Catching a Vision 018
Breaking Comics Out: Self-Publishing Part 5
Catching a Vision, the (really tries to be) weekly column on Comic Related from C. Edward Sellner, Founder and Creative Director of Visionary Comics Studio. CAV provides practical guidance on how to break into the comics industry, as well as insights into this medium we all love. With resources you can order online, interviews and debates with comic professionals, and online workshops, this is your best introduction into the wonders of creating comics!
Welcome back once again! For those of you who've been following along, you know I've been doing something of an extended overview and introduction into self-publishing. I've been looking at the big questions of WHO is a self-publisher, WHY do people self-publish, and WHAT should self-publishers be looking to put out. Today we're going to wrap this intro series as we tackle the questions of HOW and WHEN to self-publish.
If you're just joining us, I invite you to check the back columns to get caught up then plunge on in with the rest of us!
HOW to Self-Publish
This is one of those questions whose answer today is very different from what it would have been five, ten, fifteen years ago. Like other arenas in comics, technology and modern advances have completely changed the landscape of self-publishing. Unlike some of those other arenas, one would be hard pressed to say this sweeping change has been anything but for the best in this case. Why? Well let's do some comparisons as we look at the mechanics and means of getting one's stuff out there.
If you're going to self-publish, obviously this implies you're going to actually be publishing something. That implies some form of mass production. In the old days folks were pretty limited as to how to mass produce a comic. There was, for the most part, two options. The first was to do low quality photocopies printed at the local copy place, or footing the bill for a standard print job that often had minimal print runs of one thousand or more units per. The first option did not produce something very high quality and the second was a hefty investment.
Today's self-publisher would consider either of these options to be archaic.
Print-on-Demand services allow for books to be setup with a digital pre-press and, as the name so aptly implies, print copies on demand. No fuzzy, smudged photocopies, no expensive minimal print runs. Of course, the unit price for POD services can still be a bit steep, but there is still the option to charge a fairly competitive cover price and still make an even break or slight profit per unit sold. Not to mention the fact that print itself is being predicted to one day soon be considered archaic, and that perhaps the fastest growing means of publishing comics are digital based formats.
Digital comics basically come in one of two forms. First there are those available directly online where people can read them right in their computer's browser with their internet connection. Second, there are those available in various formats, where comics, both in traditional print layouts, or specialized layouts, can be downloaded through various services and then read on various digital devices ranging from your desktop to your phone.
Frankly, unless you've either had your head buried in the sand, or just discovered comics yesterday, you would be hard pressed to not at least have heard of the many new avenues for digital publication that seem to be popping up almost daily.
The advantages of either of these routes are numerous, especially when compared to the old school style.
POD can have a quality level virtually indistinguishable from standard print yet without the print run restrictions, thus not require a large up front investment. Many of the digital venues don't require ANY up front investment, unless you count formatting a comic to a specialized service. This is critical because by taking most of the costs out of self-publishing it levels the playing field. The one who is going to be successful is not necessarily the one that has the money to throw at it, but the one that can produce the best quality product.
So, once you've chosen your mechanism of mass production, or publication, there is then the challenge of distribution, or how are you going to deliver your product into the hands of potential fans?
Again, in the old days the number of options was limited. Either you dove into the deep end of the pool and tried the direct market, thus listing with Diamond and the smaller distributors that faded in and out of the picture. Or, you built piece meal, meeting with individual store owners, getting them to carry the book, doing conventions and local shows to sell the books, creating a subscription list for those who wanted the book regularly, etc. Once again, these options often meant huge investments of time and money.
In the days before the minimum threshold orders from Diamond, all distributors still made choices of what products they would carry based on quality and perceived marketability for those books. A lot of aspiring self-publishers were turned away right there. For those who made it, they had to go with those larger print runs, and often found order numbers were so low they ended up in debt on the printing costs, with tons of leftover books they then had to keep in storage.
Then, even as now, one of the best things about conventions was that they were treasure chests where fans could discover a far richer, and wider diversity of products than any store would ever carry. Numerous self and small press publishers who were not part of the direct market hit as many shows as possible to set up shop and sell.
Back then however, conventions were one of the only outlets for this. Self-publishers who could not make the cut, or afford to play in the bigger leagues depended on conventions in order to build their brand. If they wanted to sell books, they had to hit as many different shows as they could every year and keep doing it, else face a deterioration of their fan base. This meant printing books, buying table or booth space, schlepping everything around to various and sundry places, then often also incurring hotel and travel expenses depending on how far afield they went.
While the convention circuit is still the sworn golden pony for many self-publishers, today, it is by no means the only method of getting comics into people's hands. Most POD services are also linked to online book sellers, where fans anywhere can order a copy and have it shipped to them. Web comics, or digital download comics are, by definition, available to anyone who can access the internet in general. In other words, self-publishing went from having to build a fan-base in slowly, every widening geographic ripples, to gaining fans and sales literally from around the world.
