Author: Dan Mazur

Being True (or How I Learned to Love Myself) will be an anthology of short, LGBTQ+ themed graphic stories revolving around what “Being True” means to the creative team in the context of being LGBTQ+. Stories can be fiction or non-fiction, so long as the story fits this theme! Stories can range from a coming out experience to a slice of life event (major or minor) and anything in between.

Story and Team Specifications

All stories in Being True must be directly LGBTQ+ related. Stories may be fiction or non-fiction, and can encompass most genres (History, Romance, Biography, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Slice of Life, etc).

Stories must be TEEN appropriate (aka PG-13). No on-the-page sex or nudity, though stories about sexuality are welcome. No gore or gratuitous bodily fluids, though stories can depict warfare and crime.

All submissions must come from an LGBTQ+ writer-artist or a writer-and-artist team where more than 50% of the team is LGBTQ+. If you want to participate but need a writer or artist partner, feel free to register your interest with us during the Discussion Period (see below), but it’s your responsibility to find a suitable collaborator. We want teams to have discussed their collaboration and be working in sync before they submit.

While this is a Boston Comics Roundtable project, we welcome submissions from people who aren’t (yet) members of the BCR or don’t even live in the Boston area!

Submissions Process and Deadlines

1) Discussion Period. Between now and the end of January 1, 2018, we invite you to propose possible topics and ask questions about what we’re looking for. We’ll record your interests and perhaps suggest sources or approaches. This is the time to find collaborators and to research sources.

2) Submissions Period: We’ll accept submissions in January. The deadline for submitting all proposal material is therefore 11:59 P.M. on Wednesday, January 31, 2018. In order to evaluate the proposals fairly with confidence about how they’ll turn out, we ask you to please submit this material:

• To show the story: a draft script, page-by-page breakdown of the narrative, or summary with thumbnail pages.
• To show the art: one page in tight pencils, character designs, or examples of or links to your previous comics in the same style.

3) Script, Sketches, and Bio Details Deadline: The intermediate deadline for a full script and thumbnail sketches of the entire story, if those weren’t part of the initial submission, will be March 15, 2018. This will give us all a chance to review the work, discuss any concerns with you, and make any necessary course corrections.

By that date we’ll also ask each contributor for a picture and short bio to go in the back of the book. And we may ask you for one page of finished art to help the crowdfunding campaign.

Artwork Specifications

Print size: 7″ wide x 8.5″ tall, image safe area 6.5″ x 8″- No bleeds.
Grayscale.
2, 4, 6, or 8 pages.
Scanned at 300 or more dpi at print size. (Meaning 1,725 pixels wide x 2,587 pixels tall at least.)
Delivered in TIFF, JPEG, or PNG files.

Rights

In delivering material to Being True, creators grant the Boston Comics Roundtable the exclusive worldwide right to print their stories in an anthology for twelve months from the date of first publication, the right to reprint that collection thereafter, and the right to permit others to reproduce extracts of a story online or in print for review or publicity purposes. Each creator will retain the copyright, intellectual property rights, and all other reprint rights in their work.

In return, the BCR will provide each contributor two copies of the finished book and the right to buy additional copies at 50% of the cover price. We are planning a crowdfunding campaign, and if that succeeds we will pay for each page of comics—the same amount per page for all contributions. (Creative teams must decide among themselves how to split that payment.)