Making Criticism Matter, Free PDFs, Comic Book Publications Offered by Konokopia to Readers, Critics

Federal Way, WA, September 16, 2011 --(PR.com)-- Everybody’s a critic. But how much of this criticism actually matters? How many books, how many stories, have ever been improved by criticism? Probably none. And that is because critics and readers only get the opportunity to express their opinions after the work has been published. Once this has happened, the critics and readers can only like it or not like it.

Well, here is an idea: what if the public was offered a creator’s rough draft of a work-in-progress and then was given an opportunity to offer critiques, opinions, suggestion that will reach the creator of the books before he begins working on the final drafts? This way criticism matters. It can help to improve the work.

That is exactly what the artist, writer, and creator Maciek Jozefowicz is offering with the Rough Draft Series of publications. The Rough Draft Series is being published by Konokopia, the company that Maciek founded a year ago. The first three Rough Drafts are offered in two formats: as books and as PDFs.

While the books are being sold, the PDFs can be downloaded for free. Both are available from konokopia.com.

“It’s probably a stupid idea but I have a number of these rough drafts of comic book stories and will not start working on the final versions for another few months because of my commitment to other projects,” explains Maciek, “so I thought, what if...”

Currently there are three comic books offered: Kolin, Adventureland, and Welcome, Welcome, Welcome. The last one is notable for being originally created as a comic scroll which was sliced and formatted to fit into pages of a book. While it is a comic book, its unusual features include the lack of panel divisions and its constant horizontal flow from left to right.

So why sell the Rough Drafts as books if you are going to give them away as free PDFs? “I see the Rough Draft books as collectors items, a novelty. And because they are published as print-on-demand, I am able to sign and number each one in the order that it is purchased. Besides, the whole idea behind this project is to get people involved in contributing opinions and suggestions about the work.”

Readers can offer their opinions and suggestion in three ways. They can fill out the forms that are set up for each comic book story on the Konokopia website (these comments will be posted on the site unless they are inappropriate for general public), they can leave comments in the Discussion section of the Konokopia facebook page, and finally, they can leave comments on Maciek’s blog, under the post dedicated for each comic book.

Maciek expects to spend the next few months reading and thinking about each comment and suggestion and will begin working on the stories next year. “This will allow me to properly digest all the opinions before I begin,” says Maciek.

“I am still working out how I want to develop this process, but I am also expecting to give prizes to the best critiques when the final books are ready for publications. What these prizes will be and how many of these I will offer, I haven’t quite decided on yet. But as soon as I will, it will be posted on the website.”

For more information on the Rough Draft Series and to get your free PDF of each comic book-in-progress go to http://www.konokopia.com. For more information about the series, the stories and Konokopia contact Maciek via email, maciek@konokopia.com.

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