Beyond gaining customers, there is the ever present challenge of holding onto them. I remember as a youngster reading many indy comics where creators had mailing lists for newsletters and various announcements. This meant anytime that creator wanted to tweak those existing fans, to remind them to buy the latest books, or keep them in the loop, it meant printing, folding, stuffing, licking and mailing XX amount of hard copied bulletins through the postal service. This of course also cost money.
Now of course, social networking online has made that go the way of the dinosaur. I'm still utterly amazed at the fact that through my various social networking services online, within the span of a couple hours in a single evening I can send out a press release to hundreds of online comic media sites, blogs and other outlets, and send bulletins or emails through various services to several thousand fans who've connected to us in various ways online. Within a week, with PR posted online, bulletins being read, forwarded, reposted, popping up in searches, etc. I can easily expect thousands upon thousands of people to access that information. The real beauty? Other than paying my internet subscription, it doesn't cost me a penny.
Finally, one of the greatest, often unrecognized advantages of modern technology in self-publishing is the ongoing presence books now have in the marketplace. In the old days, when a print run was exhausted, without a significant influx of demand, the book simply was gone. You can't print another thousand books because you get a dozen queries of interest.
However, today, POD and Digital based publishing is geared toward the long haul. Both avenues provide means for books to continue to stay in print or available digitally as long as any individual creator or company want them to. As long as the book is listed with online booksellers, or through your own web-site, or the digital version is listed with various digital venues, new fans can always go back and enjoy the entire run.
Ironically, self-published and small press books probably enjoy a greater strength now in this arena than books from the larger companies. Most larger publishers still have not made their libraries of titles available through digital means and I don't know of any that maintain POD for back issues. The digital front is changing and will continue to change in the next few years. Many mid-level publishers list back issues on free online reading venues, or downloadable formats on various digital services. Marvel recently launched its Digital Comics Unlimited initiative, with the goal of eventually including their entire library through an online collection. This marks a major shift in the perception of digital publishing that is legitimizing it throughout the industry.
But, unfortunately, it's not all a bed of roses.
While this revolution in self-publishing has quantum-leaped the ability of creators to get their material out to an audience it has done little to actually make it pay. This is not much of a change from the old days.
Back then, those selling through conventions or other means outside of the direct market rarely made any profit to speak of. Some of the small, indy publishers who made that leap into the direct market survived and built themselves up. This was before such upstarts as Archaia, Dynamite, BOOM, and Bluewater existed, when such as IDW and, a little further back, Dark Horse and even Image were the upstarts.
Today not a whole lot has changed. For comics, the direct market still remains the most probable way to eventually make money.
Selling books online through POD, or at conventions usually leads to a celebration when the expenses of printing, booths, hotel and travel break even with money made from sales.
Most online venues generate no income, or low incomes per unit, meaning only those selling strong numbers make profit. So far in the digital world, it's pretty safe to say that the only digital books moving significant numbers that any small press would rejoice over, are those already in print and from the larger publishers but now moving into the digital fold.First, again, make sure anything you put out is top notch. Do whatever you have to to invest the time and energy in making it your absolute best work.
Part of this is competition. As the landscape of self-publishing has changed and the ability to get product out and get exposure has exponentially increased, well, naturally, the number of comics available through those means have also exponentially increased.
Especially in the digital realm, fans of digital comics have so many choices they can make that are free, that the reality of launching a viable, money making online initiative is slim for anyone, and virtually none for self-publishers. There are those who will pay to download a comic, but many others who would, if that was the only choice, but who don't because it isn't.
So far attempts to monetize online sites through third party funding, such as advertising, has not worked well either. Wowio, the first major attempt to do so, paid a lot of money to a lot of creators, but Wowio largely proved to be a self-propped up illusion. Advertising revenue never apparently matched monies paid out and Wowio essentially bled money. After Platinum's buy out, rates were cut dramatically, free online reading versus paid downloads meant download numbers dropped into the bucket and no one came out still making enough money to really call it profit.
Thus the fact remains that self-publishing in the comics industry is most often not a money making venture by any stretch. Which brings us to my final point...
WHEN to Self-Publish
This one is easy. The time to self-publish is when you've aligned your expectations with the reality. It's when you've honed your skills sufficiently. It's when your main goals are either to simply tell the story you need to tell, or to lay the groundwork for developing a career as a freelancer. It's when you have a property you truly believe in that you think will get noticed. It's when you have the business savvy and investment to build that small publisher that grows beyond your own venue to get out there. It's when you have the fortitude, commitment and resources to stick with whatever plan you have to make all of this happen and to keep at it until it succeeds.
