Written by

Josh Blaylock

Edited by

Leah Lederman

Forward by

Art Baltazar

How to be a Comic Book Artist:
Not Just How to Draw “Bonus Section” written by

Tim Seeley

Design and Layout by

Nick Accardi

ISBN-10: 0-9910010-4-4 ISBN-13: 978-0-9910010-4-0
How to Self-Publish Comics: Not Just Create Them [Master Edition] January 2015. Published by Devil’s Due Entertainment, 1658 N Milwaukee Ave #100-5850, Chicago, IL 60647. ©2015 Josh Blaylock and Devil’s Due Entertainment. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be used or reproduced by any means (digital or print) without written permission from Josh Blaylock or Devil’s Due Entertainment, except for reveiew purposes.

www.DevilsDue.net

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• FORWARD 9
• INTRODUCTION 13
• CHAPTER 0NE: WHY? 19
• CHAPTER TWO: BUILDING YOUR CREATIVE TEAM 31
• CHAPTER THREE: MARKETING, PUBLIC RELATIONS AND PRODUCTION 54
• CHAPTER FOUR: HIT THE PAVEMENT! 76
• CHAPTER FIVE: NEW DEVELOPMENTS 93
• CLOSING 107
• REAL WORLD EXAMPLES 110
• BONUS: HOW TO BE A COMIC BOOK ARTIST …NOT JUST HOW TO DRAW 117
• CHAPTER ONE: SO YA WANNA BE A PENCIL-MONKEY… 122
• CHAPTER TWO: WHATCHOO NEED 126
• CHAPTER THREE: LAID OUT 131
• CHAPTER FOUR: IN WHICH WE FINALLY GET TO DRAW THE PAGE 136
• CHAPTER FIVE: WORKING IN THE BIZ 139
• CHAPTER SIX: HOLDING ON 143
• CHAPTER SEVEN: THE END IS THE BEGINNING 145
• GLOSSARY 146

FORWARD

Years ago, Early 1990s… I was trudging through the portfolio review lines at the major comic conventions. I had that big college portfolio case with the handle. It looked like a suitcase. And my sketchbook was under my arm. I always carried my sketchbook. I was all dressed up too. Suit and tie with nice shoes. I looked ready for my job interview, that’s for sure.

I was so hopeful with the opportunity to show my artwork to the eyes of the major comic publishers. This will be my big start! My big break is finally here! These guys are about to discover the artist they have been looking for! So, I thought.

My portfolio proceeded to get ripped apart and critiqued hard! I was told to go back to school and take more drawing classes. This was not what I wanted to hear, since I just graduated a few weeks before. I was frustrated to the highest level!

Until, one editor asked to see my sketchbook. He opened it to see it was filled with doodles and sketches and characters and cartoony ideas! He asked me, why don’t I draw cartoony comics instead of trying to draw like the rest of the industry? It was like a light shined on me! A glimmer of hope in a comic industry that didn’t want me! That’s it! Instead of trying to get a job drawing like the other guys…trying to draw their characters…I’ll publish my own damn book!

That’s how it began. Now, how do you publish a comic in the days before the internet? Lots of phone calls and licking envelopes. Our phones were attached to the wall and the mail was on paper. It’s true. Ask your grandmother. So anyway, I had to learn everything there is to learn about the comic industry. Who’s a good printer? How do I get these books in stores? Who are the comic distributors?

My first comic , The Cray Baby Adventures, finally hit the comic stands in December 1994. The self publishing blood, sweat, and tears thing happened too. All Self Publishers go through it. We work a job to pay for our comic printing bill. After The Cray Baby Adventures, I teamed up with my friend Franco and we published PATRICK THE WOLF BOY in September of 2000.

Patrick the Wolf Boy caught to attention of the comic industry and the eye of comic professionals…including DC COMICS. I was asked to do a comic called TINY TITANS in 2007. From self publishing to mainstream in a heartbeat! Well, in 15 years or so. But that’s still awesome.

Recently, I am back in the self publishing business with our Kickstarter funded, all age comic series, AW YEAH COMICS! We print books to sell at conventions as well as our store AW YEAH COMICS in Beautiful Downtown Skokie, Illinois. Now, that the internet exists in this phase of Self Publishing, you can read all those old Cray Baby comics on COMIXOLOGY.com!

I truly feel, no matter where I go or who I draw for or what comics I make, my path always leads back to doing it yourself. Making it your own. Your own books. Your own stories. Your own characters. Your own comics!

Now go make your own damn comic! Art Baltazar
Famous Cartoonist January 15th 2015

INTRODUCTION

Since you’ve picked up this book, you have most likely at least pondered publishing your own comic or graphic novel. Or maybe you’re just a creator seeking a better understanding of the business of comics.

Whether you’ve decided to publish your own comic or are going to publish through someone else’s company, hopefully this will help you to be as informed as possible. There’s no comparison to real life experience, but consider this your “debriefing”—and hey, that’s way more than most people get before diving headfirst into the industry. So, congratulations to you for seeking the information out in the first place. I hope I can help you! Either way, you might be wondering, “Who the hell is this guy?”

I’ll let you make up your mind on your own whether or not I’m someone you actually want to listen to. You can then either take this to the register, or quickly put it back on the shelf before the clerk yells “this story ain’t a library!”

I’ve been in the comic trenches for sixteen years, and I’ve operated from both boot strap budgets and from the position of controlling 2% of the entire comic industry market share, so I feel like I can actually pass on a bit of knowledge to help you enter the crazy world of comics, and maybe save you a few gray hairs in the process.

I wear a few hats, the largest of which is that of the head of Devil’s Due Entertainment, the label which published this very text, and for which I’m most widely known. Devil’s Due is based out of Chicago, and over the years we have produced a plethora (that’s fancy for “buttload”) of comics – everything from major licensed properties to wacky books about penguin superheroes and a little boy who turns into a werewolf. My company has been solidly both an independent startup and a top-charting leader and trend setter in comics and employed about a dozen key staff members at our peak, in addition to twenty to fifty freelance contractors at any given time. The company was founded in 1999 in Cincinnati, Ohio, and officially incorporated in the state of Illinois in 2002.

In 2004, I expanded the company to offer creative services, something I couldn’t pass up, having access to so much amazing talent. We wouldn’t become “agents” who find an artist, and then go hunting for work—instead, we’d hunt for the work, and then contact artists capable of handling the gig. We’ve done everything from websites for the US government and construction companies to toy designs and video game illustration.

Unrelated to the comics business, I’ve also spent thousands of hours pursuing areas of interest outside of pop culture, and dabbled in small real estate investments, the health & supplement industry, and pursued continued education in stock options trading and the history of our monetary system. I graduated from a design school with no degree, but spent the majority of my personal educational pursuits on the business side of things. I’ve probably read two hundred books on marketing and entrepreneur biographies. I’m not really a fan of colleges and yes, many of them are necessary, but many are handing out bogus degrees and setting graduates up to start life with a “mortgage” from the get-go. Nowhere is this more true than art schools handing out comic art degrees. Big red flag to anyone pursuing that - in an industry where degrees don’t even exist as a requisite, no one hiring cares if you have one! I prefer to jump feet first into a massive session of absorbing knowledge straight from the sources that are succeeding, and give it a try myself. Nowhere was that more true for me than when I jumped into the comic industry.

This all started in 1995 with a few hundred bucks I saved from random crappy high school jobs, and a few more bucks I managed to borrow from my dad and my uncle. (Some would trace it back to the three little penguin toys my mom made for me when I was six that I felt compelled to draw stories about, adding guns and grenades in the mix. Or to my Dad’s Conan comic collection, but I’d say that ’95 was the official kick-off.)

Both of my parents came from very poor backgrounds financially, and my stepdad was from a hard-working, modest background. I got some help along the way, but I wasn’t getting any free rides – the most my parents could offer me was encouragement, which they did in abundance. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t claim to have ever been poor – I was very well taken care of. As time went on, they really built nice lifestyles for themselves a hundred times better that what they started with. I was able to get some help through college, and spare cash here and there, but for the most part even if I could have it, I didn’t want everything handed to me. I guess my parents succeeded in instilling in me, at a young age, that I needed to take care of myself.

I knew from day one that I wanted to be in this line of work. Before I could even read I knew I wanted to draw, write, and create, and pursue these pie-in-the-sky goals every day. I began to seek publishing opportunities long before I was skilled enough to be published and started interacting with small press companies as early as age 14. I attended small local conventions, asked artists and self-publishers questions, and read everything I could find on the subject of breaking into comics. I received some great advice, but had some bad experiences as well.

By the time I was 18, I’d been misled and burnt by so many shady, fly-bynight types that I was compelled to blaze my own path. I pretty much devoted my entire life to that cause, and finally, at age 23, was able to go full time as a genuine comic book publisher. So although this success may have appeared to happen overnight, it was actually nine years in the making.

I’m focusing on all of the encouragement I had, but there was more than enough negativity thrown in my face every day. Lots of teachers and peers thought I had a “cute little dream” that would go away once reality set in.

Now maybe you’re just looking at fulfilling a dream of producing a short comic book series and don’t intend to quit your day job. Maybe, just like I was, you’re almost obsessive about making it in this business. Either way, it’s going to take an amazing amount of dedication to see it through.

Unless, that is, you’re one of those one-in-a-million lucky bastards who success seems to follow despite your lack of effort. Damn you people.
Just kidding …

…Well, only a little. My experiences haven’t all been roses and sunshine either, though. It’s important to know your strong points and your weaknesses. One of my strong points is being able to take on both creative and business tasks, and to create systems and procedures to delegate both those tasks. It’s a unique trait to know how to speak naturally to creatives and understand how they see things, and then have a nuts and bolts conversation about contracts, P&L statements, cash flow and investment terms with your corporate team. The ability to delegate is imperative because you simply can’t run a big company on your own. You can try, but you’ll kill yourself doing it.

In 2006-2007 we had to downsize to make up for the loss of a few key licenses, expenses were piling up, and I was seriously overwhelmed handling so many duties. Personally, life had been very stressful on the relationship front as well, and it was all intertwined with work. Things were a challenge to say the least. This menagerie of stress had also been afflicting my health in a big way. As the company grew, I wasn’t always the best at hiring, bringing staff on too quickly, especially when it came to the executive level. I definitely had some star employees, but the rotten apples surely do spoil the bunch, and I will forever henceforth live by the mantra “Hire slowly and fire fast!” Spending was expanding at a time it needed to contract so I sought help to focus on creative efforts and new business development. Make sure your team is going to work well on all levels, and let everyone focus on their strengths.

This was all bad timing for the real estate market to collapse, but boy did it. I learned the hard way I should have been investing for cash flow and not the payoff later. I really don’t place a lot of sentimental value on my personal dwellings, so I could deal with it. For some, going from a house they’d worked hard to buy and then taking a massive step back throws them into a serious depression, but fortunately that didn’t happen. It would be a little trickier consolidating a 4,000 square foot office back into a work-live space, but you take your knocks and keep going. I had my comic book business and creative services businesses and those were what really mattered.
When the economy crashed in late 2008 it hit us hard. Very, very hard. At the end of the day, it was about a $1.2 million punch to my gut. Every month cash flow of nearly $200,000 per month coming into the company halted to a standstill. Checks that used to be $30,000 to $60,000 a week literally went to as little as $400. Bills that we should have been able to pay were piling up rapidly and I nearly lost everything.

Ironically, while this was going on we were being courted by potential investors from the entertainment industry. For eight months I played that game back and forth on a daily basis, getting to the actual board meeting with more than one multi-millionaire at the table, and potentially getting the funding that could have been a game changer. Then, for as long as it took to get to that point, one week before they were supposed to decide, the economic recession hit and they began wavering. Eventually the deal was off. Adding to that was that I allowed too much delegation when it came to putting our presentations together, and should have handled more myself. I didn’t give myself enough credit when it came to interacting with the buyers. I trusted my consultant too much.

Yes, I’m generalizing here, but in my experience people of the consultant nature tend to exert knowledge of things they don’t always know much about. It’s their job, I get it. But about two years later I was told point blank by someone present that the deal still would have gone through if not for “My dumbass partner fucking it up” and making things too complicated. If you don’t think that stings, when you’re back in startup mode, I’d like to know your secret. It was still my fault I’d let things happen that way and to be honest, I don’t know if that statement was absolutely true. I’m sure it was more complicated than that, but there was definitely some truth in it.

Still, that was, in another way, encouraging. I knew going forward that despite all of the difficulties, I’d been on the right track, and had grown to have a better understanding of where to delegate power and where to hold onto it with a vice grip. And I had a confidence, after so many years in this business, to trust my gut.

The point of this is that you need to learn how to build a team and work together, and you can’t be paranoid or nothing will ever get done— but be very careful of going about it. Don’t rush into a “marriage.” Don’t ever forget how hard you’ve worked for everything you’ve built, how much the others are actually contributing, and if you’re of a generous trusting nature, make sure to take even more time before signing on any dotted lines with your partners.

Well, even with all of these daunting challenges there were still silver linings. One being that I was to have a $300,000 buyout of my share of another business. While it wouldn’t have allowed me to retire and drink pints by the lake and read comics all day, it would have taken care of every creator bill and many others to keep operations going smoothly. Not only did that fall through, and not only was I still left with a bad situation getting worse, it turned out Devil’s Due was also being corporate raided from the inside by the same parties involved in this buyout. Now not only was the cash flow hindered but about a quarter million dollars of new business was walking out the door before we had it, because of sabotaging done from the inside.

This is a book about publishing and not about corporate politics, so I’ll keep it at that. You’re probably not going to have such vexing issues to deal with and I wouldn’t wish them on anyone, but if you do it means you’ve built something quite grand for yourself, so congratulations. Believe it or not, even larger challenges arose in the following two years that dwarfed this one in both stress and in dollars.

Despite all of this, and even having to go damn near dormant for about a year, I never bankrupted the business. Debts have been reduced by hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the little victories and perseverance are mounting.

After two years of lying low and climbing out of a metaphorical hole akin to the dungeon Bane threw Batman in, I recently relaunched the brand. To my giddy delight it’s been very well received by the comics community. So in many ways, although I’ve founded and ran one of the biggest independent companies in comics formed in the past twenty years, I am very much like any of you who are just now starting out. This operation is growing from the ground up, and I am wearing many, many hats. If I had more sense I’d possibly run far away from this industry, but I have the sickness. I just gotta create and publish comics, and I’m guessing you have the same compelling need too.

That’s me in a nutshell. My hobby is my job is my life. It’s all I really do, and I enjoy it. I guess you could say I’m addicted to it. In Donald Trump’s book, The Art of the Deal, he wrote that most driven, or highly successful, people have a sort of “controlled neurosis” that they just manage to channel constructively. That sounds pretty accurate. I’m not your typical corporate type, which sometimes proves to be a challenge when dealing with those firmly entrenched in corporate America. Yet I have to confess that sometimes I like being underestimated. Maybe that’s just me. Whether you instill confidence in people or they underestimate you because of your age, experience, appearance, or personality, if you have an undying willingness to succeed, work hard, and to learn, you can pull it off, and I hope this book helps making it just a little bit easier.

CHAPTER ONE: WHY?

19

WHY DO YOU WANT TO… WHY SHOULD YOU SELF-PUBLISH?

So you have that haunting, nagging, passionate desire to publish your own comic book and you just can’t shake it. Well, you poor bastard, WELCOME TO THE CLUB!

There are a few key elements you’ll need to achieve your goal. When you’ve accomplished these things, you’ll not only be financially and physically prepared to publish your own comic book, but you’ll know you’re mentally prepared too.

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to question just exactly why you’re self-publishing. Do you just want to produce a short term vanity project? Are you hoping to catch the eye of a larger publisher and land a writing or illustration gig? Do you want to defy all odds and create your own profitable publishing company?

Answering these questions will save you lots of wasted time stumbling around for months with no direction. I see so many people in this industry who’ve been showing up at conventions pushing the same mini-comic they drew seven years ago, still wondering why they can’t get hired. I’m not knocking people who simply want to produce a small zine because they 100% enjoy it, and don’t need to make a living off of it, but don’t be on of the people who can’t let go of a bad idea, or worse, someone oblivious to the dedication it takes to reach the professional level.

Then there are guys like Robert Kirkman, who started out publishing a goofy black and white comic called Battle Pope. He parlayed relationships established through conventions to convince Erik Larsen at Image Comics to allow him to use one of his “sleeper” characters (one that had a following, but wasn’t being used), called Super Patriot. From there, Kirkman did more Image projects, and a few years later had two solid titles in production, one of which was a little book you might have heard of called The Walking Dead.

I don’t know if Robert planned that from the beginning, or if he realized the genius of his master plan only after the fact, but if it hadn’t succeeded, I don’t think he would still be trying to sell old copies of Battle Pope #1.

Additionally, you’ve got guys who relentlessly pursue publishing their own characters for years with little recognition, and then actually blow up, achieving success. Dave Sim, the KING of self-publishing, is a role model when it comes to this. He started in 1977 with his book Cerebus, and published three hundred issues. Three friggin’ hundred. There’s also Drew Hayes of Poison Elves, Dave Lapham of Stray Bullets, Terry Moore of Strangers in Paradise, and more. Some of these books are out of production, but it’s worth reading up on them. Several web comics have made the transition from web to print, such as Devil’s Due’s own Plume by K. Lynn Smith, which receives about a million hits per month online.

There is no right or wrong way to do it, just varying degrees of difficulty. But if you seriously contemplate the motivations and goals behind what you’re doing, it will be easier to stick to your guns when the going gets tough. And the going WILL get tough… even if it’s just food poisoning from some Dorito flavored Burrito you ate at Taco Bell off of the highway while driving to a comic-con.

BUILDING YOUR INFRASTRUCTURE

LINE UP YOUR SUPPLIERS

No one can make comic books without a professional printer, and unless you’re from the dark ages of 1995, you need the right computer set-up to do it.

If you aren’t familiar with basic graphic design programs like Adobe Photoshop or InDesign, or if my mentioning of Tiffs and PDFs just made you wonder what language I’m using, you need to bring a graphic designer into your fold. We’ll dive into this further in the coming chapters.

There are thousands of printing companies in the North America, but only a select few specialize in comic books. Avenue 4 in Ontario, Rink Printing in Indiana, Nieman Printing in Texas and Print Ninja in Illinois all come to mind. Those are all professional offset printers using professional presses with competitive rates. A growing number of digital printers now exist as well, who can print smaller quantities on demand, as few as five or ten, but for a higher price per unit. Print on demand was once a very “cheap” looking solution, but now the quality is getting better and better and I expect that by the time some of you are reading this it will be nearly indistinguishable from offset.

In the beginning it’s important to call around and get quotes to compare prices. I recommend contacting at least three different places. One you know which printer you want to go with, you can secure a quote via email and be sure you now have a fair estimate of what printing will cost when the time comes.

If you’re really serious about printing a professional, salable comic, you should look into acquiring a UPC number and bar code for each issue you release. If you’re only putting out one series, this may not be worth it to you, but if you plan to develop a line of comics, retailers will be able to better track the sales of your books, and place reorders accordingly. As of press time, the main distributor in the industry, Diamond, doesn’t require this for comic books, but that doesn’t mean that they haven’t changed that policy by the time you read this.

