Test poll results for mecha book

Thanks to the 2% of visitors that actually took the time to vote in the art book poll. There were 10 voters (not including myself) out of approximately 500 visitors over the last 7 days.

Most of you probably don't know about my first art book, Mecha Zone, which was self published and limited to 250 copies. It was a lot of work to make and even more work to sell, but I did have fun with it. I want to do another one, but I haven't been producing any personal mecha artwork over the last couple of years because I am always busy working. That means that I'll have to make a bunch of new stuff if I do make another book. The negative to that is the amount of time and effort it will take, but the benefit would be a lot of cool mecha art!Mecha Zone was printed using the latest print on demand tech. It was printed on glossy stock and even had some color pages. I was proud of it and got good feedback at conventions. Here are a few things I would change or add for the second book...

• Larger format: 8 x 10 instead of 6 x 9
• More pages: 100 instead of 60
• More color pages: At least 20 instead of 15
• More concept and progressive work showing how I designed each mech
• More text: I would like to include some back story or tech info with each design
• Mascot: I'm thinking of adding a cute mascot girl to narrate
• Pre sales: I want to offer pre-orders to my fans and newsletter members to help with production costs
• Higher print run. At least 300, but 500 would be awesome. Demand will decide this
• Higher price: This will be necessary to pay for all the stuff above. Probably $15 - $20 instead of $10
• Free sketches: I'm thinking of giving a free mech sketch to each person who pre-orders. You wouldn't get to choose your sketch, but I would make sure they were all good.

I'm considering doing a "mecha sketch a day" to help create content for the book as well as getting people interested. I would then use those sketches as the free incentives and/or sell them on the blog.

I wouldn't be able to use any of the licensed art I've done such as Exo-Force or Battletech and MechWarrior. I would try to cover many genres though so it would appeal to a broader audience. This isn't something I am doing to make money but it would be great to break even (at least). It could be turned into a "how to draw" book but I'm not too into teaching people how to draw like I do so they can then take work away from me, if you know what I mean.

The ultimate hurdle is simply the time needed to create the art.

Comments and suggestions welcome!