By 
The Regeneration of Alien Characters
For over 10 years I’ve been producing a series for children called Alien Characters. The main idea was that there should be an ‘alien’ series to go alongside ‘Mr Men’ , ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ , ‘Grug’ and other book series of that square size.
I thought I was on to a winner by making Alien Characters the first childrens’ book series on Amazon about aliens, being the first digital series about aliens for children, and adding a Youtube animation series to go with them.
The downside, for a starving artist, is that children’s books need to be illustrated. And when a book requires 17 illustrations, and each image costs between $100 and $200 to make, you can see how expensive a 70 book series is going to end up right there. So, in 10 years, I’ve only been able to do about 28 of the books.
Yes, that’s about $50,000.00! Not to mention all the marketing, the time spent, the online advertising and the like. As well as money spent on translating some into other languages.
I’ve probably spent over $80,000.00 on the series. Which is a shame considering I haven’t made much back. Probably $500. All this has meant quite a number of months on cheap tinned fish and rice, and a strong feeling of failure. Oh, and some of that was on credit card which I’m still paying off as part of a debt collection payment plan, so add interest to that figure.
Problems I encountered
The size I wanted wasn’t an industry standard for print-on-demand books. The closest I could choose was double the size, but still square enough to fit in with other series.
The square size wasn’t one for expanded distribution, so it was only available in a limited number of places around the world as a print book.
The minimum cost for a square-sized title with colour inside to be printed was $9.35 per book. Which meant I was selling it at between $9.50 and $9.99 because, who would pay more than that, plus shipping, for 40 page kids book? And, in that sense, I couldn’t compete with similar shaped but smaller books selling for $4.95 at cheaper ship rates.
Of course, a smarter businessman wouldn’t have even started it, but a creator like myself wants to create. So, I wasn’t going to let money get in the way of getting my creations out there.
Unfortunately, after 10 years of being positive about it, my passion for creating this series has now dissolved into disillusionment, disappointment and depression, so I had to make a difficult decision about it.
I’m definitely enjoying writing the Stellar Flash series, and I really want to work on my next Science Fiction Weekly series. I’m also eager to see what future Alien Dimensions and Fantasy Short Stories releases will bring too. I’d rather put my energy into those for the time being, instead of chasing my tail with the Alien Characters series.
And so, I’ve pulled the paperbacks and will soon pull all the ebooks. I’ll put the whole series in mothballs for awhile, and then I’ll regenerate it. Bringing it back as a 5×8 series easily printed if needed, and easily read on tablets if preferred. Though if there is a smaller expanded distribution size that works out cheaper, I might look at that too.
Sometimes, you just have to rest these things and come back to them again a bit later.
If you’d like to find out more about the Alien Characters series, the website is still up here: Alien Characters
Here’s a picture of a few of them:
And here’s one of the backs of the printed version
And here’s the beginning of series one with just the book pictures, narrated by me:
And here’s the much older cartoon, also narrated by me.