If you are producing a graphic novel, a higher page count book, for release to book stores (outside of the insulated world of comic book shops), you MUST have an ISBN number.

UPC? ISBN? Why didn’t Mom ever tell me I actually needed to know what those were for? Simply put, Universal Product Codes can identify any product: comics, CDs, Pop Tarts, you name it. If it’s for sale, it has a UPC. International Standard Book Numbers are specifically for the book industry, and only apply to books. Not the small, floppy comic books, not magazines - just books or graphic novels.

To acquire a UPC or ISBN there are a number of resellers online, but one reliable source is www.bowker.com.
Lastly, we’ve mentioned shipping quite a bit. Unless you plan to use the US Postal Service (which is getting better, but still a hell of a risk for your bigger shipments), you’ll need a FedEx, UPS, or DHL account to transport your printed comics, original artwork, or any important documents. It’s easy to get an account, and you can even save 10% by filling out shipment forms online. It’s still pricey, but not as pricey as losing a piece of art. Once you have an account number established, you can ship from any drop-off location, or arrange for a pick-up, and just be billed later.
Sometimes special groups allow you to get even higher discounts. For instance, my membership with USAA insurance provides enormous savings for the entire company. Who’d a thunk it?
I suggest getting accounts with all three delivery services, and then use their quotes to negotiate better prices with one of them. They’re not going to fight TOO hard for the business of just one person, but it’s still worth a shot.

DISTRIBUTION: THE DIRECT MARKET

The Direct Market is the term given to the distribution system that supplies comics to nearly every comic book shop in the country. Whereas in most other aspects of the publishing industry, every sale can be returned by the stores for a full refund, the Direct Market sales are NON-RETURNABLE. This provides a big advantage to publishers, because once a sale is executed, the garnered money is theirs to keep. However, retailers are also less likely to take a risk on a new series if they fear they will be stuck with copies on the shelves a month later.

The Direct Market, give-or-take, is easier in some ways than people may thing, yet harder in others than one would ever suspect. It’s important to differentiate the areas of comic book distribution, and graphic novel distribution, which I’ll explain separately.

There may be a couple of upstart distributors out there trying to make it, but Diamond Comic Distributors rules the land. There’s a good chance you picked this book up from someone bought it at a store that bought it through Diamond. I can’t think of any other industry where this is the case, which makes comic books an interesting market to be in, for sure.

The good part of acquiring distribution for your comics is that this makes things easier to be included in a catalog that goes to virtually EVERY retailer buying comics today. The process if fairly simple.

You start by applying for a vendor account through Diamond. You can contact them through their website, www.diamondcomics.com, acquire their phone number from there, and call them to find out what to do.

They will want to see a sample of your product, so be prepared to send them samples of your art, accompanied by lettering, and the overall trade dress of your book. “Trade dress” is the information you put on your comics’ cover: the story logo, your company logo, the UPC or ISBN code, issue number, etc.

The downside of only having one distributor is that everyone else is in it too, so it can be hard to stand out. Very hard. The competition is fierce, and there are hundreds and hundreds of other products from other companies competing for the retailer dollar. Making it even tougher, there are five PREMIER VENDORS who get premium placement in the catalogs, before all others. Those would be Marvel, who print their own special supplement catalog each moth, DC Comics, Image Comics, Dark Horse Comics, and IDW.

This creates an enormous challenge for new guys to break in, and harder to be noticed by the retailers. Still, some people manage to pull it off, and if you use your imagination, you can too. My point is, success might not have anything to do with your actual product. An awesome comic book isn’t good enough. Unless you think of the most effective ways to get the word out about it, no one will even know the book exists.

I’ve met more than a few guys in my day who come to me with excitement about their latest comic book endeavor - their new self-publishing venture that is going to turn the world on its ear. When talking with them I find that what they are excited about is that Diamond accepted their product for distribution.

Man, these guys are in for a world of disappointment.
Before I sound cruel or unsympathetic, I believe it is a good thing being accepted, but you need to set higher expectations for yourself. Getting into the Diamond catalog is a deal for distribution, not publishing. All the distributor is saying to you is that it is willing to offer your product to retailers who may then place orders, after which they will buy that product from you. It’s not a miraculous feat. It’s what you’re supposed to do.
To be blunt, if you’re rejected by Diamond it means they feel that your product is not anywhere near a professional level, and is unlikely to generate even a few hundred dollars in sales. Their requirements aren’t really that strict, so a rejection means you need to take a serious look at your comic book. It’s most likely nowhere near the professional level it needs to be, and you need to be honest with yourself about the quality.
Don’t give up. Improve and try again.
Another interesting aspect of the Direct Market is the ordering system used by Diamond. This is the system common (and probably unique) to the comic book industry, in which catalogs are released every month to the retailers for items shipping about two months in the future. Catalogs are also sold to consumers at the stores, who can see all of the exciting goodies coming out. Retailers review these items and decide what they want to take a chance on ordering. Hopefully, they see your comic, and decide to try it out.
Let me clarify that: almost all new comics offered in the catalog will not be printed for almost two month.
Again, whatever they buy is non-returnable. If it does not sell, they are stuck with it. This is why almost every comic shop has subscription services, or “pull boxes.” Customers buy the catalogs (Diamond’s is called Previews), decide what they want, and place an order with the store clerk. Every Wednesday, when new comic books arrive, customers come in and pick up the stack of comics in their pull box. Many comics readers don’t even look at the racks.
This system started almost thirty years ago, and became a phenomenon unique to this industry that I like to call the Wednesday Society, which I’ll go into more later.

SOLICITATION INFORMATION

Your solicitation information is due to distributors about two months before their catalog hits the stands. SOLICITATION INFORMATION is all of the information and graphics that are needed to inform people about your comic book. Meaning: the name of the writer and artist(s); price; frequency of publication; and an image of the cover. This means you need to know and have all of this content four months before your book is set to debut.

You can start to see how much money companies must invest in a comic book series before they begin to see a return.
About one month before your book’s street date, you’ll receive your orders from the distributor, explaining how many copies they wish to buy from you. This lets you know how many guaranteed sales you have. After judging how many reorder sales, convention sales, website sales, and promotional copies you anticipate needing, you’ll be prepared to set your print run. It’s important to have your computer files ready to go to the printer as soon as you get your orders. Ideally, try to have your files to the printer before you receive your pre-orders, waiting to give the printer the “green light.”
Your order will arrive in the form of a PURCHASE ORDER. This is basically a promissory note that ensures you will be paid, as long as you deliver the product in time and as advertised. The purchase order contains important information to include in the instructions you send to your printer, because it gives them a breakdown of which warehouses to send comics to for each distributor. For example, Diamond has warehouses in Memphis, Tennessee, Plattsburgh, New York, and more, making it possible to get the books out to every store in the continent on the same day.
Some printers actually have trucks that pick books up every Wednesday morning. Rather than paying to ship the books to Diamond, Diamond charges you a small percentage of the retail price of your book. Your check from them will be slightly smaller, but it’s a very handy way to save some money on shipping costs, and a way to leverage their resources; i.e. you’re not paying for shipping in advance, out of your own pocket.
So you’ve reached this point. Your comic is on the way to the shops, and your fingers are crossed, hoping it sells well enough that retailers reorder more, and that the next issue’s advanced orders are higher.
Keep in mind that if you’re doing a monthly publication, retailers will have to order the first three issues before they even receive issue one. This makes their orders much more conservative on issues one and two. For this reason, if you’re a completely unknown creator or company, I suggest you consider releasing your comic on a bimonthly (once every two months), or even quarterly schedule at first. Yet simultaneously you can be aggressive on the digital front, making your comic available online for anyone who misses an issue at the store so they can at least keep up with the story should they miss an issue. This allows more time for the comics to be purchased, and for word of mouth to circulate before following issue orders are due. Remember, most of your print orders from comic shops are going to come from pull boxes.
This is a holistic approach, using print and digital together both as revenue generators and as cross marketing tools.
Your distributor check arrives about a month after the comics hits the stands for Diamond. You’ll now have experienced every stage of publishing in the direct market. You are officially a comic book publisher.
A last but crucial note: Don’t forget to invoice your distributors promptly! Some of them are good about paying you regardless, but you run the risk of not getting paid until 30 days after they receive your invoice, rather than after you receive your books. If you go a month without billing them, expecting your money, you may be in for a rude awakening. At the end of this book is a sample of a basic Purchase Order. There are a number of very inexpensive accounting software packages these days to help you keep track of your expenses and income, or even simple spreadsheets.

BOOK MARKET

When distributing your comic books through bookstores, there are a lot of distributors out there. Diamond Book Distributors is one, and is a division separate from Diamond Comic Distributors, with different support staff.

Other options are CDS, Baker & Taylor, Amazon.com, Hastings, Ingram, and on and on. You can also sell to the major chains like Barnes & Noble. Devil’s Due uses Diamond, so that’s where the majority of my knowledge comes from. Diamond sub-distributes via many of the smaller distributors mentioned above. Again, you need to do what best makes sense for you.

Here are a few key points about the BOOK MARKET:
• The Book Market is made up of key buyers for large chains. • Book Market catalogs solicit months and months ahead—up to a year in advance—unlike Direct Market’s shorter four to five month window.

• The Book Market in general has a much larger percentage of female readers than the Direct Market, and a younger audience overall.

• The Book Market works heavily off of “blacklist” sales, which means you can make even more money over the long terms than right up front.

• The Catch-22 of the Book Market is that you can reach every major store in the country by selling to a select few chain buyers—but if those few buyers don’t like your product, you’re unlikely to get in those stores. The moral of the story: don’t piss anyone off.

It’s very important to get to know the sales and marketing staff of your Book Market distributor. They are the ones who directly communicate with the buyers on a frequent basis, and they have hundreds of titles to sell, not just yours.

NEWSSTAND

NEWSSTAND is the avenue of distribution for PERIODICALS (i.e. monthly comics or magazines) such as the magazine rack at your local grocery store, or the comics you find in convenient stores. Even the comics and magazines on sale at bookstores, such as Borders, are considered newsstand, and are accounted separately from their more book-like counterparts, the graphic novel.

Newsstand is a whole other ball game, and one that I experienced and shied away from due to the risk of returns on books. In some ways, dealing with newsstand distributors made me appreciate Diamond more. It is not something I would recommend to someone just starting out, though. Newsstand, like the Book Market, is 100% returnable—if the books don’t sell, they’ll send them back. But companies who are successful in newsstand become so by selling advertising. It’s all about circulation and not about making any money on the actual books.

With the evolution of digital books I really don’t see newsstand surviving, and can’t in good conscience suggest anyone put their limited time into it, but I didn’t want to omit it and have someone wonder why. Digital is the new newsstand.

ONLINE STORE

When you’re beginning your first comic book or manga publishing endeavor, it’s just a reality that it’s going to be tough getting your book placed in stores. You need every penny you can get from these comics, and more importantly, a place that customers can always find your product. This means both offering the physical book for sale on your website and (or at least) a digital version. There are some very simple services available that allow you to sell digital files, one of which is Fetchapp that works alongside Shopify. com. There are more being invented constantly so look around and you’ll find something that works for you.

How many times have you been interested in a comic, magazine, or CD only to find that the stores in your area don’t carry them? Do you pursue them after a couple of tries? After one try? Most likely not, unless you’re already a big fan. That’s why your online web store is so important. Can’t do a full service web store yet? Get an eBay account and list items with the “buy it now” feature. It’s no comparison to a true online shop, but it will get you moving in the right direction.

One way to increase revenues from web sales, and make visiting your site more worth your readers’ time, is to offer subscriptions. It’s hard enough to earn readers, so once you do, reel them in for the long term. A four or sixissue subscription not only brings you more money, but it guarantees they’ll stick around to read your whole story.

Of course, you must be very responsible if you sell subscriptions. The last thing you want to do is spend a customer’s money, and then find that you won’t be continuing your series past the second issue. You’ll end up owing some very unhappy people a lot of money.

Above all, remember that your webstore is not merely a sub-page on your website. It is the nexus of your website. The only reason your website exists is to market and sell your product. Every aspect of it should help to achieve these goals.

KNOW YOUR LOCAL COPY CENTER

Ahh, the local copy center. Whether it’s FedEx Kinko’s, Office Max, or just Billy Bob’s Big Beautiful Copies up the street, you want to know the employees at these shops: They can come in handy. It’s been a few years since I really needed to use a copy center; Devil’s Due prints so many copies for printer mock-ups and general daily business use that it became more cost effective for us to lease a full service hi-tech copier/scanner. And now they also have some amazing multi-purpose 11 x 17 scanner/copier/printer combo machines that you might want to look into. But I remember my copy center days vividly. I even worked at a Kinko’s for a while during art school.

You’re going to need to make copies for all sorts of reasons, and maybe even to produce promotional mini-comics (called ashcans – a small preview comic book, about half the size of regular comics, and usually printed at a copy center) once you complete enough of your first issue.

Print on Demand is another great option for starting out, where books are literally printed to meet the exact demands of your customers. It costs almost as much as regular retail pricing to print just a couple of books, but it’s a way to build a following. Also, prices are dropping in this market rapidly and by the time you read this it may be a very profitable option. Websites like Ka-blam. com and comixwellspring.com specialize in these areas.

Another option is to take advantage of your high school, college, or job facilities if your superiors are supportive of your self-publishing efforts. Either way, there’s no way to publish efficiently these days without some decent computer equipment and copy capabilities, so make sure you know where you’re going to have access to them.

DISTRIBUTOR WARS!

The distribution scenario was not always like it is today. Once, long ago, in the era known as the ‘80s, there were many, many small distributors. Like any business, they began to consolidate as the more efficient companies bought out the smaller companies, or put them out of business via competition. When I first started to educate myself on this subject in 1991, as an ambitious ninth grader, there were about a dozen distributors.

By the mid-nineties, that number narrowed to just a scant few serious players. Heroes World, Friendly Frank’s Capital, and Diamond, were some of the largest distributors during the comics book boom of the 90s, when small press publishers were selling tens of thousands of copies of amateur black and white product. Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, and the newly formed Image Comics were selling millions of copies every month.

That’s when Marvel decided they were so big that they didn’t need a distributor. They were going to distribute themselves. They acquired Heroes World, and were converting it into a Marvel-only distributor. Suddenly the industry was abuzz with chatter. Friendly Frank’s went out of business, and we were left with three giant distribution powerhouses.

Then something happened that took everyone by surprise. From what I understand, feeling they needed their own special distribution deal to compete, DC Comics signed a major exclusive contract with Diamond. In that instant, the distribution wars hit nuclear level. I remember wondering, even at the age of 16, why on earth DC would do such a thing: they could have been the darlings of the industry, and had the might of every distributor, while Marvel struggled to go it alone.

In hindsight, I can now see where they were coming from, although anyone paying attention could foresee that Marvel’s new undertaking was not likely to succeed. I think it was a knee-jerk, shortsighted move, and definitely not the best decision for the industry. That’s when Capital was forced to make a move and try to acquire its own exclusive publishers. Kitchen Sink and Viz signed with Capital and so, in order to receive all of the top product in the market, store managers were forced to order from all three distributors, whereas they had previously been able to use just one if they so desired.

The loss of both Marvel and DC was too great, though, and Capital shut its doors in 1996, negotiating a deal with Diamond. It was now down to Diamond and Heroes World.

Meanwhile, Marvel wasn’t faring so well with the distribution venture. To put it delicately, they fell flat on their face, and came crawling back, only to find an industry with very few, if any, alternative choices for quality distribution. They signed their deal with Diamond, and remain exclusive with them for the Hobby/Collector shops to this day. For an even more in depth, and very fascinating, look into the Marvel Comics of the 1990s, read a book called Comic Wars by Dan Raviv, available in most bookstores and comic shops.

So this is why, when you’re flipping through the Previews catalog every month, you see those top four premier vendors ahead of everyone else in the catalog. As most people, including myself, understand it, these publishers have been grandfathered in with their exclusive agreements. Will they ever leave? It’s doubtful. There would have to be a viable alternative in place for them to do so, and as long as they are exclusive, it’s hard for any aspiring distributors to sustain themselves. It’s a Catch-22 any way you look at it.

Diamond was the victor in this capitalistic battle royale. Many contest that they are a monopoly, and it was even investigated by the federal government. The case was subsequently dropped.

WITH THE FOUNDATION IN PLACE, YOU MAY NOW BUILD!

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations! You have laid the foundation of the publishing infrastructure that you and your creative team will need to get your product out into the market. This is no small feat. By doing this, and not just blindly drawing or writing away, hoping your comic will magically get published, you’re ahead of about 80% of all other aspiring self-publishers. You’re on your way to introducing your comic to the world.

Maybe after all your research, and adding the numbers, you’ve decided this is not the route you want to take. Maybe you’d prefer to simply focus on the creative side of things. Well, congratulations to you as well! You just saved yourself months of headaches, and potentially thousands of dollars. Did you know, though, that most creators have no idea how the comics they create actually make it to the stands? It’s shocking how little many know; even some thirty-year comics veterans are clueless to the publishing and distribution side of the industry. By educating yourself and putting in a little extra time on the side, you’re better prepared to create comics professionally. You will have an understanding of your editors’ and publishers’ points of view, and that increases your value to them!

The next step in the publishing game is forming your creative team, followed by building your marketing strategy. You want to make sure you have your marketing infrastructure firmly in place so that you’ll be able to blance with creative work. The creative process can be a black hole that loves to suck you in, and keep you from maintaining the business, and vice versa.

That’s one of my personal strong points. And before it sounds like I have a big head, and even worse, that my big head’s up my ass, let me say I am not an amazing talent, I just work hard. I consider myself a pretty good artist when I really have the time to focus, and a solid writer, but I’m also able to tackle these chores while focusing on the business. The older I get, the more I realize that the ambidextrous ability to perform the left-brain/right-brain tag team is actually a unique ability. Usually it’s one or the other. It’s an old stereotype, but it really does seem that the more talented the creator, the more flakey they can be in terms of business. Then, when you’re dealing with a guy right out of corporate America with an MBA in business management, he often doesn’t have a creative bone in his body.

Even still, it is very difficult to switch gears during the day, jumping back and forth from creative writing or drawing to spreadsheets and administrative duties. It’s a challenge because your brain needs a little while to get into the creative mindset, or into the groove. Whenever I write, I have to go hide away at a coffee shop or walk around a local neighborhood to clear my head, often both — anywhere away from distractions. If you can do both, even simultaneously, then take that talent and run with it. You’ve got me beat!

My point is, it’s OK to know what your strong points are, because knowing your strong points also means knowing your weak points. Are you that talented artist who can’t even balance your own checkbook? Then get a partner who can! Are you the accountant who’s always loved comics, but deep down inside, you know you’re not a good writer? Don’t let your own ego stand in the way of making a good comic. Hire someone who is great, and have him/ her expand upon your ideas. Everyone, even you, will be much happier with the end product.

“But Josh,” you’re thinking. “I know I’m not that great, but it’s what I really, really want to do. The whole reason I’m self-publishing is because I want to be an artist. I just need more practice.” Well then, by all means keep up your efforts to achieve your dream—but ask yourself again: why are you selfpublishing? It’s very time-consuming, expensive, and draining. If you take another year to improve your talents before publishing, you’ll have a product to be proud of, and never have to look back on those moments thinking, “my God, what was I doing back then?” Trust me, I speak from personal experience! Ever heard of my first comic book, Minotaur? Probably not, and there’s a good reason.