Most importantly though, the time to self-publish is when you recognize there are many definitions of success. If your definition involves you making lots of money, then most likely self-publishing comics is not going to be your path to get there. If your definition involves creating something you're proud of, or honing your creative talent and producing an original work, then your odds at succeeding are much better. If your definition of success is laying the groundwork for a career in comics, your talent, determination and staying power will be the deciding factors of just how far you go.
NOW ON A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SUBJECT...
THE INDUSTRY ROUND-UP
The Small Press Spotlight
To celebrate finishing this multi-part introduction to self-publishing, I'm going to institute a new feature, the small press spotlight. If you're a self-publisher or small press publisher and you would like to have your work spotlighted in this column, send me a hard copy of a printed book to...
C. Edward Sellner
2610 Escondido Dr.
San Diego, CA 92123
If you don't have printed copies, or don't want to pay postage, no problem, send me a link to the online version, or a mid-level resolution PDF or JPGs of the comic. Email stuff to cedwardsellner@aol.com and I will review it.
Every week, whenever I have one to recommend, I'm going to put the spotlight on a single small or self publisher who deserves the extra attention.
First up, 4th Dimension Entertainment
This small publisher was a particularly bright spot of discovery on my trip to Wizard World Philly. I don't know much about them, and their website is a little woefully lacking in information. But the first book they have released, a graphic novel by Tracy J. Butler entitled Lackadaisy is a true work of art. It started as a web-comic and was obviously released in a more typical strip format but the printed book encompasses a complete story arc that reads very well in the collected format.
Lackadaisy itself is a great story and someone should do a full blown review somewhere. The book is a story of Prohibition, with gin joints, dolls, thugs and gangsters galore, but uses cats as the main characters. There is depth in the characters, drama, action, solid humor and heartwarming storylines with these characters such that you quickly come to love them all, even the thugs (well, some of the thugs). The art is strikingly gorgeous and remarkably rendered and detailed. The creator has a strong art background and it results in a very professional looking strip considering she is a newcomer to comics.
My only complaint is that the printed format of the book used a larger size and printed 2-3 of the original strips per page. Story-wise it translates well into a collected story, but the layout of the art leaves unbalanced gutter space that tends to at times swallow the art into it. The use of sepia tones for page color and in the art itself helps to offset this as well as create a 'dated' feel that matches the story, but it's not an ideal presentation.
Frankly, considering the lush detail work of the strips, it would have been better printed larger, one strip per page, and formatted to fit the strip size so that the art could breathe better over the page and I could enjoy it more.
However, for a first publication this is one of the best I've ever seen from a start-up and it is well worth the cover price! I hope to find out more about this company and maybe bring in someone with it for an interview. I'm emailing them the column, so, if you check them out, tell them Comic Related sent you!
Cheers and Jeers
Cheers to DC for their Wednesday Comics! The new format and title debuted recently and is a truly gorgeous package. Nice whenever one of the big guys decide to still do something so radical and different.
Real Life Heroes...
Once again the comic community is rallying to help one of our own. John Ostrander, hands down one of the best writers who has ever graced the comic industry is battling glaucoma and potential blindness. He has undergone surgeries to help, and is now facing pretty hefty medical bills. There is an initiative to help located at Comix 4 Sight. Check out the benefit deals they are doing or just make a donation to help out.
Catching the Visionaries...
Hope everyone caught my recent in-depth interview with Pat Broderick and picked up copies of Vincent Price Presents #10, marking his return to mainstream comics. Head on over to our main site for updates that came out of Philly and next week we'll be making more announcements out of SDCC. These new announcements will include another Visionary Universe title ramping up with a pro artist of many years, and our ongoing digital publishing schedule which is finally taking off with a number of new, high profile titles!
Next...
I'm going to FINALLY return back to the creative side of things, as we take another, deeper and more detailed look into writing comics. We'll talk about story format, scripting, and just all kinds of writing goodness. Plus, hopefully before the Fall, we're going to start our first online workshop where we will do a hands on look at creating a comic, while showing you an actual comic being created. Check it out!
Join the discussion and add your thoughts on this edition, or the column in general. If you have any questions or suggestions for resources, post them or email them to Sellner so they can be included in future columns. Are you an aspiring or up and coming creator and would like to share your story? Email Sellner and let him know who you are and what you've done.
C. Edward Sellner is the co-founder and Creative Director of Visionary Comics Studio, a studio that within its first three years has drawn high praise from the media and attracted the attention of legendary creators in the comics industry. They have been digitally and print published in the mainstream market and their creators currently work with over a dozen different publishers. Their work has been featured on television news shows, radio programs and internet podcasts as well as featured in every major comics news site online.
Contact him directly at cedwardsellner@aol.com
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