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Hello all!

As evidenced by the title of this thread, I am in need of some assistance. I have number of questions. Whew. Where do I begin… I guess I’ll start out by saying that I have a superhero story put together in my mind, and I’m ready to start putting it out there. The real struggle I’ve come across is how.

The reason why I ask is because (a) I don’t want this to be a written novel—I either want it to be a graphic novel or a combination of both prose and (massive) amounts of artwork, (b) I am wondering about financial gain (ugh), and (c) … well I really just don’t know what to do. 😂🤷🏼‍♀️

And ugh. I guess I’m just frustrated because man, there are so many complicated variations to this thing! Particularly because I don’t want to publish your typical story. I’ve actually gone over a lot of options for how I want it to be published, and I’ve narrowed it down to these few…

1. I could self-publish and sell my works on the road with my family band. (The sad thing, however, is that the story deals with many hard issues [main character is a teen mom who is also fatherless, the bad guy is a ruthless killer who doesn’t value human life at all, alcoholism is addressed, many characters die] and I’m not sure how well that would go over with a typically senior, Southern Gospel audience.)
2. I could publish sections of the story weekly/bi-weekly on one of my favorite webcomic platforms, WEBTOON, and create a patreon account so people can support me. (Cons: this website is. Absolutely terrible. FOR THE RECORD, I DON’T RECOMMEND CHECKING IT OUT. There ARE rare gems  [which is why I’m there at all], but it’s so easy to become bored and search for other comics… which can be, simply put, traumatizing. 😅 I’ve actually considered just dumping it because really it’s more bad than good, and I really would hate to publish it on that site because I wouldn’t want to lead any of my family or friends there. More than that, it’s obvious that the platform and I don’t value the same principles.)
3. I could try to get someone to publish my odd little book and hope it generates enough to sustain me. (Where would I publish it? And having a very heavily illustrated book would be very expensive because of ink and paper, right? And if I went with a graphic novel, do people even read those anymore? Do people even READ anymore?)

And woof. I’m kind of overwhelmed. My mom also had an idea that even if I did publish on WEBTOON, I could use the money I generate from the story to start a more wholesome webcomic publisher, since I really really love the formatting and easy access those things have. But, I still kind of don’t want to publish it on WEBTOON because I don’t want them to have rights to my story, either, since they would be my publisher. I guess. I’m really not sure how those things work.

I think it really is easy to say, though, that I feel like an income and a fanbase would be far more easily generated if I DID publish on WEBTOON. *massages temples* It’s kind of the “easy way out,” I guess. Is that bad?

So yeah. Idk. I guess I’m really just wondering if any of you know of any places where it would be appropriate to reveal my story in installments (which is what I’d like to do), or how to generate income through traditional/self-publishing. I’m not sure. Just any publishing advice or marketing advice would be helpful in general.

And ugh! I wish I didn’t have to worry about money! But I feel like if I don’t, I won’t be able to do this at all because I won’t have the time because I’ll be… working. 😂💔 Which is probably not true, but yeah, I guess I want to be able to kind of devote myself to my work.

I apologize in advance if this all seems confusing or jumbled. I’m really not entirely sure of what I’m talking about either, so I’m kind of in the same boat. 😂

I just, ugh. I think I really want to do what God wants to do with this story, but I just wish it’d be easy. Sigh. It’s so hard to discern what God wants me to do. I feel like He wouldn’t want me to opt out for WEBTOON, but man. It’d be so easy. 😂💔 Ah well.

Thank you for whoever read through this! You’re a champ! You deserve amazing things in life!