FOR THE SENSITIVE SOUL

Sometimes my comments or advice sound harsh, or even mean, and that’s the opposite of my intentions. This can be a tough industry, and if you jump into it without thinking, trust me that it will be a lot harsher than I’ve been. I’d like to ensure that your publishing experience is as exciting and fulfilling as possible.

This is exactly how I treat myself. I don’t sugarcoat things, or try to paint a pretty picture when there isn’t one. I think everyone who works for me knows I can’t stand someone tiptoeing around a problem, and appreciate an honest assessment of the situation. There simply isn’t time to pussyfoot around issues. We call it like it is, and deal with the challenges that we face head on. What’s great is that when you succeed, you know it’s for real. And that’s the best feeling of all.

Whether you continue reading this entire book or decide to venture into the publishing arena from this point, good luck to you. I hope my prattling on has helped in some small way. Now get out there and start building your infrastructure. Make me regret writing this five years from now, when I wish I could publish you, but you’re already doing too well on your own to accept my offer!

CHAPTER TWO: BUILDING YOUR CREATIVE TEAM

Although some people attempt to create an entire comic book by themselves, most people form a team of creators. This team may consist of any combination of writers, artists, and designers. Oftentimes these are two or three friends, eager to break into comics.

We’re going to explore the various facets of building up the creative team who will produce your comic or manga publication. However, we’re not going to dwell on the creative process. Here, we focus on the legal and administrative responsibilities that go into it.

Anyone can gather a team of artists and writers to help create a comic book, but too often young publishers do not take their agreements with these creators to a professional level: to the contract stage. Many people are intimidated by the legal process—an average attorney in Chicago charges anywhere from $250 to $400 per hour, so I can understand the hesitation. However, once you have a boilerplate in place, it is easy to make changes yourself. BOILERPLATE is the term commonly used for a template of text that basically says the same thing with each agreement you sign, with a few small changes for the specific deal at hand.

Even if you don’t go to an attorney to draft your agreement, any information you can gather to document the terms of your deal is useful: emails, text message conversations, handwritten agreements on toilet paper … anything. Later, I will discuss the steps in making an agreement from scratch, and minimizing your legal fees.

Let me preface this by stressing that I am not an attorney. I’m not even a part time paralegal. I’ve just had a lot of experience working with creators, and have drafted a number of contracts ranging from standard work for hire deals to four-year licensing terms with major corporations. “What’s work for hire?” you ask? That’s why we’re spending a whole chapter on this subject. You, and only you, are responsible for any legal agreements you may enter into. I am only here to offer my opinion.

I still consult my attorneys on a regular basis, and suggest you do the same if you are at all uncertain about something, or are inexperienced in reading or drafting contracts.

THE TALENT

Comic books require a set of very specific talents: a writer, penciller, inker, colorist, and letterer. As I’ve said before, there are many great books on the market that explain these roles in detail, but I’m trying to focus on the business side of their relationships with you, the publisher, so I’ll be brief. For the sake of us all being on the same page, the following is a breakdown of a comic book creative team:

THE WRITER:

This is the person who actually drafts the script for your story. S/He may be working from a concept initiated by someone else, or creating something from scratch. Some writers are very descriptive, and specifically break down the scene and dialogue for every single panel to be drawn on every page. Others have a loose style, and prefer to give the artist a rough outline of what is happening on each page, fitting the dialogue in later.

THE PENCILLER:

The artist who brings the script to life is the penciller, so called, because s/he depends on just that – a pencil. This artist must interpret the writer’s descriptions and ensure that they are visually translated onto the paper. S/He designs the structure of the panels on the page. Not only that, but they must be able to show emotion in the character’s expressions and body language. Basically, a comic book penciller must be able to draw anything from any angle, and typically needs to produce a page a day to make a decent living (in North America, anyway).

THE INKER:

Inkers must trace over the art drafted by the penciller, making sure to maintain clean, crisp lines, and when called for, add depth and weight to the art. The inker needs to take care that everything doesn’t look flat and twodimensional; backgrounds should appear to fade into the distance, and the foreground should pop out at the reader. At one time, inking was vital to the process, because printing technology was limited, but with computers, artists are finally breaking the rules. I’ve seen all sorts of pencil/ink combinations, and there is some amazing art out there, so your artists are not as limited as they once would have been. Inking, however, is probably the most abused facet of the art form. Many people think it’s easy, but good pencils can be easily destroyed by poor inks.

Oh, and if you ever meet an inker in person, please refrain from the alltoo-popular “tracer” joke popularized by the movie Chasing Amy. Not because the artist will take himself too seriously, but because those jokes were funny fifteen years ago, and have all the punch of a knock-knock joke these days. To every inker out there, you’re welcome!

THE COLORIST:

Colorists add hue, tone, and depth to the black and white inked artwork. The art of coloring has changed more than any other facet of the comics form. Once upon a time a colorist’s palette and capabilities were extremely affected by the limits of the printing process, and coloring was mainly very flat and featureless. Computers have changed all that—colorists are often very involved in the rendering of the page, employing complex shading, multiple light sources, modeled shapes, and a plethora of other tools once available.

Particularly in the area of colors, the Internet has allowed us to see what the rest of the world has to offer, and there is an amazing pool of talent out there. Devil’s Due, for instance, uses colorists from all over the world.

THE LETTERER:

Comics these days are all lettered via the computer as well, using programs like Adobe Illustrator and InDesign. The letterer takes the computer art files and the original script, and builds those words into custom-shaped word balloons on each panel. Way back in the Twentieth Century—like 1995— lettering was largely done by hand. Today, there are a number of fonts your letterer can employ to give your comics’ dialogue that “comic book” feel.

It still takes a good set of design skills to letter properly, and even though I’m not a pro letterer, let me save you from making a grave mistake right now: never use the fonts that come stock with your PC or Mac computer, or comic fonts that have been around since the dawn of digital lettering. Keep your fonts fresh. And seriously, if you use the font Comic Sans, cut up your printouts and start over. If you don’t understand why that’s a bad thing, that’s okay—you shouldn’t be the one lettering. Go find yourself a letterer.

CONTRACT, CONTRACT, CONTRACT

The most important reason you sign contracts with people is to ensure that everyone has a clear understanding of their role in the publishing process. I don’t know who first said it, but the saying I always remember is, “Contracts are for when things go BAD, not when they’re going well.” Over time, even the simplest agreement can be misunderstood as memories fade and selective memory takes over. Many a friendship has been lost over scenarios like this. If you have an agreement in writing, no one can argue with it. Well, okay, they can argue but a contract keeps thing from getting way off track from reality.

Before I “went pro,” I heard plenty of artists claim that they “don’t like to worry about contracts.” No one wants to think that current relationships could sour years later, because no one feels that their current partners would intentionally try to burn them. The truth is: it’s true, that’s very unlikely. Instead, what happens is that with the passing of time, people forget what was said—or worse, each person had a different understanding of the agreement to begin with, because it was too vague.

An example: you are the “business-minded” person on your team, and you agree verbally that you will “split the profits fifty-fifty.” What if your definition of “profits” is different from your partner’s? S/He may think that “profit” means all of the sales from the book, while you (correctly) define “profit” as all sales after costs for shipping, printing, advertising, etc. That’s a huge difference. Let’s add a complication. This misunderstanding isn’t even realized until six months after you and your partner start working together … because that’s when the first check arrives from the distributor. Now you have a partner who is very frustrated, and may feel that you are going back on your word.

If you are able to pull out a contract that clearly states and defined the meaning of “profits” in this relationship—a contract signed by all parties involved—this problem is quickly resolved. Your partner may still be upset or frustrated, but the contract you both signed will have served its purpose: you both agreed, in advance, to a certain statement, and thus adhering to the contracts allows both of you to maintain your integrity, and know that no one’s trying to pull a fast one.

UNDERSTAND EVERYONE’S GOALS

I spent a good deal of time writing about this in the previous volume of this book, but it bears repeating: What do you want out of this? This is not just a question to ask yourself, but to ask your partners. Are you very serious about making a professional living as a comic book artist, or just fulfilling a childhood dream for kicks? It’s important that you partner with someone who shares your goals.

For instance, if you are drop-dead serious and highly motivated about writing a professional manga, but you team up with an artist who is only halfheartedly involved and not willing to put as much effort into the venture as you are, you should know this up front. Perhaps you assume that the artist is going to help you promote it online, that s/he’s going to help pay for tables at conventions, and do as much to market the product as you are. Yet s/he may just be drawing the comic for fun. S/He may draw an incredible-looking comic, but if everyone’s expectations are not in sync, it can cause serious problems very quickly.

Say your main goal with your self-published comic book is to get the attention of someone like an editor at Devil’s Due, and score a job writing comics? What if your artist has decided that s/he only wants to draw in an Invader Zim style? Your writing may be great, but your sample product won’t be in line with the genre you’re trying to get hired for.

What if you’re an artist, and you’re serious about sticking it out with a series for a full year, but the writer you team with only wants to write for a few issues—or worse, you want a serious action story, and s/he’s set on filling it with jokes?

Every one of these scenarios may seem painfully obvious. But those are some of the most common – and most serious – mistakes people make when publishing. Hell, those are some of the biggest mistakes people make in major life decisions, period. Clashing goals can be a major setback.

©, ®, AND ™

Before we get into the section on Work for Hire, it’s important to know just what the terms COPYRIGHT and TRADEMARK mean. They are commonly used, but few people understand the difference. The intricacies of these laws are worthy of their own book, and many have written about them, but the basic concept is pretty simple:

COPYRIGHT

If you own the copyright to something, it means, basically, that you have the right to copy it, to reproduce it in any medium. For example, you’ve created a character named Jimmy AllPowerful, and asked me to draw a picture of her. I agree to do so for free, and tell you that you may publish it as a pin-up in one of my comic books. Although you created the character, I own the copyright on that image. If you want to use that image in another comic book, or on a T-shirt, you must again ask me for permission. If you’re selling a lot of comics, I’m probably going to want some money.

Notice: I still do not own the character, just the image you drew of it. That’s because you own the trademark (I’ll get to that in a second). If I took that image, and produced T-shirts of it without your permission, you would have just cause to make me stop (or as they love to say, “cease and desist”).

Most states have laws that automatically protect your creations the very moment you put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard. However, it never hurts to mount the evidence in your favor, so it’s a good idea to officially copyright your work through the government.

The symbol used to identify copyright ownership is ©. To type this on your computer, simply type “alt G.” Contrary to popular belief, you do not have to register your art or text with the government to place a copyright symbol on it. Registration with the state or federal government simply helps strengthen your claim of ownership in court.

TRADEMARK

Trademark is the ownership of more than just an image: it’s basically the ownership of an idea. It is the general concept, and all of the associated characteristics that go along with it. It’s really hard to explain, but once you understand, the concept of “trademark” should be very simple.

The United States Government breaks trademarks into categories and various media. For instance, Superman is a term that’s been around a lot longer than the DC comic book everyone knows today. The concept of a hero in tights and a cape is also a very general concept that no one person can claim to own. Krypton is an actual element on the periodic table of elements. Lastly, the letter “S” is simply a part of the alphabet, and free for everyone to use. Put them all together, though, and you have a trademark.

DC’s Superman is a powerful hero from the Planet Krypton, wearing blue and red tights and a cape, with a very unique “S” design on his chest—and these are some of the details that compromise the trademark of Superman. Even more specifically, this trademark applies to comic books. Now, Superman has been around for a zillion years, and has been merchandises into many other media, and DC (or their parent company Warner Bros.) has taken care to register the “™” in various categories. You still hear the term “Superman” in songs, though, and there’s nothing DC can do about it unless the song refers to very specific elements of their character’s trademark.

The symbol for trademark is simply “™,” asseen somewhere on most logos and product packaging. Just like copyrights, if you have created something, you have every right to place a “™” by its name.

REGISTERED COPYRIGHT

This is the big daddy of copyright and trademark law. If you see any product with an ® (“alt R” on your keyboard), that means the owner has officially registered it with the Library of Congress. They’ve sent images, text descriptions, and logos to the Feds, and paid a few hundred bucks to do so, to ensure they protect their property as best as possible.

Again, I must reiterate that I am not an attorney, and you should see professional advice on the subject, but this gives us a start.

WORK FOR HIRE VS. CREATOR-OWNED

When starting your comic book publishing venture, you need to decide up front: is this going to be something that you own outright, or will you share in the ownership of rights with your creators? Sharing a percentage of sales is different than sharing ownership.

In 1976 the United States Government passed a bill that clarified the copyright issues, and created the “Work for Hire” clause. Depending on your view of creative rights, this may be positive or negative, but what it allows one to do is retain all of the copyright for any artwork or stories created by someone else. The rule is that the artist must agree to this, and sign an agreement saying so.

The is how large companies like Disney can have thousands of people working for them, drawing and writing stories, but maintain ownership of everything.

What this does not mean is the ownership of the original artwork. Traditionally, the artist keeps the physical art, which s/he may then sell. However, if you’ve signed a work for hire agreement, they do not necessarily have permission to reproduce it or to allow anyone else to.

On the flip side, if you do not sign a WFH agreement, the artist owns the copyright to the work. It’s only by his/her permission that someone else may publish it beyond the one-time usage he’s being paid for. Even if you’ve published the art, you must get permission to produce it a second time, or to use pieces of the art on T-shirts, stickers, or anything else.

An example of the work for hire clause would be: The Work created hereunder has been specially commissioned by Devil’s Due to use as contribution to a collective work, and constitutes a work made for hire as that is use in the United States Copyright Act of 1976. Talent acknowledges that s/he has been engaged to perform hereunder. In the event the Work is deemed not to be a work made for hire, the Talent hereby assigns to Devil’s Due all rights in the works, including copyright and trademark rights and all other rights to exploit the work in all media now or hereafter existing throughout the world in eternity. Upon Devil’s Due’s request, Talent shall also have the right, but not the obligation, to use and to permit others to use Talent’s name, likeness, and biographical information in connection with the Work, and the advertising, publicity, and promotion thereof.

Now, when starting out, it’s very common to agree to share ownership of the copyright and trademarks of your comics. Many split the ownership 50/50. If you’re the publisher, for instance, your contribution involves paying for and managing the business aspects of publishing, while the creators are putting their time into working for you, most likely for little pay.

PAYMENT TERMS: PAGE RATES, ROYALTIES, AND COMP COPIES

Among the top-selling comic book publishers, writers are paid by the page (known as page rate), as are artists and letterers. These rates can range from $50 a page to $250 a page, depending on the level of talent. Most wellestablished guys get around $100 or so.

When it comes to self-publishing, however, unless you have significant amounts of disposable cash, you won’t be coughing up that kind of dough. If you’re not writing the book yourself, it’s customary to offer the writer a percentage of the profits. Of course, it’s wisest to make sure you have someone who is working out of a love of the medium, and for exposure. Chances are, you’re not going to sell enough to make any money back – you’re doing this for the experience, but there’s always a chance you’ll create the next Bone or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, so you want to dot your i’s and cross your t’s.

It’s important to determine what “percentage of profits” means, and to get it in writing. Remember, contracts are for when things go wrong, not right. As time passes, memories become selective, and good friends may begin to fight over money. A well-drafted contract, even if it’s only an email agreement, can save you a world of problems later. In the chapter titled “Drafting a Contract (and Saving Money),” I’ve included a sample document of a basic writer/ publisher agreement, based on shared profits.

Sometimes a person will believe “profits” or “net sales” to mean “money left over after all printing costs.” Meanwhile, his/her partner understands profits to be money left over after paying for printing, shipping, advertising, website hosting, supply costs, gas money and printer cartridges. See how easily that can be misunderstood? The worst scenario that can happen is that you could be losing a couple thousand dollars, and your writer or artist believes you’re hoarding a lion’s share of cash.

Another option for payment based on sales is offering a flat royalty for each issue sold. This means that whether you make or lose money, the talent will be paid a flat price for each copy of the book that is sold. For example, you and your writer agree that you will pay 5% of the cover price. If you sell 3,000 copies of a $3.00 book, the total sales would be $9,000. Thus, your writer is then owed $450 (9,000 x .05 = 450)

Be sure, when drafting a royalty agreement, that you specify COVER PRICE or WHOLESALE COST. If you agreed to pay 5% of wholesale, a $3.00 product would sell to distributors for around $1.20 (that’s $3.00 minus a 60% discount to the distributor, or $3.00 x .4 = $1.20). Five percent of the wholesale cost of 3,000 books would be $180. That’s way off from $450, and a confused writer will not be happy. Additionally, I recommend whoever’s controlling the money flow specify that a percentage is paid only of revenue you receive, and not revenue you “sell” to a vendor on terms who may not pay.

I landed in court over a dispute of unpaid royalties when, despite sending tens of thousands of books to a vendor, my company was never paid for them, and the artist still demanded royalties. The artist ended up settling for my initial offer to pay the flat rate we’d agreed to – before any royalties were factored in
– after seeing documentation that I was telling the truth (I’m sure that a judge would have come to the same conclusion, had it come to that). This didn’t happen though before the artist dragged us through the mud a bit, and never bothered, to my knowledge, to correct anyone that I’d been completely honest about the whole thing. Having that simple item specified in the agreement, it would have likely clarified the dispute before it got to that point, saving everyone a lot of time and a lot of stress!

If you’re new to this idea of payment (of if you just plain hate math), it may seem a little intimidating, but take some time to digest it. It’s all very simple arithmetic. Practice a few scenarios on paper, and see if you get the hang of it.

You can stay simple, or get as creative as you want with the deal. Here’s a common scenario at many publishers:
Clyde McWriterpants agrees to script a four-issue mini-series of SuperHypo-Force 3000. The publisher is going to pay him $50 per page for each 22-page issue. That means he’s going to receive $110 per issue. Now, McWriterpants is an established pro, and his rate at another publisher is $85 a page – he’s not doing this for the money, he just likes working with the publisher. Still, if the book does well, he wants to make sure he enjoys his share of the wealth. So the publisher agrees that in addition to the page rate, Clyde will receive a 10% royalty on the wholesale cost of the book, after sales break 10,000 copies.
Follow me?
Super-Hypo-Force 3000 debuts, and it’s a surprise hit, selling 20,000 copies. Clyde was already paid his page rate of $50 per page, a total of $1100, but now he’s entitled to 10% of the wholesale on all copies sold after the first 10,000. In this case, it’s easy math: 20,000 copies, minus 10,000, and we are left with 10,000 copies. The comic sold for $3.00, making the wholesale price $1.20. That means the publisher receives $12,000 for those additional sales, and now owes Clyde 10% of that, or $1,200. Not bad for Clyde. Since he was willing to take a risk, he’s now raked in $2300, which breaks down to over $104 a page.
If you’re like most people, and need to find creators to work for little pay up front, you may still be able to spare one expense that could add a very professional touch to your comic: you can hire an established pro to create your covers.
I’m not suggesting you run out and pay super-hot artist J. Lee Scott Campbell Ross $2500 to draw a cover, but someone who’s currently drawing comics for the bigger companies gives readers the perception that your book is of the same quality before they even open the cover.
Don’t tell anyone I told you, but oftentimes the pros will draw the cover for you at a major discount, just because they enjoy helping out the new guys. Be sure to offer him/her something, though, even if it’s buying drinks at the next convention. You never know, five years later you might be able to return the favor, and hire the same artist for real pay.

