In the “choices I wasn’t expecting to have to make” department, Spots is well over 600 pages when laid out as a proper book. With some extreme prejudicial layout tricks it can be gotten to just under 600, but it’s not going to get much smaller than that.
So my choices now are:
1. Issue it as a single 6″x9″ paperback that costs $20ish, which will prop it up over the “will pay negative royalty numbers if someone orders it from B&N” level. Barely. Or…
2. Issue it as two volumes, which will cost $15 each. Which will at least solve the royalty problem (seriously, I was looking at negative numbers), but cost readers an extra $10-15 each (plus postage) and create new issues like “where do I split up the book” and “now I need to find cover art for book 2″ and “now book 1 has all the graphic novel pages and book 2 has none.”
I don’t know. So it’s time to ask the readers! What would seem more reasonable to you?
If there’s a good cutoff point in the middle to make it a two-volume set, that seems like the best solution. Spots is a pretty sweeping story.