9 Important Lessons learnt on self-publishing in Singapore (Updated May 2015)

Do you know that I was rejected by American publishers, Japanese publishers, Taiwanese and even Singaporean publishers? Of course only 7-8 rejects is not a lot compared to 100 rejects from some diehard cartoonists. Even when I had 25K likes on Facebook back then, nobody had faith in me that my books, which were quite niche, would sell. Fortunately when I was about to give up, I was introduced to my lovely investor in the Singapore Makers community, who believed in my work. So we paid a publisher to self-publish because no other publishers would want to publish my work. There was one exception, however, with a Malaysian publisher who offered me a contract for the first time in my life! But the condition was that my captions had to be changed to "Malaysia" instead of Singapore...

Because my journey had not been an easy one, I would like to share some of the things I learnt with other authors or artists who are thinking of doing self-publishing as well.

Mail service in different countries

I think Japan has the best postal service. I almost lost my parcel in Singapore when the post lady did not go up to my unit and left the non-delivery slip on the parcel itself. Because there was no notification in my mailbox nor doorstep, I continued to wait for 2 days at home until I thought it was strange and went online to check. Luckily I managed to check on the last day that I can collect my parcel before it was returned to sender. Fortunately the post lady at my parent's home was much better and even recognised a wrong address and delivered it correctly to us!

New Android app for Evacomics

Thanks to my brother, I finally have an android app that grabs content from both my blog and website so you can easily access all the latest comics, blog articles and news about my public events in one place!

Conservation of places with memories

I like the new malls but at the same time, there is a sense of nostalgia because there is not a place in Singapore that looks the same as 20 years ago. I think as we grow rich, we build and tear down things so fast without much thought as long as it is more practical and can earn more money... For people like us who had been away from Singapore for some time and come back again, we have this sense of loss as the things we grew so fondly and familiar of are now all gone.

Review of Yoga Inc.

As you can see from my recent comics, I had developed this yoga craze and been going to yoga classes every week. I am very happy that Yoga Inc. invited me over to give their classes a try.

Their address is
100 Guillemard Road
#01-08
Singapore 399718

Webinar about Social Media Marketing for Artists and Entrepreneurs

I had been procrastinating to do a webinar about how I increased my fanbase from only 600 Facebook likes in 2012 to 68,000 likes now without paying for any FB ads. Luckily my procrastination stopped when Mark Koh from Temploy asked me to do a webinar for his company as a reward for their crowdfunding campaign: Skillup 2015. Skillup is a free two-days event for youths to be inspired and learn about jobs outside the norm, such as part-time jobs, creative jobs as well as becoming entrepreneurs.

I know Mark Koh from one of his networking events and he is also a writer together with my comic artist friend, Shawn Siow, for their new book "Silent War". If you read my blog last year, you would know that they actually let me share their booth at Comic Fiesta, Kuala Lumpur.

My Webinar

Ok, I admit, it was my first time making a webinar so it was a bit draggy at times and totalled at around 68mins. I split the webinar into three parts: 1) Introduction, 2) Strategy and Execution, and 3) Case Study.

Keeping our city clean

Sometimes I wonder if our city can still be kept clean without the "fine" signs everywhere and our diligent cleaners going around to clean up the mess... But one thing is for sure, we don't pick up other people's trash like what the Japanese did after the World Cup!

The Ultimate Review of 21 Sweet Japanese Matcha Snacks

Ok seriously, this review took me like 10 months to complete and I gained a whopping 2kg as a result for not exercising too. That's why I had been doing yoga every week to shed those additional pounds of fats...

Download Chinese New Year 2015 goat wallpaper

It's been a long time since I created wallpapers but I found this one especially nice so I decided to make wallpapers for mobile and desktop too!

To download for smartphones (1136x640 pixels): http://www.eva.sg/gallery/calendar/2015/cny2015.jpg
To download for desktop (1920x1080 pixels): http://www.eva.sg/gallery/calendar/2015/cny2015_1920x1080.jpg
The wallpaper should be big enough, if not you can enlarge or crop it according to your screen size.

Looking good right?
Like what a Singaporean Chinese will say, "HUAT AH!" (to grow wealth!)

How to unblock your link when Facebook blocks it by saying it is unsafe

The Problem

I tried to post a blog article on my FB page EVACOMICS on 20th Jan, but whenever I post my link, Facebook will insist that it might be UNSAFE and I had to enter a captcha code!

Monday sketch comics (yoga and fitness)

You might have noticed that I am starting to upload comics that are not Japanese-related to diversify my topics and not bore myself with everything Japanese...