character (Kleya) is a genius hacker. She’s trying her best to be good and not take over the world anymore.
NG: Anymore?
AR: Key point - anymore. It’s very difficult for her.
NG: Fair enough. So, the prose books I imagine you wrote alone?
AR: Yes.
NG: With the Not a Villain series, do you do that alone as well?
AR: I do it all.
NG: Oh wow.
AR: I do it all except make the paper.
NG: Well that is a shame.
AR: I know.
NG: (laughs) I mean where did all the artisan work go?
Not A Villain Volume 1 - by Aneeka Richins.
AR: I need to buy a tree farm but haven’t done it yet. (laughs)
NG: I see that you already have several books in each series. How long have you been working on each of them?
AR: The Chaos Gods series has been going for about nine years now - since I got the idea in my head and I started writing them. But published for about 5 or 6 years now. The Not a Villain series started out as a novel, my background is novel writing, but the different settings - the jumping around, the virtual reality section - I knew it would work better in a visual format. I couldn’t afford an artist at the time, so I started teaching myself how to draw and about a year later I started the web comic.
NG: Are you an artist who is never happy with your own art? Or do you like the way it came out?
AR: I... from the very beginning, I’ve never been a perfectionist with my art because I am learning still, and I know I am learning. I see the web comic as a way to improve and continue to experiment, so I’m not a perfectionist, no. With the storyline and storytelling, I am more of a perfectionist in that area.
NG: How far forward do you plot?
AR: A long ways. I have the ending and everything pretty much all done.
NG: Very nice. If you already know where it ends, how long is the journey between here and there?
AR: So that’s the difficult part. How I like to describe my plotting process is this: When you go on a road trip and you’re going from LA to New York, you know the towns you want to go through. You know the basic route and the amount of money you have to get to that route, but as you’re driving you may have a detour, construction, your car may break down. So you have to re-evaluate that. Or you’re like, "Hey I didn’t know that this cool place was so close to that town", so you add on. You may have thought your trip was going to take two weeks but it takes four weeks or more. I’m estimating somewhere between 20 and 40 volumes for the series.
Aneeka Richins at Phoenix Comic Fest 2018. (2)
NG: Wow.
AR: Right now, I just finished the fifth one and I’m working on the sixth.
NG: So, this is going to go on for a while then.
AR: Yes, it’s a very massive story.
NG: Jumping back to the prose novels just quickly: You do the art in the graphic novel. Do you also illustrate the covers of your books?
AR: Yes, I do.
NG: I notice the covers for the two series are done in fairly different styles. Is that on purpose?
AR: Yes. Actually, Not a Villain has several distinct art styles in order to show the different settings. The life setting is very simple, very basic - because it’s bandwidth friendly for everyone to log in. So, to make it look like that I made the art look very simple, very basic. Then you have the game which is a lot more intensive colors. Then to show when we are offline, or we are not in any type of virtual reality format I do an entirely different art style, a more realistic format. The reason why I did the different art styles is because when I was starting to learn how to draw I read up on several different artists. I read that they felt trapped in a cartoony style, or the one that they started with - particularly Fred (Gallagher) from Megatokoyo - and I didn’t want that same experience because I knew I would be going through this for several years. So, for virtual reality I thought, "Well, we can change the setting".
NG: In speaking to independent comics creators I find that a lot of times they will make a book in the beginning of their careers and just stop because they are not happy with the art they started with.
AR: And they will redo the art each time they restart. Correct, I saw that too - and even though I hate the art in book 1, book 2, book 3 and so on - I have a hard time looking at the art nowadays - but I still enjoy the story. I think the story is solid, I think the characters are good and I’m a firm believer that story is key, and art is second. You can have beautiful art but if you don’t have a story to support it no one is going to care. But I just know from my love of reading web comics that if it has a really good story, I don’t care if it’s stick figures. I will read it.
The Chaos Gods series, by Aneeka Richins.
The Not A Villain series by Aneeka Richins.
NG: I assume this is all independently published, do you self-publish everything?
AR: Yes I do.
NG: Have you ever thought about moving to a publisher, does that appeal to you at all?
Not A Villain Volume 2 - by Aneeka Richins.
AR: It depends on what they are willing to offer and what they will bring to the table. If all they want to do is take all the control and then 90% of the profit and give me the leftover 10%, then no.
NG: So you are happy with the self-publishing model?
AR: Yes, for now.
NG: Do you do any sort of crowdfunding?
AR: Yes, I do Kickstarters. Book five is going right now.
NG: As an independent publisher who’s been doing this for a while, what is your opinion: I find a lot people talking about the death of the current publishing model, do you think that that rings true? Do you see the way you are doing it as the new way forward?
AR: Yes and no. There’s a variety of people and everyone has their own way of handling things. I don’t think the old way of just – how do I put this? If you go with a traditional publisher, they are expecting you to market. They are expecting you to pull your weight and do all the work. What I object to is that you do all this work (which I’m already doing self-publishing) but with a publisher I only get 5% of the profits, while self-publishing I get 70% of the profits and I’m doing basically the same amount of marketing effort on both sides. Also, the traditional publishers are too behind on understanding the sales. When I try a new marketing tactic I can look at my sales and I see it day to day and I can say, "Ok this worked". Or if no sales were made I can say, "Ok don’t ever do that again". But with traditional publishing you don’t find out that information - those day to day sales. Sometimes you only get quarterly sales. So you don’t know if any of your marketing tactics worked, and you get those results 6 months to a year later.
