The APTN and Z2H, along with the Z2H community, will choose three Aboriginal Canadian writers’ stories and turn them into comic books.

You’ll work with our editor and an art team to produce a 22 page online comic. Making the comic will probably take about 3 months, a process you must be involved in.

We are a digital publisher and that will be our first line for distribution: we think digital offers some unique advantages. But, as producers of your story, we are motivated to push the property forward across all media and would be quite happy to see it wind up in print.

Pitch your idea in the pitch doctor, then tell people about in the blog, forum, or any other place. Pitches that get rated the highest and appear in the most people’s collections will almost certainly be chosen.

This is a free contest funded by lots of nice government organizations and other groups. You don’t need to pay a dime.

You must be self declared either First Nations, Inuit or Métis and be able to provide proof of status if you win.

Applicants selected as winners will be contacted by Zeros 2 Heroes — successful candidates will also be posted on www.zeros2heroes.com.

Once the community selects your story for production, we will contact you and walk you through our standard contract. And we do mean standard. Essentially the contract creates a partnership based on the production of your story as a comic: you supply the genius, we supply the tools, artists, editors and marketing muscle.

Now, we’re creative types ourselves and not really very good at math, so we want to keep everything simple: what we’ll propose is a 50/50 split. We understand that for more established writers, this might not be an interesting deal. But if you’re trying to get your first break in the business, want to have your story professionally developed, are willing to work with a pretty damn good marketing team... give us a shot.

We really think this is an excellent career opportunity. After all, we’re writers ourselves, and we wish we could have had something like this when we were starting out.

There’s no limit, no cost and you might be surprised at which idea strikes a chord with our online audience.

In fact, we encourage you to do so. The winning pitch in our ReBoot contest was refined several times based on audience feedback... it really improves your chances.

The editor assigned to your story will present you with a number of available artists that he/she feels would be good fits. The editor will take you through our “Page X” process which lets you work with the artists in real-time. If it doesn’t feel like a great fit at the end of that process, we’ll make changes until everyone is happy.

We recognize that some stories come with artists already attached. If that’s the case with your submission, we will make every effort to include your artist on the team.

Your story doesn’t need to include Aboriginal themes or be of primary interest to Aboriginal peoples. We want stories ranging from men-in-tights adventures to gritty noirs to indie experimentations to family histories. Bring us great, exciting stories that you feel must be told. That said, there are some obvious no-nos.

No fan fiction: we just won’t produce it if you don't have the rights.

Adult themes are fine provided you flag it as such. We'll have the usual community tools to report inappropriate submissions and will take necessary action to bring them in line with our site standards.

For those concepts lucky enough to go the distance in the entertainment world, it is increasingly tricky to retain control. For an undiscovered writer, it becomes nearly impossible. If this situation should ever arise, we’ll be working as your partner to achieve the best business deal possible.

We are very conscious of avoiding the mistakes of other similar talent searches and have taken measures to avoid technical trickery as well as crowd hacking. While it’s deliberately something of a black box, we won’t be following a “one user, one vote” policy ⁙ the strength of any member’s vote will be based on their stature in the community: length of time, degree of activity, creative contributions, etc. This will prevent unscrupulous people from tipping the results.

Ok, we admit that this seems like a weird artifact from the print medium... and at first it was. But the more we analyzed the form, the more we realized that 22 pages impose a certain discipline on the writer. You need to get your main characters on stage, establish relationships and conflicts, sketch out the world, themes, etc. If you can’t do that in 22 pages, you've probably lost the audience.

At the same time, 22 pages is roughly the length of the first act in a feature-length screenplay or a television pilot. This does help us determine how best to further develop the property.

We recognize that many of you will want to carve out much bigger epics... and we think that's great. We do, however, recommend that you focus on that first 22 pages because, well, maybe - just maybe - your idea could use some refinement before charging ahead.

If that first chapter captures the imagination of the audience, our partners or Zeros 2 Heroes itself... we’ll work with you to make those next installments come to life.

Once a pitch has been “greenlit” by the community, Zeros 2 Heroes will assign an editor to the project. After discussions with the writer to ensure a common understanding of the story, the editor will work with our Creative Director to assemble the art team that is best suited for the story.

To make sure that this team is a good fit professionally, aesthetically and creatively, we then go through a process we call “Page X”... this allows us to shake down the creative team and make sure that it will be a good fit.

For our part, Zeros 2 Heroes will ensure that the final book is professionally illustrated, edited, and ready to go for online distribution. That said, there will almost certainly be creative disagreements on the comic team. Nature of the beast. But don’t worry ⁙ we’ll sort that crap out.

But we’re counting on you to be an active participant in the process. That means working with our editor to polish your script, engaging with the artists on approvals and being available for consultations.

It’s a team effort, but we’ve had great results with our method so far.

Comic Creation Nation: APTN is intended to give undiscovered Aboriginal writers their first break in the industry. To do this, Zeros 2 Heroes will be underwriting the costs of art, editorial, distribution and marketing. Your “sweat equity” as the writer is to produce a great story that works as an amazing comic.

If you’re looking to get paid as a writer - and who isn’t? - this campaign isn’t the right fit. If you’re a writer who wants to get their first professionally produced work, then climb aboard.

As a side note, however, Zeros 2 Heroes does hire writers from time to time. If you’re interested, the best way to show us a sample of your work is probably through the online pitch packager we're launching for this contest.

But let’s assume you can get the necessary permissions worked out.

This campaign was created to give undiscovered writers their first break... so if you’re Alan bloody Moore, we’d ask that you stand aside and give the new folks a chance. If, however, you are still on the outside looking in, there’s no problem with submitting that story you got published in your campus literary mag.

In the past, we’ve used a variety of talented artists from around the world. Once the artists’ tools have been launched, we’ll be asking these folks to post their work online just like everyone else.

We want this social network to be a dynamic environment for artists, writers and fans. That requires a certain degree of participation and transparency. This is a good first step in that direction.