DRAFTING A CONTRACT (AND SAVING MONEY)

Writing a contract seems like a very intimidating task, but just like the creation of a comic book, it’s done step by step, and with help from your team. It all starts with a simple conversation about what you want out of the deal, and what your team members are expecting. This needs to be done on a one-on-one basis with each member. After talking, you can begin to jot down notes about all of the various terms. It helps to know what questions to ask, so hopefully I can help by providing a scenario:

Sean has decided that he wants to publish a comic book called Ninja Pants: the Domination. He believes it’s the best idea in the world, and must be published. He has thoroughly thought about why he wants to do it, and received honest criticism from others about his professional level, and it was positive.

Sean is going to write Ninja Pants himself, but does not want to – or cannot – draw it, because he only knows how to draw with crayons. He’s pretty good at lettering and graphic design, though, so he’s going to handle that part himself.

Sean isn’t interested in publishing this book for years and years, but instead wants to use it as a resume piece to show to bigger publishers. So this comic is just going to be a one-shot, self-contained story.

Sean has found an artist named Caitlin, who is awesome at drawing in a manga style, and perfect for Ninja Pants: the Domination. She too, is just looking for an opportunity to get her work seen by the “big guys,” so this is perfect for her.

When they finally discuss the arrangements, Sean and Caitlin have their questions ready to go (they’ve already read my book, so they knows what to ask):

**1. If I can’t pay you any money up front, are you willing to work for a percentage of the profits? Is 50/50 fair?
the Ninja Pants title and characters? If the artist does all of the designs, does she keep partial rights?

2. How quickly can you create a 9.penciled and inked page of
   comic book art, and how much free time do you have to work 10.on it? 3. How will you deliver art to me, and can you send images to
   me at various stages, such as sketch, pencils, and then 11.finally inks?

3. What do you think is a fair amount of revisions to do for each page?
   Do all of these terms apply to future printings of the book?

What if someone wants to make a T-shirt, movie, podcast, cellphone download, or other merchandise based off of the comic book art?

If we promote this book at conventions, how is the
money divided? Who is going to pay for the booth rental at the conventions?

5. How much money will be used 12. for advertising, and will it be considered one of the
   expenses when you calculate profits?

6. How do you define “profits”? If a lot of work is done on the comic book, but the entire project is cancelled for any reason, what happens? Is anyone owed any money? Does the division of ownership rights change?

7. How long does it take to get money from the distributor, and other customers, and when will we receive our first checks?

8. Who is retaining ownership of ** From there, Sean and Caitlin are off to a pretty good start. These questions beget more questions, and by the time they are all answered, they’ll have a pretty solid contract. The process of putting these together in a rough draft results in a “Deal Memo,” or “Letter of Intent.” Basically, the deal memo is what you write up in your own words, that you both agree to, before passing it along to an attorney.
   Obviously, if you’d involved the attorney in the process any earlier, it would have cost a lot more. Now, depending on your experience level and writing abilities, you may be able to take this a little further on your own. I usually go beyond the deal memo, and once it’s agreed upon, draft a full contract. This is where I try to conceive of every single circumstance that could possibly happen, and include it in the document. I’m “half past” thirty, though, and have been writing agreements since I was sixteen years old, so I’ve had some practice. In high school my business class teacher used a contract I’d written (for a “publisher” I was going to work with that didn’t know how to write one) as a classroom example, so I guess I have a knack for it. If you’re good at foreseeing all possible outcomes of every scenario then you’ll be a natural for contracts, but as they say, “You don’t know what you don’t know,” so I still highly recommend having an attorney look things over.

I’ve finally done this enough that if a new deal is very similar to deals I’ve done in the past, I may choose not to send it to my attorney. However, if it’s at all unfamiliar territory, I email it to him right away. The consequences of making a mistake are just too risky. I’ve usually typed things out so much, though, that it takes him less than an hour to review and amend the document.

Here is an example of a sample contract for Sean and Caitlin’s deal. Feel free to use this as inspiration, but please do not copy it word for word. I’m only doing this for the purposes of the book, and again, stress that I am NOT a licensed attorney.

The basic breakdown of categories I start with, after assessing all of the questions each party has, are length of TERM, each party’s COMMITMENTS, PAYMENT terms, OWNERSHIP rights, and TERMINATION details.

PUBLISHING AGREEMENT
NINJA PANTS: THE DOMINATION
This Agreement (“Agreement”) is effective as of this XX day of XXXX, 20XX (the “Effective Date”) by and between Caitlin (“Creator”), and Sean (“Publisher”). TERM
This agreement shall be effective for two years from the date of execution. Upon expiration of the term, the agreement must be renegotiated, and does not automatically renew, with the exception of specific clauses that may obligate Creator and Publisher to share in responsibilities, payment distribution, or rights ownership for a longer period of time.

No terms of this agreement may be changed without a written amendment agreed to by both parties, executed via signed contract or email confirmation.

COMMITMENT
Publisher agrees to produce NINJA PANTS: THE DOMINATION (the Comic), a forty-eight page comic book story, to be distributed through comic books stores, online web-stores, and conventions nationwide. Publisher makes no guarantees of sales quantities or revenues earned by the comic book.

The Comic will be printed in black and white, to be solicited, printed, and released in stores on a date set by Publisher, agreed upon by Creator.
Publisher agrees to advertise the comic book on many standard comic book industry fan websites and in the primary industry Distributor’s catalog, PREVIEWS. Publisher will arrange for interviews with website column writers and editors.
Publisher will arrange to acquire space at comic industry fan conventions and trade shows, and acquire pricing information. Publisher and Creator agree to split the cost of all convention expenses 50/50. Publisher and artist both agree to attend at least three major fan conventions, with attendance of over 2,000 people, during the term of the agreement.
Creator agrees to produce pages of the Comic at a rate sufficient to meet the deadlines agreed upon with the Publisher. Creator understands that timely production of the Comic and meeting deadlines is a vital part of the success of the Comic.
Creator agrees to pay for all supplies necessary in the creation of the Comic, such as paper, pencils, ink pens, and computer hardware. Creator and Publisher agree that Creator is allowing one-time usage of the art created, and that all future printings of the art, other than for promotional or review purposes, must be renegotiated once the term expires. Creator maintains ownership of all “original art,” defined as the physical artwork that is later transferred to digital files, and is free to sell the art at whatever price the Creator desires.
During the term, Publisher may use the Creator’s art in any media format, for promotional purposes.

PAYMENT
Publisher and Creator agree to share the net profits of all revenues generated by The Comic 50/50. Net Profits shall be defined as all moneys earned minus the expense of printing, online and print advertising, shipping, distribution fees, and website hosting fees. Costs not deducted from Net Profits will be traveling expenses, convention expenses or Creator expenses for shipping artwork to Publisher when digital delivery is not possible.

It is understood that the first payment received by the distributor will be thirty days after the debut of the Comic in stores. Publisher agrees to pay Creator any moneys owed from the first distributor check within two weeks of receiving that first payment from the Distributor.

All following distributor payments shall be accrued by Publisher, and paid at the end of every quarter of each year following, as shall all sales from online stores.

Publisher will provide Creator with an itemized list of expenses and income from the Comic, and upon the Creator’s request, will provide copies of invoices and receipts associated with the itemized list.

Convention revenues from the sales of the Comic will be shared 50/50 between Creator and Publisher, unless otherwise agreed to. From time to time, distribution of money from convention sales may be handled on a special case basis. The Creator will retain all money from the sale of original art or commissioned sketches produced at conventions.

OWNERSHIP
Publisher and Creator agree to share the ownership rights of the Comic, and all associated characters and trademarks from the Comic, 75/25. The Publisher, who is the party who conceived of the Comic, will own 75% of ownership rights, and the Creator shall own 25%. In the event of merchandising of the Comic’s associated trademarks, all distribution of moneys shall be calculated based on the 75/25 ratio. Ownership rights shall remain split at this ratio indefinitely, notwithstanding (big word alert! “notwithstanding” means “despite”) any other clause in this agreement related to limited terms.

Publisher has the authority to sell the rights of the Comic to another party, for any category of media, be it comic books, film, television, video games, cell phone downloads, or any other medium, without consultation from the Creator, but all income from the sale of such rights shall be shared upon the 75/25 ratio. The Creator, of course, still retains the ownership of all artwork created for the Comic, and the use of said art, must be negotiated on a case-bycase basis.

TERMINATION
This agreement will automatically expire two years from the date of execution, unless an extension is negotiated. In the event that either party fails to meet the obligations set forth in the agreement, the opposing party may notify he or she, in writing, of a Breach of Contract. The accused party shall have ten business days to rectify the matter. In the event that either party is determined to be in breach after the ten-day window, this agreement is null and void.

If the Creator is the party in breach, Creator may make no claims of ownership of the Comic and associated trademarks. Ownership rights shall revert to the Publisher 100%.

If the Publisher is the party in breach, Publisher must cease use of all art produced by Creator. Publisher retains 75% ownership of the Comic, but the other 25% will remain with Artist, even if the Comic has not yet been completed in full.

In the event of a dispute between the two parties that cannot be settled out of court, both parties agree that the matter shall be settled by arbitration to be administered by a single arbitrator of the American Arbitration Association, under its Commercial Arbitration Rules (this is a common way to avoid the lengthy court process). The judgment of the arbitrator may be entered in any court having jurisdiction thereof. The place of such arbitration shall be within the County of ______, State of _______. Furthermore, the arbitrator shall award the prevailing party the costs of arbitration, including but not limited to reasonable attorneys’ fees, expert witness fees, accounting fees and costs.

CREATOR:
Name ___________________________ Address _________________________ City, State _______________________ Country _________________________ Signature ________________________ PUBLISHER:
Name __________________________ Address ________________________ City, State ______________________ Country ________________________ Signature _______________________

INVOICING

Invoicing, or “billing,” is arguably the most important aspect of any business, because without it, you can’t get paid. I went into detail about invoicing in an earlier chapter, focusing on the distributor/publisher relationship. However, it’s just as important for you and your team members to invoice each other.

Invoicing is one the most basic skills needed by any artist yet most of our schools fail us miserably at teaching people how to do this. I’ve encountered at least a dozen contracted artists who don’t know how to invoice the company and need help doing it. Once I even called the Assistant to the Dean of my sister’s school (anonymously) to let them know how absurd it was that she didn’t know how to invoice us for a quick design job. This was and still is a reputable college churning out thousands of students who will make a good deal of their living on a freelance basis. Again, sometimes colleges really get under my skin when I see them failing people paying good money to attend, and it’s usually involving the creative arts where this happens.

Early on, it may not seem like a necessity, but as the months pass, there’s no way to remember all of those numbers in your head. Even if the creator is not charging the publisher an up-front cost, accounting is imperative to a well-run operation…and it’s cheaper to hire a bookkeeper than most people think!

For instance, let’s say that our friends Caitlin and Sean, who agreed upon splitting the proceeds of Ninja Pants: The Domination by fifty-fifty, actually did quite well with their publication. After all costs, they were left with $2,000 profit, and a couple thousand books left in inventory to sell. Originally, each person gets $1,000 a piece—easy enough. Now skip ahead a year. Hundreds more have sold through the distributor, but there have also been some returned copies due to damages during shipping. On top of that, Sean has started an online store, and sold another couple hundred copies online, at full price. Now add to that copies sold at conventions—conventions that cost money to attend…

Do you understand why meticulous accounting is important? I’m currently addressing accounting for the purposes of the creator/ publisher relationship; I’m not even talking about taxes. To ensure that you are able to write off as much as possible against your income, and that you can show the IRS that you are not hiding money away, accounting is even more important.
Don’t be intimidated, though. It’s all just simple math. There are a number of inexpensive accounting programs for both PC and Mac that you can use to keep track of everything. If you can’t afford that, there’s always the good ol’ spiral-bound notebook.
Don’t forget, you can deduct every expense you incur for your publishing from your book’s income at tax time. That’s when you start to enjoy the beauty of having your own small business. I highly recommend learning more about the subject, but warn you, once you start, you probably won’t be able to stop. The U.S. Tax Code, specifically, is a 1,000 plus page book about how not to pay so much in taxes, written so much more in favor of business owners than it is for employees that it will shock you. And hey, if the Supreme Court is going to declare now that corporations are people, and give them special rights on top of it, then shouldn’t “people” respond by in turn incorporating to take advantage of it? I think that verdict is a disgrace and failure of our judicial system, but it’s either take advantage of the ever changing rules or continue to have the system chip away at your bottom line. And long before that polarizing verdict, the code was still written in favor of businesses, largely because true innovative businesses do create the jobs that provide the capital that make our country work.
As I’ve said before, the standard turnaround time for paying an invoice is within thirty days. You will most likely have a different arrangement if you are sharing profits of sales, but as long as it’s documented in your contract, that’s okay.

ROYALTY REPORTING

This is the not-so-fun aspect of the administrative side of publishing, but as long as you stay organized, it shouldn’t be a big deal. In contrast, receiving royalty checks is pretty fun.

The most common standard for reporting royalties is to pay on a quarterly basis, every three months. Along with a check to your team members, you should also provide a report of what has been sold, and how much money has been made and/or lost. If your operation is fairly simple, you may choose to do monthly reporting.

It’s also a good idea to divide them up into categories, such as “Direct market, book market, online sales, and convention sales.” Please see an example of a basic royalty report at the back of this book.

REPUTATION: YEARS TO BUILD, SECONDS TO SHATTER

I had to pause when editing this chapter from the previous version. My, how crazy things had become since originally writing it in 2006. There was the digital revolution, the economic recession, and – as I discussed in the Introduction chapter – my reputation being put to the test. One could probably write an entire book on this subject. Hell, I’m sure someone has, but I feel compelled to stress your responsibility as a publisher to maintain integrity. You will have a lot of people putting a lot of sweat and blood into every comic book you produce, and it is important that your word means something. One of my favorite sayings, and life philosophies, is:

“If you always tell the truth then you’ll never have to remember anything.” Not only is constantly lying (even “little white lies”) wrong, it takes a lot of effort to keep up with. If someone lies about little things, they’ll lie about bigger things. It’s not always easy, but it can’t be any simpler. Just DON’T FUCKING LIE.

Ever. What happens all too often in comics is that people go into the business with rose-colored glasses. Despite the research that tells them that they probably won’t make any money publishing a small press comic book no one’s heard of before, they convince themselves that their idea will sell better than “all those other wannabes.” Then the orders come in and they’re a quarter of what was expected. Suddenly, the publisher can’t pay a team member what s/ he promised to pay, and so s/he starts to tell little white lies. Or worse: when creators call or email, s/he doesn’t even respond to them. It might not be what anyone wants to hear, but I will always always always opt to give bad news up front, and then work to take care of a situation when it becomes possible, understanding that the party I’m speaking with may not know if s/he can trust me to do so until I deliver.

This is why it is so important—to all parties—to have a contract, and to only promise what you can afford to pay in the worst-case scenario. If everything goes well, all the better, but you will sleep better at night knowing you haven’t bitten off more than you can chew.

If a publisher does not heed this advice, and makes a mistake, the best thing to do is suck it up, grow some juevos, and tell your team the truth: you screwed up. See if you can renegotiate a deal with them to pay them less based on your orders. Most people will understand and have sympathy. Some will insist on the full amount, which you will just have to pay off slowly. Everyone may be upset. They may scream at you, or berate you in emails—and you may well deserve it. The most important thing, though, is to pay them. Live up to your end of the bargain. If takes you a year to pay them, when all is said and done, they will respect you all the more.

Never let anyone else spend your money without keeping them on a tight leash. No matter how close you are with them, it will be you everyone holds responsible when they’re gone.
I have made mistakes myself. I’ve had to pay people late, and they’ve not been happy about it. Their biggest concern deep down is that they will not be paid at all, because they’ve been screwed by people before.

The reputation I’ve built has stepped in to help me. People who know me well will vouch for me, and treat me just as well as I treat them. Simple concept, isn’t it? I had one run-in with a group of people who, it turned out, had been lying to artists and writers, and making a ton of promises they couldn’t possibly keep. When confronted, they wouldn’t listen to my concerns, so I had to pull away from them. Making the situation worse, they were blaming their problems on me. I could not let this ruin my reputation, and had to fight back. Worse, they were vocally very religious (emphasis on vocally), yet told me that as “Christians” they couldn’t tell an artist they wouldn’t be paid in the near future despite having squandered all of the money I had advanced them, so they carried on lying to everyone.

Fortunately, my reputation was stronger than theirs and, with a few exceptions, most observers believed me. The whole situation bothered me, but I just moved on. You know what? Eventually, the ones who disliked me the most—my former partners’ most loyal team members—eventually came back over a year later and let me know they were sorry they ever doubted me. They eventually saw through the lies. Honesty and integrity always win out in the end—and it helps to have a solid reputation already in place.

I wasn’t really a spiritual person and didn’t believe in karma. I believed “What goes around, comes around” to be a simple game of odds. I have worked for fifteen years in the business and slowly developed a very solid reputation. While the past few years have presented many challenges, transparency, honesty and determination to keep pressing forward have served me well and, in the long term, have played a major role in turning the ship around.

Plus, following through on your word is just the right thing to do. Beau Smith is an industry veteran who’s been around for years. He was instrumental in the early days of Image Comics as the head of marketing, and he’s written too many comics and video games to count. I’ll never forget Beau because he treated me with respect from the moment I met him, when I was only 18. He gave me one of the best pieces of advice that everyone should take to heart: “In this business, you never know who your boss will be tomorrow.”

Moral of the story? Treat everyone well. I’ve had the fortune of being treated well by people for the most part, but I’ve also been burned by a lot too, and make no mistake, more than a few of them tried to get on my good side later.

Maybe that makes me the lesser person, but I say screw those people. Ain’t got time for ‘em. I am a huge fan of cutting shitty people out of your life. I’ve been blessed with an amazing awesome family that truly supports me, and in 2010 an amazing wife that just magnifies that support. However, sometimes people need to separate themselves from destructive people, even family members. Cut negativity out of your life and surround yourself with those who inspire you. If someone refuses to live by the standards and integrity you hold yourself to, it’s okay to cut those ties, especially in business. Once you’re invested in time and money (and emotions) on a project with someone, it can become very difficult to part ways if you start seeing red flags, however, experience has shown me it’s usually best to cut ties quickly and completely, despite the pain. It will save you enormous headaches in the end and just make life better.

When you surround yourself with awesome people, life becomes more awesomer! Poor grammar intentional, dear editor.
I’m not saying you should expect special treatment if you’re new to the biz. If Devil’s Due is at a convention, having a serious problem with booth setup, and you’re simultaneously in Artist Alley with a problem, they’re probably going to take care of us first. It’s just the way it is, but they should treat you with respect. And guess what? If Robert Kirkman or Stan Lee need attention, they’re going to get it way before Devil’s Due does. So you have to understand the business side of things, but you don’t have to accept being treated like crap.