Chaos Gods: The Servant Lord - by Aneeka Richins.
Let’s say you put in hundreds of dollars and 20, 50 or a hundred hours into this marketing tactic that they told you would work, and six months later you find out that it was a total waste. And you’ve been doing that for the past six months! That really hurts! For me I can start putting in the hours and see, oh this is not working. Change, change, change, change. I just think that if the traditional publishers want to stay in business they need to upgrade faster, which is really hard. It’s like us old folks. (laughs) Us 30-something people we have our own phone, our own way of doing our computer and then they have an update come in and it messes all your systems up and it’s really annoying and it’s really hard to update sometimes.
NG: I have heard a lot of people saying that just the lack of desire of original characters anymore - the fact that you can’t write an original character anymore or the company owns it - is pushing a lot of recycled product. In that way do you feel that offering something new, something people haven’t seen, has an appeal?
AR: Yes and no. The key point, especially when you are at a convention, is that when people are wandering around they are looking for a character that they have an emotional connection with already. That’s why fan art sells so easily - because the artist doesn’t have to create an emotional bond with the buyer. They see that character and they already have the emotional bond. You’re just feeding on that emotional bond with the art that you made. That’s why fan art sells so easily. With my original work I have no emotional bonds to the buyer. If they don’t know my character, they have no emotional bonds with it - so it requires me to be more proactive. I need to bring people to my table, I need to give my pitch, I need to hone my pitch and make it enticing enough that they will be willing to try and read it in order to develop that emotional bond. So that’s the aspect you have to look at. You can’t just draw art and expect them to develop the emotional bond that you personally have with your character. It’s a lot easier to sell an original character when you have a story to go with it.
NG: Ok. I notice that you don’t have any at your table, but have you dabbled in fan art at all?
AR: I’m afraid I’m the weird one who has never had any interest in fan art.
Not A Villain Volume 3 - by Aneeka Richins.
NG: I hear that a lot more, and - well honestly, I see it go both ways, I see people lean into it hard and I see people swear it off completely.
AR: I have friends who love doing fan art. That is just what they love doing. I have never had that passion. They do. I have too many characters of my own, I have no room for other people’s characters. There are artists who don’t have any of their own characters, they have an emotional bond with these others and that’s how they interact. That’s what the fan art is for to them.
NG: Do you hold any animosity towards those who do fan art?
AR: I understand the purpose of fan art, it has a lot of pros to it. I also see a lot of cons to it. And I know the frustration I have seen with other artists, where they make a lot of money with their fan art. Then when they try to switch to their own original work, no one is buying them in comparison to the fan art - which sold like hot cakes. So, it’s usually a huge downer to them and they give up on their original work because they can’t get the sales. It’s really because they were trying to apply the same tactic to selling both, but they are two completely different beasts. You can’t do that. I’ve always been wondering myself how – because fan art is technically illegal - you are making money off someone else’s hard work that they did. I don’t know. I mean, I’ve been toying with ideas of how to make it more legal. I mean I don’t think fan art should be banned, I just think we need to develop a way that it can be encouraged but at the same time you don’t feed off someone else’s work fully. You know what I mean? I just want to be more fair somehow but not banned. I know people love doing it and personally I have characters I love. If I see a piece of fan art that really gets a character - I rarely buy fan art - but there a few where I’m like, "I really like how you did that".
NG: Then feeding off that just a little, has anyone ever done fan art of one of your characters?
Chaos Gods: The Unified God - by Aneeka Richins.
AR: Yeah and it’s a lot of fun. I have not yet seen them selling it and this is why I want to figure out a way to work with it. Because I know eventually people will start selling fan art of my stuff - because I intend to get famous like everybody (just add my name to that long list) - and I don’t want to discourage people. At the same time, if I get famous it takes me 20 years. If I come to the convention and someone is selling my characters like hot cakes, and they don’t know the 20 years that I put in... I just feel like, "Wait a second". Again, that’s why I am trying to figure out a way to make this a little more fair.
NG: Going back to the books, you had said that the Kickstarter campaign for book five of Not A Villain would be up soon, with a release coming in October. How often do you put out a new Chaos Gods novel?
AR: Every year and a half.
NG: So, when would the next one of those be ready?
AR: Next year. This one just came out, The Unified Gods {Chaos Gods Book 3}.
NG: I think that just about wraps up the questions that I had for you, but I do have one final query. If people want to see more of you, experience more of the story, where can we find you online?
AR: You can type in Not a Villain in Google and find me or you can go to navcomic.com or aneekarichins.com.
NG: And is Not a Villain still posted as a web comic?
AR: Yes, it is.
NG: And how often does that go up?
AR: Twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays.
NG: Everyone reading needs to check that out! Thank you for your time.
You can also find Ms. Richins' books on Amazon.
Not A Villain Volume 4 - by Aneeka Richins.
Aneeka Richins at Phoenix Comic Fest 2018. (3)