WHERE THE HECK DO I FIND THESE PEOPLE?

When the Godfathers of the modern comic book industry were ushering in a new era of four-color heroes, everyone worked from the same studio. The big comic book publishers were almost all based in New York. Guys like Stan Lee, Julie Schwartz, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko worked from offices that had “bullpens” where the artists and writers interacted face to face.

Then came the dawn of FedEx, and overnight delivery services. Suddenly, artists could work from home, sending their pages in once or twice a month, and the publisher no longer had to assume the risk of hiring on so many full time employees. That was the early ‘70s, and it stayed that way until, yes, that gift from God known as high speed internet access!

Man, I swore I wouldn’t date myself, because I want this book to help the modern self-publisher, but it’s so hard to write about these topics without contemplating just how quickly things have changed in a decade. It blows my mind … and also fills me with anticipation for how quickly they will continue to change. I think it’s very important that we remind ourselves of how young the internet is. And even how astonishingly young social media and smart phones are. I agree wholeheartedly with marketing guru Gary Vaynerchuk’s feelings on the internet being like a teenager whose true potential has barely even begun to be realized. If we’re comparable to film, then we just left the silent film era and are just now entering 40s sci-fi films. So yeah, it’s going to get crazier.

Take for instance that in the first version of this book, just eight years ago, Facebook wasn’t even on the public’s RADAR. Since that time I’ve met, had a deal with, and watched the same Hollywood producers make a movie about Facebook.

The new skool creators and publishers have so many great tools at their disposal that didn’t exist a few blinks ago.
Back in the day, if you wanted to find others to collaborate on a comic book project, you were relegated to asking your other friends in art class, or meeting someone at the local comic shop. If you were very serious, you would travel to one of the big conventions, and try to meet as many creators as possible.
Comics Buyer’s Guide was a weekly newspaper that many people placed classified ads in, seeking talent. Still, that took weeks, and then you had to wait for photocopies of art samples to arrive in the mail.
Today? Man, today you can find the most amazing talent in a matter of seconds. There is no reason anyone should have to publish a comic book of unprofessional quality. Take the time to see out talent before you begin, and it will save you months of struggling down the line.
The old ways still work, but try sniffing around on the web’s many artist communities and message boards to see what you can find. Between Deviant Art (deviantart.com), Facebook and Twitter you can build one hell of a creative team; impossible just five years ago.

IT ALL COMES DOWN TO COMMUNICATION

In the ideal situation, no one ever needs to bust out an old contract for a dispute. Hopefully it’s never needed. If there ever is any confusion between you and your team members, though, you’ll sure be glad that you took the time to write a detailed agreement. This is just all part of clear communication.

The biggest wastes of time and effort, the biggest feuds in the history of the world, and the biggest expenses for companies come from poor communication. No one sets out to communicate poorly, but few people always make an effort to communicate well. It’s in human nature to make certain assumptions, and it’s those assumptions that bite you in the ass later.

As time goes on, and you make more deals, problems will arise that neither party anticipated. There’s just no way around it. All you can do is handle the situation to the best of your ability—and make sure, if something particularly bad happens, to include a new clause in any future contracts expressly to prevent repeating the ordeal.

Having these arguments in place will allow you to move on to the fun part of publishing—creating a comic book! You’ll be able to sleep better at night knowing that you are handling things like the pros, and that the journey you are about to go through with your team members should be one of cooperation, and few, if any misunderstandings.

Alright now it’s time for the next step: Marketing, Public Relations, and Production. You can have the best comic book in the world, but if you don’t know how to market it, and no one hears about it, you’ll never sell enough to sustain yourself. Even more importantly, if you don’t know how to handle the transition of your artwork and computer files from your home computer to the printer, you won’t be able to deliver on time.

CHAPTER THREE: MARKETING, PUBLIC RELATIONS AND PRODUCTION

In the previous two chapters I covered the territories of setting up your self-publishing infrastructure, and signing your creative team. With those two elements in place, the creation of your book is underway. Creating the comic is only half the battle, though. Now you have the assignment of making sure everyone knows about it, and making sure it gets into the stores on time.

THE HOOK

It all starts with the “hook.” If you don’t have a hook, you don’t have anything to market. The hook is what makes your concept stand out from all of the others. Too often people try to explain every detail about their character or story, and lose the reader’s interest. You only have a split second to grab someone’s attention before they move onto another comic, so make that second count.

For example, if you told someone you were writing a 100-page graphic novel about Santa Clause, most people are going to stare at you and walk away. But if you have a hook, for instance, “Santa Clause vs. the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in 2215,” you might pique their interest. I’d read that story, but maybe that’s not the best example.

Another example is my comic book called Mercy Sparx. This started as an excuse for me to draw what I enjoy drawing – punk-influenced imagery like cute girls in the punk rock and hip hop scenes, cartoony devil girls, urban settings, etc. There are a lot of books like this, and there are countless cartoony devil-girls found in both comics and music. My “hook:” Mercy Sparx is a devil-girl secretly hired by Heaven to hunt down angels who’ve abandoned their duties. Sure, there’s a lot more to it than that, but I can tell you the overall concept in one sentence, and hopefully pique your interest in the process. All of the marketing can then revolve around the hook. From that point on, if someone is captured by the concept, you can then hand out more nuggets of information to really close the sale.

The hardest thing for people to grasp is usually just how far in advance your promotion needs to start. Solicitations (covered previously) are due to the distributors no less than four months before your book debuts, and if you’re selling to the bookstores, it’s more like eight months.

THE PLANNING STARTS NOW

The means at minimum you need to have the cover art and any other imagery you want to accompany your advertising underway about a month before that. It sounds like a long time, doesn’t it? Planning a comic book series actually takes as long as some animated series. Then you need to take into consideration that there has been more competition than ever in the recent year, and it’s not going to stop.

The last thing you want to do is to rush your book into the distributor catalogs and into the stores without having planned out a year’s worth of promotion. More and more these days I’m developing the philosophy that no promotion plan is too extensive. Take hit sellers like MegaTokyo. This was an online strip forever before finally being released as a manga digest graphic novel. That time on the web helped it earn a following of thousands of people, and that same audience translated into sales once the title jumped from cyberspace to bookshelves. Later Dark Horse pulled off the same phenomenon with Penny Arcade, which reportedly sold tens of thousands of copies. In 2012 and the creator of the popular web comic Order of the Stick used the power of crowd-funding on Kickstarter.com to raise $1.2 million in funds to produce the print collection of his series without a publisher. Fast forward to 2015 and www. TheOatmeal.com consistently generates hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for its creator.

My saying this about marketing comes from experience. I confess, I haven’t always practiced what I preach. Even after years in business, and after learning all of this, sometimes things get so hectic at the office that we allow a book to go through without marketing it as far in advance as we should. That’s very rare, though! Just like we did, they only learn from experience, so even when someone is telling you that it would be a good idea to do x, y and z, it’s not the same thing as learning it for yourself.

So to you I say, learn from my mistakes! Don’t wait until you’ve made the mistake yourself.
I put long-term marketing strategies in the same category as going to the gym, eating healthy, and not smoking. It can be really damn hard to do, even though you know it’s the right thing to do. People do things that are detrimental to their health because doing the right thing is more painful. It’s only events like having a heart attack that wake some people up, only too late. Well, only after your book’s sales come in at zilch do you kick yourself for not doing all the marketing that you should have done.
Of course, the Catch-22 is, you might promote the hell out of your book, and it still might not sell very well, the same way you might eat all of your vegetables every day, but get hit by an ice cream truck. Playing the odds. I’d say we’re all safer doing the right thing.
“But Blaylock, I don’t have any friggin’ money to spend on marketing!” you may be thinking. Sure, having some money is a necessity. You have to have, or be acquiring some money, otherwise self-publishing might be out of your realm of possibility, but stretching those funds might seem harder than it actually is. I understand where you’re coming from, though, and will do my best to explain how to stretch that penny so far it turns into copper wire.

BREAK IT DOWN, “SON”

The three major categories of marketing are: Print
Online
Face to Face

And your two completely different target markets are:
Readers
Retailers

PRINT MARKETING

TRADITIONAL PRINT ADVERTISING

Advertising in print is no doubt one of the most expensive means of marketing. It’s imperative that you advertise a FULL PAGE in the distributor catalog when introducing your title to the world, that’s the easy one. You need to seriously consider where else, if anywhere, to spend your other print advertising dollars.

Say for instance that you somehow earn the funds to advertise in a major publication like Maxim or Complex (imagination here, people) and you want to get a full page ad. Will this expensive advertisement actually produce sales? Would it really do any good? How many outlets are there for those millions of people to go buy your comic book? The same goes for spending big money to advertise locally in newspapers and weekly street publications. If you only have four comic shops in your city, and you’re not in the major bookstore chains with a graphic novel yet, it doesn’t make sense to spend any cash. Lastly, it’s likely that over 90% of the people reading those publications are not in your TARGET MARKET. Target Market is exactly what it sounds like: your potential “targets,” or customers, most likely to buy your comic or manga.

For instance, you’re going to have a lot stronger chance of hitting your target market by advertising in a comic convention program, or sending postcards to a hundred major comic book shops than you are running an ad in say, The Chicago Tribune. However if you’re using an ad to tell readers to go and download your books digitally, the right ad campaign could make sense.

The cardinal rule for print advertising—for any advertising—is that repetition counts. It is far more effective to buy six months’ worth of quarter-page ads in a publication, running an ad each month, or multiple ads throughout the books, than it is to blow everything on one or two full-page ads that are gone in the blink of an eye.

All of this talk about aiming for your target market may seem obvious, but I see the same mistakes made over and over again. I think that when people are knee-deep in their project, they just lose sight of the big picture sometimes. It’s hard not to when you’re so close to it.

I emphasize again that the one place you must use a full page of advertising is when promoting your first issue in the distributor catalog. There are so many comic books shipping each month, it is your only chance to be noticed. If you can’t do it, don’t bother trying to self-publish comics through the Direct Market. The repetition factor comes into play when you’ve been in the catalog multiple times.

FLYERS, POSTCARDS, AND INSERTS

Bands do it, local businesses do it, and you can too. The good old fashioned flyer is an effective way to get your idea across to many people in a short amount of time. One might be tempted to head to the local copy center to print up a few hundred leaflets, but before you do, check online for other alternatives.

Companies such as Club Flyers and PS Prints offer as many as 5,000 full color postcards for under $200. Let me tell you, that’s a lot of postcards. These are perfect to send to comic book shops so retailers can hand them out to customers, or to leave on the “free tables” at major conventions. Remember to apply the same principal as discussed above regarding your target market. Don’t waste your postcards by handing them out at Burger King, or anywhere that has nothing to do with comic books.

Your distributor should offer marketing programs in which they will include inserts into catalogs or newsletters sent to retailers although these may be a little pricy. It all depends on your budget. Some argue that it’s actually more effective to mail batches of flyers or cards directly to the retailers yourself.

As always, you only have so many hours in the day, so make sure that whatever you’re doing is as effective as possible. Keep your message simple. Don’t flood the flyer with too much text. I suggest one side of the flyer contain one powerful image, your logo, and one short catch phrase, to grab the viewer’s interest. Keep all of the detailed information on the other side.

Things that you should include on the back of the book are the distributor order code for your title (every comic book has one), your website for anyone who wants more information, and a short synopsis of what the book is about. Emphasis on short. This is not a summary of your entire issue—rather it is the “hook.”

TIMING

Timing is everything, so much so that I’m going to discuss it at the end of each of the three major marketing categories. Since comic book solicitations run in the comic shop catalogs two months before the book is scheduled to hit the shelves, you need to have your print ads out before that. I’d recommend advertising three or four months before the books hit the catalogs, and continue to advertise until one month after the catalog hits.

That month after the catalogs hit the stands is when customers are giving their order requests to retailers, and when you push them into that all important, make-or-break decision, “Yeah, I’ll give this book a shot.” That’s it. Everything you’re doing, all of the months and months of preparation and hundreds to thousands of dollars you’re spending revolve around getting the customer to say “I’ll check it out.”

I don’t want to mislead you into thinking that this is the only marketing you’ll do. Marketing never stops, at least if you’re releasing more than one issue or volume. This is just how you put yourself on the map.

ONLINE MARKETING

Ahh, online marketing, the savior of the financially limited. There will come a day when online marketing is more valuable than television and print combined, and some would say that day has already arrived. Fortunately, the costs to do so have not caught up with their effectiveness. There are a plethora of free and low cost marketing opportunities online that hit your ultimate target markets.

THE WEBSITE

The most obvious, and one of the most important tools for online marketing, is your website. This is the nucleus that all of your other online marketing efforts revolve around. You want to draw the audience to your site so they can find out all about your comic. As surprising as this may sound to some, I don’t think the traditional website is going to remain as important as it has been, if they don’t disappear altogether. Social media and simple blog solutions like Tumblr have started to take over the personal website role, and are becoming more important to business. However, with social media changing every couple of years, it seems like a good idea to keep your site as a stable home base.

I’ll stop trying to predict the future, though, because I’m sure whatever dominates next hasn’t even been created yet. When this book was first released there wasn’t even a Twitter or Instagram. The social media technology developed those few short years helped overthrow a forty year dictatorship in Egypt for crying out loud! Imagine what may be on the horizon in another decade. It’s also most likely that the term “social media” may go the way of the Dodo Bird

So, back to your website.
There are a number of companies that offer simple website software packages that can be accessed completely online. I prefer WIX for my personal blog (because I’m pretty html-ignorant), and occassionally call upon the experts for more complex HTML needs. Take a couple of hours and search online for what’s out there.
We all know that websites can be as complex as you want them to be, but they all need to contain a few key elements to effectively spread the word about your product.
First, it needs to be easy to navigate, and should be updated regularly with news items and updates. This may be in the form of a “behind the scenes” blog, regular postings of work in progress, or both. Try to structure in time to update at least once a week. That’s what keeps people coming back to your site.
Once you get them to your site, you really want viewers to hang around for a while because that means they’re more likely to be converted into fans and customers. On the flipside, if they are already customers looking to buy, it’s imperative you make the e-commerce checkout process as simple as possible for them. Make sure your site has an email sign-up form to reach people directly with news of upcoming projects, and keep up to date with the latest social media plug-ins so your readers can also be your promoters generating discussion about you. Data on e-mail marketing shows it to be amazingly effective if your list is compiled of true fans. If someone has the motivation to sign up for your list, they are multiples of times more likely to be engaged by and purchase your comics. Don’t make them work hard to stay informed; give them the inside scoops they crave!
You want to create as much viral marketing material as you can, called so because once it’s out of your hands it spreads like a virus. These can be in the form of screen wallpaper images, web-banners that link back to your website, message board avatars, or instant message icons. Anyone with basic graphic design abilities and a copy of Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator can make these in a short amount of time. As long as the masses think they look cool, you’ll start to seem them pop up on their own forum posts, social media pages, and websites.

FREEBIES

The most immediate – and easiest – advertising is simply posting on social media platforms… relentlessly. Truly interacting with your potential readers. But truly engage them in conversation and only try to actually push something for sale once out of every hundred comments you make. I have to improve my own ratio which is all the more reason to put it in writing for the world to see. There are so many ways out there to market your comics that your challenge is not going to be finding them, but rather determining which ones to weed out, because you only have so many hours in the day.

There’s no message board that I know of where people go to read posts from random individuals pitching their comic ideas to readers, but websites like BleedingCool.com and ComicBookResources.com have active communities that discuss everything from the articles posted on these sites, to their thoughts on—well, their thoughts on just about every damn thing in the world. What you need to do is get active on these boards. See, every time you post, you have an opportunity to direct someone to your website. Yeah, that’s right, you have to have a website.

Every message board forum allows you to attach a “signature,” a brief piece of text and a web-link of your choice, and in most cases, a small image. Every time you post a comment, you’re advertising—even if it’s just to join an argument about who would win in a fight, Storm Shadow from G.I. Joe or the Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Now, I am not recommending that you go on every single thread in every single forum and tell everyone that you are publishing a comic book. Keep your post subjects related to the subject of discussion, unless you are in a specific thread about self-promotion.

SOCIALIZE! THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Eight years ago I started this paragraph off with: “If you haven’t heard of, or if you’re not on Myspace, there’s a good chance you’re over thirty years old. Myspace, Friendster, Facebook—these are websites that allow you to customize your own page, photo albums, blogs and calendars, and link them with other people all over the world.” It now seems laughable that I felt the need to explain.

Wow. Time flies. But not only does it fly, it’s going to go even faster when it comes to developments like this, so strap on your jetpack and try to keep up. To toot my own horn, I also added, eight years ago “I can’t help but almost laugh while I’m typing this explanation, because in a few short years, these portals (that’s the name I made up for ‘social media’) will be as commonplace as terminology like “website” or “internet,” and the fact that I’m trying to explain them right now will be amusing in and of itself.”

Newly developed social media apps and websites will continue to pop up all over the place eventually becoming one and the same with the internet. For now Facebook, Twitter, Instagram Tumblr and Pinterest dominate, and they’re a great way to spread the word about your comic. But you have to be genuine to truly be effective.

PRESS RELEASES

So your website is ready to go, your Social Media presence is set up, and you have a list of forums to start regularly posting to. It’s time to let the world know about your comic book. The way to do this is with the traditional press release. A simple, one-page announcement that explains the who, what, when, where, and why about your new creation. Who’s publishing and creating it, what is it about, when is it debuting, where can people find it, and why should they care?

Everyone has seen press releases, but not everyone has written them. There are a few key rules for press releases, but they’re very simple. The problem I see with most bad PRs is that the writer overcomplicates them (and as years go by and attention spans decrease they need to be even more concise). I’ve included a sample press release with notes in the back of this book to help explain how to make yours the most effective.

If anyone’s intimidated by writing one, don’t be. I actually credit everything I needed to know about press releases to my 8th grade journalism teacher.

You can easily email these PRs to the major comic book news websites, magazine editors, and comic book stores. You can send them anywhere you want, including the local press. Getting an article in your hometown newspaper doesn’t usually translate to many sales, because it’s not your target market (how many people in your local area actually read comics?), but it’s nice to show the folks at home, and gives Grandma something to brag about. It can, however, drive solid traffic to your website or webcomic.

PAID BANNER ADS

There’s so much you can do for free online that it’s hard to swallow spending money, but it’s worth doing so in some places. For example, websites like Newsarama.com, ComicBookResources.com, ICV2.com, BleedingCool. com, and many more have huge followings of avid comic book readers. Some are strictly comic book news sites, while others cover information about toys, cartoons and video games too.

Some of these sites get as many as 50,000 visitors a day, which is probably a heck of a lot more than your own website’s going to get. Posting a banner ad on there for a few months can greatly increase your exposure for a nominal fee, and start to burn the image of your comic into the readers’ minds.

INTERVIEWS

Now that word of your press release has spread all over the planet, everyone will be banging down your door for an interview! Okay, maybe you won’t be that lucky, but hopefully your book interests some comic journalists enough to request a Q&A. If not, though, don’t be afraid to contact them and ask. Don’t be pushy, and don’t take offense if they just aren’t interested. You’re new to the game, and it may just take a while.

It’s no guarantee, but throwing a few bucks towards some advertising never hurts when you want a website to cover your story.

PREVIEWS

As you start to receive completed images from your comic book, they always make for good teaser material to show readers. Previews can be fully colored, lettered pages, or just sketches of characters. You have to decide the best way to show off your product, and get everyone interested. If you have interviews lined up, the reporter will usually request images from you. You can also send out previews to sites in the same manner that you send the press releases, and post them on your website or social media.

Devil’s Due posts five-page previews of every book that we have coming out each week. Not only does it get people excited, but it gives them a reason to revisit the site on a regular basis. Each time they visit our website, they may see something new that piques their interest that they otherwise may have glossed over.

EMAIL NEWSLETTERS

You need to be careful that you don’t violate any spam laws, or irritate fans with too many messages, but using email newsletters is a great way to inform thousands of people about your product with but a click of the mouse. I recommend using a service offered online, such as Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, or (my favorite) Mad Mimi, that allows you to craft clear, easy to read HTML emails, so it’s basically like you’re sending a small web page to your customers. These allow you to send images without actually attaching files to the email, which even in this age of high speed connections is frowned upon.

Services like this automatically delete invalid emails, people who wish to unsubscribe, and duplicate entries, as well as allow you to easily add names to your list. If you keep an updated email list, this makes every single “face to face” promotional event that you do a chance to build your database.

And I again reiterate the effectiveness of email marketing as a tool to blast messages out to your true fans and mobilize them.
Every single email could turn into a customer or even a backer on Kickstater.

PUSH ALERTS

This is a bit premature for the infant digital comic book market, but push alerts are an amazing tool. I feel they’re one of the most powerful marketing tools created since the internet itself. Essentially a text message you “opt in” to receive when downloading an app, it allows the manufacturer of that app to notify you about anything they want.

One app developer I worked with has the ability to send out a push alert to over one million of their customers. Instantly. I can only imagine if I could notify every single person who ever bought a Devil’s Due book in the past twelve years about new projects. So long as you don’t spam people, and are sincere, that is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal and as the digital comic market continues to expand, you’ll see publishers and creators make use of them.

TIMING

Since online marketing is so inexpensive, it’s never too early to start. I would actually encourage you to have your entire online marketing plan ready to go before you even put pencil to paper. That means knowing specifically where you’re going to advertise, what your website will entail, and purchasing any necessary software.

The thing to remember is that, unless you’re already an established professional artist or writer, no one has ever heard of you. No one has heard of your comic book, so it doesn’t pay to be mysterious. If you’re afraid to show people glimpses of your project, afraid you’ll spoil the surprise, no one is going to hear about it, and therefore no one will buy it, and there won’t be anyone to enjoy the surprise. Start showing sketches and conceptual images from your project as soon as possible. Get people talking.

You don’t have to tell them everything, but you need to make sure that by the time your book comes out, thousands of people have had the chance to hear about it. Like I said earlier, don’t hesitate to promote your book for an entire year before it actually debuts.

FACE TO FACE MARKETING

Face to face is probably the hardest way to market your product, but it never hurts to get out there and meet the people who are actually reading your book.

One example of face to face marketing is the store-signing. Talk to your local stores (or stores near conventions you may be attending) about going to their shops and drawing sketches for readers, or signing books. Try to make sure you’re going to a good store first, so you don’t waste a lot of extra time and effort, but also don’t have unrealistic expectations. Unless you are the hot shit, you’re not going to pack a store with customers. Take advantage of this, though, to issue another press release to the online websites, collect email addresses from the fans you meet, and above all, be nice.

Other than conventions and store signings, you need to think outside of the box for this style of marketing. Perhaps you target the local movie theatre chains and hand out flyers during a weekend that a major comic-book inspired movie debuts, and inform the local press. Maybe you cooperate with a local DJ to host an event where imagery from your comics is displayed. Sometimes you might just want to do this for fun, regardless of the sales potential it translates into, but always keep that in mind so you don’t burn yourself out. In every case, wherever possible, collect emails!

In 2009 we were part of a major party during San Diego Comic-Con hosted by my event operations group called PopCult. We had DJs, live art, a hip hop performance, and even some free prizes and drinks. It was a lot of fun, but Coke Zero sponsored it so not a penny of our own was spent. That’s how you do a party!

TIMING (AGAIN)

Timing your face to face appearances isn’t much different than other marketing efforts, with the exception that you need to do just as much of it after your book debuts. The up side is that you have a chance to sell copies and recoup some, if not all of your money (or even better, increase profits).

Just like solicitations for catalogs, and ad deadlines for print publications, you need to reserve your trade show appearances in advance. The more popular the show or event, the more likely it is you will need to book early. I will go into this in detail in the next volume of this series.

READERS

Up until now, this has most likely been you. You probably buy your comic books every Wednesday at the local shop, or peruse the bookshelves at Barnes & Noble looking for the latest manga offerings. Either way, you know your habits, now it’s time to really think about them.

How do you go about choosing your comic book or manga purchases? What makes you decide to pick up a book that is not released by the major publishers? What is your age, race, and sex? Are you the same demographic as the majority of other comic book readers, or are your habits or characteristics different than most? If you have very eclectic tastes, and deep down you that you just like stuff that’s “weird” in the eyes of others, you need to make sure your product will not be too far from the center to find an audience.

I still struggle with this problem even today. I’ve always been too weird for the normal people, and too normal for the weirdos. You just have to know your niche, and know what reactions to expect to your concept. If you’re not in the majority, ask other readers a few key questions about why they buy certain comic books, and if they only rarely buy small press / independent comics, ask them what triggers their decision.

I couldn’t have written this just two years ago, but now there is a revolution happening when it comes to the comic book shop customers. Kids are back, for the first time in decades, and female readership is growing at a phenomenal rate.

Most comic shop customers have “Pull Boxes” (a subscription service) which is very convenient for them, but they’re a double-edged sword. Me, I’m a rack browser, I like to peruse the shelves for the latest releases and pull a handful of comics down. I request some of the harder to find indie comics, but the pull box sort of ruins the experience for me. Many people only buy what’s on their pull box, though, and hardly look around. So if you didn’t capture their attention in Previews or online, you may already be out of luck. That’s why marketing ahead of time is so important.

Now access to comics via digital editions is making it accessible and affordable to the youth again, which is going to have a great impact on the art form going forward.

The internet is a great way to get people talking about a book, but I believe the amount of readers who go online to receive comic book news every day is a much smaller percentage of the comic book readership than most people think. It’s easy to lose sight of this when you’re knee deep in publishing. All of the real sales happen when you get a word of mouth buzz. The comic shop is like a barbershop for all of our fellow comic geeks; people like to hang out and talk, and the people who’ve read the gossip online love to spread the word when they meet with their shop owners and peers, and then that conversation is magnified through social media.

The bookstore customer is much different, though, due to the mainstream accessibility of major book chains, and the popularization of comics through superhero movies and intense dramas like The Walking Dead. There’s not so much of a “secret club” mentality. It’s much more casual, as customers simply browse the shelves looking for the latest releases. Since most of the bookstore offerings are graphic novels too, serialized books don’t usually come out every single month like the thinner comic books.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a huge manga following of very, very, very passionate fans to rival the most diehard Clark Kent fanatic or Jedi-intraining, but the availability of these stores has helped them to become more mainstream. When I was in high school you could repel an entire army of girls with a comic book (it was like a magic trick!) and these days you can actually meet girls that way. Although it’s not the “white hot” phenomenon it was a few years ago, I credit manga for initiating that paradigm shift in our culture.

Part of this is also thanks to larger cultural changes. We’re a much more cartoon-friendly society than we were twenty years ago, and that makes comic less “geeky.” Or it makes being a “geek” cooler. Take my Dad, for instance, who refuses to this day to watch any cartoons, no matter how damn funny they may be. He just can’t get past the mentality that they’re for kids. Now most thirty year olds devote a good portion of their TV watching time to cartoons like South Park and Family Guy.

My point is that while there are more challenges facing comic books than ever before, there is more opportunity than ever as well. I can’t guarantee that comic shops or bookstores will be your best path to choose, but you need to consider both in your plan, and consider various formats that make the most sense for whatever you choose to do. If you never go to the major bookstores, take an evening and check some out. Are you a former haunter of Borders? Head down to the nearest comic shops and see what they have to offer, because they may have the potential to be a valuable part of your sales.

MORE ON THE PULL BOX (AKA SECRETS OF THE WEDNESDAY SOCIETY )

A Pull Box (AKA Pull & Hold Service, Club Membership, Comic Book Subscription Service) is a helpful service most comic shops offer their customers. You provide a list of comics that you want—monthly titles, special orders, whatever you need—and the shop pulls those titles aside for you every week, so you don’t miss a single issue. Plus, many shops offer a discount for keeping a pull box!

Your comic shop (and even comic fans) uses Previews magazine, a monthly catalog of comicky goodness listing all of the comics that will be out two months later, so you know what to order for your own pull box. Only comic shops can order directly from Previews, but your shop should stock Previews, or have a copy available to look through. Previews comes out the last Wednesday of every month, in both print and digital formats.

RETAILERS

Retailers in the comic book stores are very different from the major chain buyers in a lot of ways. First off, as discussed in the first chapter of this book, there are only a handful of people at the major bookstore chains who make all of the purchasing decisions for the entire market. This makes it easier to keep them all informed, but it also means that if you mess up, it’s a lot more damaging than if you accidentally upset one store’s manager. This is more true than ever with the ongoing consolidation of the book store market.

Buyers at the chains are less concerned with what company a book is coming from. They are more interested that you have a solid distributor (they don’t like to buy directly from small companies), and that your product will sell. That’s it. I love dealing with bookstores for this very reason because it makes it easy to move big volumes.

Remember, though, that these buyers are dealing in a returnable market, so if your book does not sell, they’ll send them back! A major bookstore chain buyer’s concern is not getting stuck with product, but rather that it sat on the shelf not making any money. These huge stores cost so much to operate that they MUST make money. This is what they mean when they say their shelf space is too valuable to waste.

Overall, the bookstore buyers work very far ahead in their ordering practices. Each buyer is inundated with hundreds of publishers showing them thousands of books every month. This means all of those things we went over about repetition in advertising apply here as well! You need to amass a list of the graphic novel buyers at each store, and regularly send them sale sheets, flyers, postcards, preview copies, etc. Keep them informed about your project.

Do not get caught up in telling them the intricate details of your story. They only care about the selling points. What demographic does the book appeal to? What marketing have you done to notify readers about it? What’s the page count, price, and size? Aside from that, you only need to show them a sample of the art, and a brief synopsis of the story, until you have enough to actually compile an entire mock-up of your book to send them.

A MOCK-UP, or “galley” as they’re sometimes called, is simply a bound copy of all the pages in the book that you make yourself, say, at the local Fed Ex Office. You want it to look as close to the finished, printed graphic novel as possible. Don’t assume they want to spend time downloading and/or printing a PDF either. Make it convenient by sending one unless they welcome an email.

When it comes to marketing to bookstore retailers, you need to make every effort to inform them directly, but also remember that your distributor is going to be doing the same thing. It is very important to speak with your distributor representative at least once a month to discuss what is being done to help sell your book, and to get his or her honest opinion about the best way to market it. Pry that person for all the information you can get! You don’t want to rely on them to do all of the work, because they have a gazillion other titles from other companies to push, but you don’t want to irritate the book buyer by bombarding him or her with too much material.

Comic book shops, on the other hand, are stuck with what they don’t sell. I went on about this at length in the “Infrastructure” chapter, so I am going to focus on your communication with the retailers instead. Your distributor will offer a number of marketing options, which you should definitely familiarize yourself with everything from telemarketing and catalog inserts to email blasts. Just like with the bookstore buyers, though, the comic shop retailers get bombarded with so much information it’s hard to keep things straight. It is sometimes much more effective to mail your promotional materials directly to the stores.

Herein lies the challenge. There are thousands of comic book stores, and sending something to every one of them is near impossible, and also not very cost effective. What you can do, though, is try to contact the major independent players. Stores like Graham Crackers, New Dimension, Midtown Comics, Meltdown, and Golden Apple are huge independent comic shops/chains who order the majority of the comics in the industry. Your distributor’s not going to give you that list, though, so you’ll have to do some research. I gave you a couple to start with, so that should get you off on the right foot.

There’s a phenomenon called the Rule of 80/20, and it applies to almost any business. Comics is no different: 80% of the comics are bought by 20% of the stores. That also means that the other 80% of the stores only buy 20% of the comics. So which ones do you want to spend your energy and time contacting?

Although Image comics and other indies are growing their ranks, at the end of the day the comic book shops are still dominated by Marvel and DC. How will you stand out? The only thing that really gets retailers, en masse, to order enough of your comics is the customers. If the customers don’t come in and place orders for your comic book on their pull box list, it’s going to be hard to get orders. The shop owner isn’t going to want to risk getting stuck with a comic book no one has heard of before.

When marketing to the shop owners, you just want to make sure they know your book exists, and those who are inclined to support indie titles will probably give you a chance. Otherwise, it’s all about getting those feet in the door demanding your comic book. That’s why every piece of ad material you send to a retailer should include distributor order codes, release dates, and pricing information. Once you get a person to go into a store and request a copy, you damn sure better make it easy for the retailer to find it in the distributor database. Hence, my insistence on the full page ad of advertising for your first issue.

PRODUCTION

So you’ve created and marketed the heck out of your comic book. Now it’s time to send it off to the printer. It’s not that complicated, but it’s not magic either. This is the PRODUCTION process. As long as you stay organized, and keep an open line of communication with your printer and distributor, everything should go smoothly.

TURNAROUND

You need to budget in about five weeks from the time your comic book files leave your hands, until the printed copies hit the stands. Add more than a month to that if you’re printing in China (or rather add a month to whatever they tell you the deadline will be when you first get your quote). Discuss this with your printer and distributor to be sure, but it’s a safe estimate. Many new publishers don’t realize quite how long the production side takes, so don’t get caught by surprise. If you have opted to use an overseas printer, know that it will take much longer to receive your books, because they have to come over on the “slow boat.”

Your orders may not arrive from distribution until four weeks before the books are expected to be in stores, but don’t wait for them. Go ahead and make arrangements with your printer anyway, so that they can be ready to run the presses at the word “go.”

SET-UP CHARGES: BOOK ASSEMBLY

There are a number of ways to send your finished comic book computer files into the printer. The less finished they are, though, the more it may cost you, or the longer it may take to print your book. If you don’t have anything except original artwork and hand lettering, for instance, the printer will have to scan all of your pages, resize them, and assemble them in the computer for print, and they’re going to charge you for that.

Hopefully you can at least send them individual files of each page uploaded to a cloud storage solution like Dropbox or uploaded to the printer’s FTP server, so that they only have to assemble the files and send them to press.

At Devil’s Due, we assemble all of the individual lettered art files in a program like Adobe InDesign, and from there generate a PDF. This is the kind of file that today’s digital printing presses all read. If you don’t send the printer an assembled PDF, they’re probably going to be making one themselves.

No matter how you read your files, you must be sure to send a PRINTER MOCK, at least in PDF form. This is a simple mockup of the finished comic book (not necessarily as nice as the one described earlier for sending to book buyers), but good enough for the printer to see what is supposed to be on each page. This can just be a bunch of copies stapled together, but make sure the mock-up reads just like the book, and that no pages are out of order, including covers.

When the printer has received your materials, they will send you a PRINTER PROOF for review. This is your last chance to check for errors in your book. Sometimes the mistakes were yours, but sometimes the printer mixes up files, so be sure to look carefully. They will not print the book until you sign an approval form, and fax (haha, fax) or email it back. In a worst case scenario, you may approve via a PDF that you read onscreen, but that’s very risky. If for instance, the files are too low of a resolution, and look pixilated in print, they may still look fine on screen.

Once you sign off, congratulations! Your brand new baby is about to be born!

ORDERS ARE IN!

The first thing to do when your orders arrive is to get your purchase order from the distributor(s). The distributor will provide you with the dates to expect orders to be in. For more info on POs, see the samples at the back of this book. The PO will not only list the amount of total copies ordered, along with the pricing information, but will include a breakdown of various warehouses certain quantities need to be shipped to. Distributors maintain various warehouses in different regions of the country, and this is how they get so many products out everywhere on the same day.

It is important to give this information to your printer, so they know how to divide up the print-run, and how many copies to ship to each place.
Don’t forget to include how many copies you want sent to yourself, and to anyone else who contributed to the comic book. How many do you expect to sell via reorders and at conventions? Did you pre-sell any copies on your website?
What we like to do at Devil’s Due is have a handful of copies sent via FedEx to the office, and to various people associated with each particular title, so that we can see them before they arrive in stores. You may choose to let a book hit the stands before you’ve seen a printed copy, but if so, you’re more of a gambler than I.
The remainder of the copies are either sent via ground delivery services, or in the case of a printer like Quebecor, picked up by the Diamond Distributor trucks at the crack of dawn each Wednesday morning. Whatever books are picked up that Wednesday will hit the stands two weeks later.

SETTING YOUR PRINT RUN

Once you know how many copies you need, it’s time to set your printrun. You should already have some preliminary quotes from your printer, but may have to request additional information if your orders were more or less than you expected.

The lower your print run, the higher the cost per book. A lot of the time spent in the printing process is getting the paper and ink set up on the press. So it’s a lot easier to keep the presses running to print 100,000 copies than it is to print five books at 2,000 copies each.

This is where you may find yourself getting more books than you need, simply because it doesn’t cost much more to print 3,000 copies as it does to print 5,000 copies of a comic. Sometimes it’s almost the same price. Be sure to read your quotes carefully so you don’t miss out on an opportunity like this.

The last thing to arrange is where you’ll be keeping your inventory. Most comic books come shipped in about 200 copies per box, so if you’re only holding onto a few hundred copies an issue, it might be no problem to keep them in your house. If you’re storing thousands, though, you’ll need to make arrangements. Most printers will store your books for a very nominal fee. Then, as you need more, or you need more sent to distributors, they will ship them for you.

QUESTIONS ARE GOOD

Never hesitate to ask your printer, or your distributor, questions. No one expects you to have all of the answers, and the only dumb questions are the ones not asked. When I started writing this section I thought it was going to be the most difficult one yet, and I was right. Not how I expected it to be, though; I didn’t know how I would verbalize all of this, but instead so much information was flowing from brain to keyboard that I was only able to briefly touch upon the subjects in the space and time allotted.

There is plenty of information about both marketing and production to fill entire textbooks by themselves (and there are many on marketing at your local bookstore), but hopefully this helps you get started. Once your wheels start turning, there’s no stopping you. Just don’t be afraid to seek out more information, and get out there and learn the best way – from experience.

CHAPTER FOUR: HIT THE PAVEMENT

So you’ve followed through on building your infrastructure, signing a creative team, and marketing, but hopefully you realized one thing: it doesn’t stop here!

Unless your only goal was to publish a one-issue comic to fulfill a longtime dream, and now you’re content, you’re going to need to continue marketing the hell out of your publication and yourself. If you published a one-shot title to get noticed by bigger publishers, it’s time to start promoting yourself to them and their editors. And of course, if you’re publishing a series of books there are more issues to produce, and more readers to introduce your comic to, and no time to waste—so let’s get rollin’.

This chapter focuses on convention promotions, but I will touch upon overall marketing follow-up tips.

WHAT’S A COMICON?

So what exactly is a COMICON, or Comic-Con, or Comic Book Convention? It’s hard to imagine anyone not knowing the answer to that, but this book is also friendly to under-rock dwellers!

It’s hard for me to fathom, but I’ve been exhibiting at comic book conventions, or comicons, for nearly half of my life. Some of you may have only seen them in poor interpretations on television. Don’t let them kid you. They’re much worse! Ha, just kidding, but the first thing to get out of the way is that NOT EVERYONE WEARS COSTUMES. Although “Cosplay” has gotten so popular now it’s becoming its own industry. Sure, some comic-cons are more of a super nerdfest than others (and I say that with a great sense of endearment), but most have expanded to include exhibitors from video game and toy companies, creating an entire “pop culture” experience.

A comicon is usually held in a large hall in a convention center or hotel, and houses displays from various comic book publishers, as well as tables where artists set up examples of their work, and draw and sell sketches for the fans. It’s one of the only industries that allow fans to meet its “celebrities” face to face, and take a piece of that industry home with them in the form of original art and autographs.

That’s why now “real” celebrities have gotten in on the act too, making appearances, signing high-priced autographed photos and attending press panels to promote their latest projects.

Some of the publishers are there to give away promotional posters and materials, while others sell comics from their entire catalog of titles.
Half of the shows are usually reserved for comic book retailers, most of whom own stores, that set up spaces to sell new and old titles, toys, T-shirts, and anything else you can imagine tied to comics in any way.
Conventions typically range from one to three days in length. ComicCon International in San Diego, the largest of all, is four and a half days and spills out into the entire city. It’s more of a film festival for action, sci-fi and superhero movies. The price of admission for conventions can be anywhere from a few bucks, to over $100 depending on what package an attendee buys, and the size and scope of the show.
Earlier I posed the question, “Why are you doing this?” Just as it’s important to ask yourself about publishing, it’s important to do the same for conventions. So many people make them a priority without truly discerning the reason behind going.

MY FIRST BIG “CON”

My first major convention experience (or “con” as we call them in the industry) was the 1995 Chicago Comicon. This was two years before Wizard World took it over, and a year before I published my first comic book. I had just graduated high school, and had already encountered my fair share of shysters in the comics biz. Just a couple years earlier everyone was selling comics hand over fist, so many people who had no idea what they were doing jumped into the publishing game. Many of them even made money despite themselves.

Amidst those groups of fly-by-night publishers, many also lacked enough artistic aesthetic that they hired a teenager like me. I was by no means skilled enough to be professionally published yet, but didn’t know that then (or care to wait to wait until I was better), so I jumped at the opportunity. Each opportunity usually ended with me learning that the publisher knew less about the business than I did, and I would devour a few more pieces of information in my quest to get my comics out to the world.

Well, at the 1995 Chicago Comicon, I had another serious lead on a hot indie publisher. They liked one of my ideas, and wanted to talk. I didn’t let my $400 Volkswagen Rabbit stop me, either. If my engine couldn’t get me there, I’d do it on faith … or something.

My friend Jerry came along for the ride, and I was so excited I went ahead and left at about 11:00 at night, figuring I’d drive through the night. It’s a miracle we made it alive, because my headlights at the time had what I called the “Ninja Hunter” feature, meaning that they preferred to illuminate the treetops rather than the road in front of me.

The engine’s deficiencies won out over will-power, and we broke down about two hours outside of Cincinnati, in the middle of Indiana. And no, we didn’t have cell phones. A guy named Harley was nice enough to give us a lift, and call in a tow truck for us. He worked for the city or something, just driving around helping people. We opted for sleeping in the booth of a 24-hour restaurant rather than a hotel (money doesn’t grow on trees, especially when you’re 18), after which he was nice enough to pick us up again at 6:00 AM, when he got off of work.

When we got to the auto body shop where they’d towed the car, it was CLOSED. So we waited for another three or four hours. Then, when I eventually got to speak to a mechanic, I was told, and I quote, “Ever’body ‘round here drives mostly Fords ‘n’ Chevys. We don’t really work on no foreign cars.” Yeah, that actually happened.

I was at the end of my rope. I somehow convinced him to look at the car, and long story short, we were on the road about four or five hours later. So, what should have been a six hour trip became a 22-hour monumental task, but we made it.

The actual convention part of the trip was cut down to half of a day, but I managed to meet with the aforementioned publisher, and a couple weeks later, we had a deal! Over the next couple of months I drove to every small convention in a 200-mile radius, printed ashcans, and along with my writing partner, pimped the hell out of that comic.
So why am I telling this story? Because shortly thereafter, I got a phone call from the publisher saying that they weren’t going to publish the book. That it really wasn’t very good, and not up to par for them. “But you’ve seen it,” I said. “You’ve known what it looked like for months.” The company completely burned us, and that’s when I said “Screw it, I’m doing this myself.” That was when I made the conscious decision to enter the world of self-publishing.

NETWORKING

Probably the most important effect convention attendance can have for your business is the amount of contacts you make. No matter what relationships you develop online or over the telephone, they pale in comparison to face to face contact. This is where you can meet the hundreds of talented creators that make the industry tick, and even become close friends with many of them.

There’s an energy at conventions, a sort of instant bonding that happens between people. It’s one of the few times that everyone is linked by a common interest – everyone knows what happens on Wednesdays! (for the layman, that’s when new comic books hit the shelves). I’ve often chatted with friends about how strange it is that you can meet someone at a convention just once, and by the next show you’re crashing in a hotel with them, and it’s like you’ve known each other forever.

That’s the networking that happens naturally, but you also need to make a concerted effort to meet people, pass out your business card to those you chat with, and just get to know people who make comic books for a living. You’ll also meet dozens of self-publishers in the same boat as yourself, and you can trade thoughts and ideas, and talk with others who understand where you’re coming from.

It’s been awhile since I was creating small black and white rags in my mom’s basement, or my apartment, so even though I’ve been in it for a long time, it’s been a while, and I forget things. It used to drive me crazy that I had a hard time getting to shows on Fridays because I had to work my day job, and had to speed off on Sundays to get back to work. I was so envious of everyone who just got to stay an extra day, because it was their job. It was a great feeling to finally take that next step. Nowadays, Devil’s Due has to turn down conventions because there are simply too many to attend; quite a 180-degree turn. It’s something I constantly remind myself of when feeling the pressure.

One of the most important things to do once you’ve made your initial contacts is follow-up. As you’ll find, the more conventions you attend, the harder it is not to lose things on the trip home. This goes double for big publishers. When a convention is over, displays and inventory must be broken down and shipped in a very short amount of time, and it’s very chaotic. Don’t ever feel jilted if someone loses your information and never follows up with you. Simply make an effort to be the person who keeps his or her collected information, and makes the first contact.

VISIBILITY & CUSTOMER AWARENESS

Another benefit of conventions is, of course, interacting with hundreds, if not thousands of potential fans all in one room. There is nowhere else that you can find so many people who fall into your target market. You get to sign comics, draw sketches, and of course, sell your merchandise.

Greater than that, though, is the ability to make sure that everyone simply notices you, and by you I mean your product. Whether they buy it at the show or not, you want them to walk away with your branding etched into their minds. That can make all of the difference when someone is perusing the racks at their local comic books store two months later, and they notice something familiar about your book, sitting on the rack. This is why you need to make sure you have an easy to read, eye-catching logo and image designed into your booth set-up. Let’s imagine that you’re attending a con with an attendance of 20,000 people. You can’t expect all 20,000 attendees to buy your comics, but you should think of that as the equivalent of being able to advertise a full-page ad in a magazine with a 20,000 copy circulation. This is what I mean by “visibility.”

Even if they don’t buy a comic, try to make sure that everyone gets something. It may be a flyer, postcard, or sticker that directs them to your website.

You also have the chance to increase your visibility by advertising in the convention program pamphlets, or by sponsoring parties or auctions the organizers might set up. This can be pricey, but depending on the size of the show, and the flexibility of the management, you may be able to negotiate something that works within your budget.

When working with the convention organizers, always remember that running a show is extremely taxing on the brain, and the coordinators are usually trying to appease ten people at a time. Just be patient, and state clearly if you have a problem while remaining very polite. It sounds obvious, but so many people lose their cool in the chaos of setting up for a convention.

The last category that you have a chance to score “visibility points” is the press. Many of the online comic books news and fan sites send reporters to all the major shows, and they’re always looking for material. If you are fortunate enough to pass a review copy along to a reporter, or land an interview on, say, BleedingCool.com, you just increased your visibility from 20,000 people to upwards of 100,000.

I guess what I’m saying is that you need to always think of the big picture, and not just get caught up in where you are right at that moment. That doesn’t mean every convention is great, but you can get a lot out of a good one.

MEETINGS

A lot of the success you have at a convention revolves around what you do before the show, even more so than the activities during show itself. I mentioned press just a little while ago; although you will often stumble upon opportunities by luck, try to contact reporters a couple of weeks prior to a con, and arrange to be formally interviewed. This way, you are guaranteed press, and you have time to find out what images or information would appeal the most to a particular journalist.

This is also a great opportunity to meet artists, writers, and anyone else you’ve been dealing with via the internet or over the phone. As I’ve said before, nothing compares to a face to face meeting, and conventions are where many relationships are formed.

Look closely at the programming. Is anyone from your distributor going to be there? Anyone from your printing company? Distributors and printers usually only attend very large shows, but you don’t want to miss the opportunity to meet them. When you get outside of the comic book industry, and attend shows that cover other media, these meetings become more important. When I fly to a book industry trade show, I make sure that I have meetings scheduled with my distributor, and the buyers of any large chain stores that will be attending, as an opportunity to sell Devil’s Due product. Also, after you’ve been around for a few years, you’ll know so many people that you have to schedule formal meetings with just to get anything done.

Try to scope out the convention layout before these appointments so you can determine the best place to meet, away from the chaos of the show where both parties can concentrate and hear each other. At a show like the one in San Diego, this is a challenge, but most are easy enough to manage.

I have a hard time walking from one end of a convention to another without running into three or four people that I haven’t seen in months, who want to say hi. I always try to, but there simply isn’t enough time in the weekend to talk to everyone at length. And no, it’s not because of my superduper charm, it’s simply because I’ve been around for so damn long. It’s always good to excuse yourself for a meeting, where you have time to get down to business. Meetings are also necessary at huge shows like the San Diego ComicCon International, because, well, good luck finding anyone if you don’t have a scheduled appointment and a copy of their booth number.

With that said, it’s awesome to know so many people from all over the world, and to have so many buddies under one roof. Some of the coolest experiences of my life have taken place over the span of a convention weekend.

SALES

Who likes to make money? Ah, of course … you do, and a convention is a great way to do it. Before you expect to walk out of the con with a fistful of Franklins, though, be prepared for the expenses you’ll incur as a part of attending the show. Once you add those costs up, you’ll know how important it is to make the most of your “table time” when you get to sell to the attendees.

You always want to have a pleasant look on your face, and be nice to every single person that passes your table. Don’t let anyone walk by your table and make eye contact without giving them a “what’s up?” or “how’s it going?” Anything to draw them in. People have a lot to see at a show, and if you don’t draw their attention, someone else will. So often I see people sit at their booths, not saying a word to anyone. Sometimes people even come up to the table to peruse art or merchandise, and don’t get so much as a “hi.” This is completely ridiculous, and if you’re too shy to say hello to potential customers, then you should see who else can run your shows for you. You wouldn’t hire yourself to print your books without knowing how to run a press, would you? So you don’t want to give people a bad vibe at a convention if you’re just naturally shy or grumpy. You are the face of your company or comic book.

People go to conventions to have a good time. They paid to be there. When they approach your table, you want them to receive a warm greeting. It’s an atmosphere of camaraderie, so be sure to treat everyone as a friend.

In the past I was often told that I’m very hard to read (my face, not my comics). Well, that’s an improvement from people who used to always tell me that I looked pissed off. It’s just the way my face is built, I guess, but I had to make a serious effort to be conscious of that, especially when speaking with readers or fans. Because I took the criticism as constructive, I worked on it and now rarely get any of those comments. Maybe marrying a great lady helped fix that too, but either way now I am able to use it to my advantage like a super poker face. Know your strengths and weaknesses, and don’t be too proud to improve upon the latter.

Once you manage to snap a potential reader at your table, they’re most likely going to ask you what your comic is about. This is where the “hook” comes into play. I focused on the hook in an earlier chapter, but just to brush up: The hook is a very simple, one or two sentence synopsis of your concept, and something that sets it apart from all the other books out there. If you don’t have a good hook, you’re going to have a lot of trouble earning a fanbase.

One of my favorite convention hooks was for a werewolf book we published. The creator simply asked everyone walking by “Do you like werewolves?” I mean, who doesn’t? That guy could really move copies at a convention. Had the book sucked they’d have run away, but without that quick ice breaker they may have never even looked at it.

An easy tactic is comparing your concept to something that is more recognizable. For instance, you could say your book is “like Lost meets the X-Files” or “A Christmas Carol meets The DaVinci Code.” Whatever makes sense, as long as your references are common knowledge to your demographic.

Reiterating the point that not everyone will like your comic, do not be offended if they pass on it. Even if you’ve been sitting at your table all weekend and haven’t sold one comic, don’t project your frustrations onto anyone. I see this all the time, and it’s pointless. Some people just aren’t going to be interested in what you have to offer, no matter how well done it may be … even if it’s free!

Don’t wait for someone to ask you about what your title is about. Perhaps you could ask them if they’ve ever heard about it? If they haven’t, it’s a great opportunity to inform them. If they have, then you can go into more detail about your specific offerings.

ROOKIE MISTAKES AND PITFALLS

I think the biggest mistake rookie conventions exhibitors make is setting their expectations too high. Many walk into a show expecting that everyone is going to like his or her comic and that sales will be amazing. They believe that they will walk away with a fistful of cash in hand, and be off to the next convention. It rarely goes that way. It takes time to perfect your sales tactics, and find what works best for you. It also takes experience in dealing with convention organizers and shipping companies to make sure things go smoothly.

If you haven’t gone to any major cons before, it’s a good idea to go as a fan first and scope out the scene before committing dollars to a table or publisher booth.

Conventions are also long and tiring, and it’s easy to use up all of your energy on the first day. Make sure you bring plenty of water and something to snack on, or that you have enough money to pay for the over-inflated convention center food (I think they get their prices from the future or something). Otherwise you may be getting dizzy in the 7th or 8th hour of the show, especially if you overdid “Bar Con” the night before (I’ll explain that fun experience later).

That said, going to your first show is a wonderful experience. It’s your first chance to see what real flesh and blood people think of your comic book, not just faceless handles on a message board. People are usually never brutally honest to your face, but you’ll know if you’re onto something or not just by the response of people coming up to your booth and buying your product, or quickly walking by.

Be sure not to get taken by surprise by expenses that can arise. If you shipped merchandise to a show using Union Workers, you’re likely going to get charged for any shipments brought to your booth unless delivered on a specific day arranged by the show organizers. Also understand that the convention organizers are not the same organization that is working for the convention center. One is simply renting from the other, so you’re dealing with multiple organizations.

Lastly, don’t forget to remove your geek-badge after the show! AKA your exhibitor / professional badge. Or if you want to rock it throughout the evening while you’re bar hopping or out to dinner, let your geek flag fly high.

MAJOR CONVENTIONS

The king of all comic conventions is the San Diego’s Comic-Con International. Although it’s arguably more of a “pop culture” con than a comic con, due to all of the movie studios, toy companies and video game industry professionals in attendance, it’s growing every year, and it’s the show that everyone goes to. If you want to meet the highest caliber of industry pros face to face, this is where you need to go.

New York Comic-Con and C2E2
Two of the best conventions to come on the scene in recent years are New York Comic-Con and the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo. Reed exhibitions, in my experience, puts on great, well-organized shows and as the founder of these two, they’ve done an amazing job. NYCC is now the second largest after San Diego, and C2E2 isn’t far behind.

Wizard World
Run by the company behind the former Wizard: The Guide to Comics magazine, this company has built a mini pop-culture empire out of their shows. Although pricey, Wizard World has conventions scattered throughout the country including the Chicago suburbs, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and more. OTHER CONVENTIONS OF NOTE
(Sorry for any I’m leaving out! Good God, there are so many out there now!)

Emerald City Seattle, WA
MSP Comic-Con Minneapolis
Alternative Press Expo California
Mega-Con Orlando, FL
Wonder Con
Anaheim, California
Heroes Con
Charlotte, North Carolina
Cherry Capital Con Traverse City, Michigan
Tampa Bay Comic-Con Tampa, Florida Cincy Comicon &
Cincinnati Comic Expo Cincinnati, OH

Lake Count-i-Con
Round Lake County, IL
Fan Expo
Toronto, ON
Phoenix Comic-Con Arizona

PREPARATION

The process of registering for and attending a convention can range anywhere from over six months to as short as a few weeks. The more popular the show, the earlier you need to reserve your space. Besides the convention itself, you’ll need to book hotels and make travel arrangements, and you usually get the best deals by doing so far in advance. In some extreme cases, during the San Diego Comic-Con, hotels open up for availability on a certain day, about six months before the convention, and sell out within a matter of hours.

Regardless, there are a few important steps you must perform when attending any convention.

REGISTRATION

Each con includes a simple process of completing application forms for table or booth space and determining how much space you want, and what it will cost. Some conventions insist on money at the time of registration, and others give you more time. Very few, if any, let you wait until the day of the show to pay so be sure to keep an eye on the deadlines. If you’re already a sought-after talent they may give you space for free and even help you cover hotels.

Many conventions have registration deadlines that hit a few months before the shows, and the closer you get to the show date, the higher the price.

HOTEL RESERVATIONS AND TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS

Once you have confirmed a space at the convention, the next step is booking your hotel even if you’re not sure you’ll be attending a show, because you have up until a day or two before the show to cancel the reservations. You never pay any hotel expenses until the day of check out, so keep that in mind. You don’t want to book a show only to find you have no place to sleep, although that’s only an issue at the largest conventions.

Plane tickets are different. You’re going to need to pay for those immediately, so I advise purchasing them as soon as possible after confirming your placement at a show. Last is your car rental, if necessary. Again, you don’t have to pay for your car rental until the day you return it, so I’d recommend reserving one as soon as you know you may be attending a specific con.

*Indie Small-Budget Trick: If your wallet is especially thin, one simple tactic is to use the cash you’ve made at the show to pay for your hotel and car rental. You’ll still need a credit card to reserve them, but since payment’s not sure until you’re leaving, you can request to pay with cash. Of course, you need to have a “Plan B” if you don’t make enough at the show to cover these expenses.

BOOTH DESIGN

I think this is one of the most exciting parts of the convention experience. Designing your booth display is your chance to show off your comic to the world, and make yourself stand out from everyone else.

It’s a challenge, because you don’t have a lot of space to work with, especially if you’re in the small-press area, or what’s commonly referred to as “artist alley.” Your set-up can be as simple as 18x24 posters on easels placed behind you, and a nice table skirt, or it can be as wild as your imagination and budget will allow you to be. Try attending a decent-sized convention and perusing other booths to get ideas before you attempt to do it on your own. Even today at Devil’s Due, it’s common practice to take pictures of other company booth displays to brainstorm ideas for the following year.

Try to pick a booth display concept that is easily mobile, cheap to transport, and that contains images that you can use for an entire convention season. When I was starting out, I used to carry an elaborate set-up made out of PVC piping and cloth banners, with posters attached. It collapsed down into a big duffle bag and a few flat poster boxes, but it took forever to set up. Then, as Devil’s Due grew, we created some extremely complicated booth displays. One was actually made of sheet metal, mesh fencing, and translucent plastic! It looked really cool, but damn if it didn’t take hours to set up, and it cost a ton to ship. I had resisted purchasing a professional “pop-up booth,” (the curved black backdrops you will see at any show), because they used to cost anywhere from $2,000 to $3,000, but I was paying more than that in shipping and labor costs. They collapse into two fairly small shipping barrels, with wheels attached for easy transport… and they’re worth every penny. So we just build off of the pop-up booth format, and it takes a much shorter amount of the time to set up. Good news is, now you can get them online for a fraction of that price.

I don’t think you need a pop-up booth when you’re just starting out, but if you start to grow, or if money’s not the issue, I suggest getting one as soon as you can. To find these, check out ebay and Amazon for the best deals.

INVENTORY AND SUPPLY PLANNING

The most common mistake new publishers make is bringing too much inventory to a convention. Sure, it’s better to have stock left over than it is to sell out on the first day of the show, but one small box holds a lot of comics. Although big publishers can sell hundreds of certain titles at a show, they often sell less than thirty or forty copies of specific issues.

If it’s your first show, it’s hard to calculate how many comics you’ll need, how many sketches or pages of art you’ll sell, or what the reaction to your book is going to be like. Just make your best educated guess, without losing an arm and a leg on shipping expenses, or without carrying around 500 pounds of comic book boxes all weekend, and adjust for the next time. Don’t be upset if you sell out of inventory a couple days in. If you covered your basic costs, that’s a good thing!

SHIPPING

Do not be caught off guard by the shipping restrictions and fees at a convention. Be sure to read the paperwork to find out if the show you’re attending is fairly lax in their policies or if they require union participants. This won’t be a huge issue for someone publishing one small-press comic, but if you have a skid of boxes being delivered at a show like San Diego, you may be charged as much as a few thousand dollars extra if you don’t read the fine print on the rules.

SET-UP (SUPPLY DELIVERY)

As long as you can set up your display by yourself, or with one other person, you’ll be fine at any show. If you get very ambitious, though, and require all kinds of tools and equipment to construct things, you may find a union supervisor assigning someone to help you, whether you want his help or not, all for a nice fee. Again, this is probably NOT an issue for a creator straight out of the gate, but it’s always good to know.

The next time you’re at a show, and you see those huge displays for companies like DC Comics, SyFy Channel, or even Dark Horse, think about the fact that not only did they pay thousands of dollars to reserve the space, but all of that stuff had to be designed, manufactured and shipped, and the companies probably had to pay union help about $80 per person per hour to assemble it. We’re talking six figure costs there.

BREAKDOWN

I’m always amazed at the breakdown process at a convention. After three or four days of insanity, walking around huge displays with loud music and flashing lights, no matter how enormous the set-up, it seems like everything disappears in a matter of seconds at the close of the show on the very last day. Within a few hours, this magical wonderland you’ve just spent the weekend living in will no longer exist. Anyway, my point is that when a show is over, it’s time to get yourself in gear and get the heck out of the convention center.

On the days preceding that, though, when the show ends each night, you don’t have a lot of time to pack your materials for the night. After a long day at a con, everyone wants to run out to the nearest restaurant or bar, and so will you most likely. Make a serious effort to head back to your hotel room and count your money, though, before you do. If you are comfortable doing it at the table, that’s fine too, but just be sure to keep an accounting of it so when the show is over you have detailed information about how well the event went for you. It’s very easy to spend that wad of cash in your pocket after a few drinks, or pick up the table for someone else because you’re feeling generous, only to discover in the morning that you should have clung to every penny.

On the final day of breakdown, even if your display doesn’t take long to pack up, you’re going to have to weave through everyone else that’s breaking down and packing up. If you plan to ship materials home, rather than carry them, you’ll need to arrange for that beforehand. It’s very easy to bring FedEx or UPS forms along, fill them out after you’ve packed up your materials, and then deliver them to the nearest drop off location. Most major convention centers and hotels offer FedEx and UPS service, but in the rare case that they don’t, you don’t want to be stuck driving boxes to a location in a town you’re unfamiliar with when you need to get to the airport on time (trust me, I know).

RESOLVE BILLING ISSUES

This isn’t something you usually need to worry about, but if you run into the situation where you do need to have skids delivered, and are paying the various unions and shipping companies to deliver skids to your booth (these are called “drayage charges”), be sure to check whatever credit cards you may have used on the next few statements. Sometimes charges magically appear that you should have never paid. For instance, at Devil’s Due, we’ve flown people out a day early, and paid for the extra man hours and hotels fees just to take advantage of discounts offered if you set up your display on a certain date, only to be charged anyway. This leads to many phone calls pestering customer service managers to give the money back. In the end it usually works out, but causes added frustration. Be on the lookout that you’re only paying what you owe.

BAR CON

When you attend a convention as a casual spectator, and you meet the artists, get signatures, and buy a bunch of cool merchandise, you might not know that you’re only experiencing half of the con experience. Every convention has another side to it … a fun, and sometimes a little bit seedy phenomenon we like to call “Bar Con.”

For the artists, retailers, and anyone else working the show floor, the official hours of the convention are only half of the experience. Where everyone really lets their hair down, has a good time, and forms the relationships that last throughout the years are at the dinners, parties, and spontaneous pub crawls that happen in the evenings. This is an industry where very few people work in big offices with dozens of employees to socialize with. Many creators work in their home, or in small studios, and never get to interact with their peers face to face, except at conventions. So when they do, everyone seems to be making up for lost time.

After you’ve done a full convention season, if you can pull it off, and hung out with the same people in half a dozen cities across the country, it’s easy to feel like you’ve known them for years. I imagine it’s a very tiny glimpse of what it’s like traveling on a summer concert tour, without all the groupies beating down your door.

To all of you female readers, I say that from a man’s perspective, because let’s face it, if you’re a woman attending these shows, you probably will have to beat guys off with a stick comparable to some touring rock star. Be careful not to overdo the Bar-Con experience, and lose sight of the fact that this is still business. You have to get up in the morning and make money, so be careful. If you party too much, you may find yourself doing something foolish, and burning bridges in the process, depending on who’s around to witness the events. First impressions are the most important. After you’ve been around for a few years, then you can make an ass out of yourself.

Seriously, though, let me clarify that this does not mean you have to actually go to parties, do shots and get plastered, but it does mean that you should be interacting with people after the shows. Don’t just go hole up in your hotel room every night reading comics that you bought at the show that day. That’s fine for the average attendee, but you’re trying to network here, so take advantage of it.

You can always start a sketch circle in the hotel lobby and hang there all night talking shop with other artists.
If you’re serious about breaking into this industry, and you’re not taking part in any Bar-Con events, I really feel you’re missing out.

RETAILER CONTACTS

The people you’ll meet at Bar Con come from every level of the comic industry ladder, but you need to target each category specifically to maximize your networking. By simply exhibiting, you’re hitting your first demographic – the readers. Bar-Con is probably the best way to meet artists and writers, aside from scheduled meetings, or simply being their “booth neighbor” all weekend. Retailers are usually in a separate area of the convention than the publishers, though, so you’ll need to make extra effort to promote your title to them.

Take note that not every retailer at a convention has a comic book store. Many of them only sell golden or silver age comics (comic books that were published years ago), so they’re not going to be interested in buying yours. Look for the displays that are offering modern comics, and keep an eye out for those representing an entire chain of stores. If you don’t know who these people are, you’ll have to learn by talking to them.

The retailers are usually very busy at these shows, and don’t have a lot of time to talk, so keep your discussions short and sweet. Make a small flyer or give them any other simple promotional material you have, or better yet, a sample comic; but don’t expect them to manage to take it home. 95% of the time they will lose this by the first day, because conventions are crazy…but the

CHAPTER FIVE: NEWEST DEVELOPMENTS

THE DAWN OF DIGITAL

Welcome to the real world, Comics. For thirty years you’ve been closed off from the real world of retail, isolated to small mom and pop shops. Part of a ‘boys club’, the capes and tights have dominated, while also incubating a small cult-following of alternative titles with occasional break out concepts that appeal to the masses.

Tekno Comics in the ‘90s, Crossgen and Platinum in the previous decade…companies have thrown MILLIONS at the comic book masses trying to carve a niche, often led by entrepreneurs who’ve had great success in the business world. But they’re gone now, because the comic book industry is a strange place. A wonderful yet terrible, bizarre but amazingly creative, confounding place where standard business practices have not always worked. Not standard marketing tactics, anyway. To succeed in this industry one must understand what makes that geek flame burn— usually by being a geek yourself and sharing in the passion.

Vain attempts to market comics through traditional media have failed. TV spots, billboards, newspapers & local media all fell short because there was no easy way for people to get ahold of the product companies were advertising.

After trial and tribulation, those who’ve survived in comics learned not to exert energy where it wouldn’t be appreciated (or reciprocated financially). Some never knew it any other way - others had to “unlearn” the marketing tactics they were taught in more mainstream lines of work, or marketing school, and go against what may be intuitive.
Then along came digital.

Suddenly any kid with an iPad or iPod touch can download the entire comic book history of Iron Man after seeing it at the movies. When I was a kid I had to beg my mom to take me to one of those mysterious “comic shops” on the other side of town after I saw the ’89 Batman. Indie creators can now sell their books on iTunes or comiXology and point people in that direction every time it comes up in conversation. Suddenly, comics are as accessible as chewing gum or a tank of gas. As easy to get – no, easier to get – than they were in the heyday of newsstands.

You know what that means? Now we can market them the way everything else in the world is marketed. Now those TV ads would make sense for the companies with enough cash to get behind them. Billboards actually have a place. Maybe there’s not enough demand yet for a single title to post ad spots all across the country, but I wonder why it hasn’t been done yet by companies like comiXology (now an Amazon subsidiary) — those that sell millions of digital comic titles. They’re on target to compete with late night TV programming at this point.

There’s just one catch. All of those “traditional” ways of marketing pretty much every product in the world are changing by the month. TV commercials are on their way out thanks to DVRs and print advertising makes less and less sense. There are shelves of books dedicated to this subject at your local book store’s business sections. Well, if you can find a book store in your area. But more on that later.

So what do you do? You get your hands (and brain) dirty and learn what everyone else is doing to market their products. But not just what other comic book people are doing. Someone launching a hot line of baby bibs these days could teach you something about marketing your comic. Read blogs and magazines like Fast Company, The Culting of Brands, anything by Seth Godin, lectures by Gary Vaynerchuk. It’s time to jump into the real business world if you want to stay in the comic book realm.

And always – as I harped on so much at the beginning of this book – constantly revisit what your true goals are and make sure the marketing goals are in line with them.

Ironically, as individuals become more hi-tech, and their ability to spread word of mouth increases, I feel businesses need to become more old school in their approach. What does this mean? It means a lot of the advice I’d have given someone years ago may now be completely the opposite.

I learned the hard way in the past that comic book conventions were an easy way to exert a lot of your energy, and even more money, selling books to fans for little payoff. Despite how sincere and diehard of a reader each person you encounter may be, they could never help you convince their local retailers enough to order your product. Now, however?

Now those same fans, even from the smallest town convention, can go online and recommend your books to their friends, who can then go online and download your books instantly, putting money in your pocket, and in turn creating more fans for life. It means you have to do the work. It means you have to treat these people well. It means you have to deliver something they actually want to read. But for once, finally, it can pay off in scale—if you continue to release new product as time goes on.

Whereas in the past I may have told someone to save their energy and not go to those shows, now I may recommend it (though you still need to monitor expenses closely and make sure you’re not overdoing it).

WHY SAYING “DIGITAL” MAY SOON BE REDUNDANT

The advent of digital apps and e-books has led everyone to use the term “digital” with everything. Hence “digital comics” are discussed often as being separate from print comics. This will not last long, and it’s best not to give a “digital” preface to anything that will have lasting qualities.

Digital distribution is simply the newest way to get the content you love. In the near future I predict people will drop “digital” from things and start using “print” to identify when they get ahold of an actual, genuine physical copy of a book because it will be the less common. It will signify that they are a print collector.

I actually created a digital offshoot of my company with the word “digital” in it. Mostly this was for legal and accounting purposes, to keep things clean from the other company, and to acquire digital-only rights to other creators’ libraries of work. But I’d never continue using it as a label to promote my books.

Is Digital DEVASTATING Print Comics, or is this the dawn of a Golden Age for both? Comic shops, many think, will soon go the way of Borders and Tower Records— all thanks to digital comics. However, a surprising trend is developing where sales of print comics are actually increasing.

Image Comics, a haven for comic book creators, is having an explosion in both sales and quality, and the breakout title The Walking Dead, thanks to its television success, just broke the highest sales records since the late ‘90s.

Yet the comic industry is still dominated by one print distributor, retailers are still toughing it out from month to month and hesitant to order most independent comic titles, and should Barnes & Noble collapse like Borders, another glut of cheap graphic novels will flood the market.

So why is this? I believe there are a few reasons. Comics has been cut off from the “real world” as we’ve already covered, and digital is opening it up to the masses. While book stores and magazine stores were already at the ultimate saturation point, comics have been shut off in a gulag-like economy. When the concepts of comics are exposed to the masses, such as through film, they are often immensely successful. And yet, despite the trend of more people than ever viewing the comic medium as an acceptable form of entertainment, it’s just too much effort to go find a comic shop and buy the books. So shut off have comics been from these “normal people” that just this tiniest percentage of those testing out digital comics who take a chance and go to a shop actually contributes to a significant spike.

Next, many people downloading digital content are actually still print collectors at heart, and using digital as a means to take a chance on new comics. They’re part of that Wednesday Society crowd that hits the comic shops every week, and if they like what they read, the next visit to the store results in a sale.

Third, as I mentioned about that kid downloading Iron Man comics, a small percentage of that demographic is also going to filter down to some new blood coming into shops for the first time in many years.

And lastly, there are millions of former comic book readers out there who only stopped reading because it was just too difficult keep up with a certain series, or because life simply got too busy and comics weren’t a priority. Now they’re older and would love to read, but it’s been too overwhelming to jump back into all of the current titles. Or at least it was until Tommy Comic Collector in Iowa was able to sit and download comics on his iPad while riding the bus to work. Now, fully addicted to the medium again, he just may visit the next local convention or head to the store— and then they’ve got ‘im!

What we may see over the next couple of years is a divergence between comic book print sales and all other print book sales. Comics may go up while everything else continues to lose market share to tablet readers. I still expect to see a meteoric rise in digital comic sales continue. In just the past few years alone we’ve gone from estimated digital comic revenue (in its entirety) starting at $1 million in 2009 to $8 million in 2010 to over $25 million in 2011. In 2014 digital comic sales are projected to be around $100 Million.

The entire print comic book industry has been hovering at around $700 million dollars for years, so how long is it before digital matches it? It’s probably safe to say that your hardcore fans, though, will want physical product, be it print comics or print T-shirts, and they will be your evangelists. Print and digital will continue to work together, not at odds. Although I strongly feel that eventually digital will be the leader by far. In the e-books & apps chapter I go into building your library of content, but it’s also about building a library of followers, fans and readers. It’s all about eyeballs reading your stories, and whatever way you can get them, there will be a way to monetize that if you’re proactive.

So be excited about the digital evolution!

NO ONE IS MAKING MONEY IN DIGITAL …YET

This is rapidly changing, but for now it’s still the general rule. Despite significant increases in the digital market, a lot of that has to do with companies that have been around for a long time adding more of their backlist to the sales menu. If DC comics adds 20 years’ worth of Batman back issues in a week, then yeah, that’s going to skew sales figures for a while.

But for many publishers it’s equating to about ten to fifteen percent of their total sales. I don’t know when you’re reading this, but as of press time in 2015, that’s the case, and it’s interesting. The total North American comic market in 2014 was about $750 million, and that’s probably what it’s going to be for 2015 too. So digital sales are staying in that ratio of ten to fifteen percent at $100 Million and have stopped gaining ground over print, at least for the time being.

There are some exceptional cases too, such as publisher Ape Comics’ partnership with the popular app Pocket God, which promoted their namesake comic within the app. Those digital comics sold over one million units and the traditional comic book industry didn’t even notice.

For now, though, don’t naively think that putting your book for sale on comiXology, iVerse, and the Kindle is going to start bringing in thousands of dollars a month unless you’re hiding a million Twitter followers in your back pocket.

CROWD FUNDING

Perhaps one of the biggest game changers to come onto the scene in recent years is Kickstarter.com and other similar crowd funding sites. Crowd funding, for the uninitiated, is a simple way for the collective masses to support a creative endeavor (or any endeavor) by pledging money, usually receiving something in return.

Let me say that again. This is a game changer. I don’t believe the power of crowd funding has sunk into our consciousness anywhere near as much as it deserves. The ability for the “little guy” to bypass angel investors or large retail buyers and make something happen from scratch, delivering it directly to a built-in audience, is huge. That is a fundamental, paradigm shift in commerce – that most major corporations are still oblivious to – and it’s going to bite them in the ass before they know it.

This power will be magnified in the coming years when the ability to crowd fund the creation of new start-up corporations is scheduled to debut. Currently there are specific SEC laws holding it back.

In the 1990s seven insanely popular comic book artists left Marvel to form Image Comics and turned the industry upside now. The next Image Comics upheaval will likely be a crowd funding story.

As an entrepreneur, I can relate to just how much time – and I’m talking years – can be spent trying to find someone with the financial capital to help infuse money into a company so that its launch or expansion may be properly executed. How many ideas go nowhere because, despite a great product, there isn’t enough interest from buyers of a large enough scale to make it happen, even though had they taken a chance, the actual end user / customer would have made it into a hit?

That all goes away with crowd funding, because now the person with the idea can gather the support of the end user. This is why Kickstarter has become the place where web comics shine. Our newly signed Devil’s Due title PLUME, originally a web comic (which is how I came upon it and its creator K. Lynn Smith) has raised over $40,000 through the platform. Something impossible for an indy title like this just three or four years ago.

It seems every week I see a new comic project on Kickstarter surpassing forty or fifty thousand dollars in sales and I’ve never even heard of it! Meanwhile, much more well-known creators (in the “mainstream” comic book industry) are trailing behind them. That’s because web comic creators can instantly direct their readers to make pledges, while a twenty to thirty year veteran of print books can’t access his or her fanbase that easily. Some of them are doing fantastic, though, such as veteran inker/writer Jimmy Palmiotti, because he’s maintained a relationship with his fans that allows him to access them through social media.

If the creators able to pull off a successful crowd funding strategy are able to execute well on their fulfillment of all of the products they promised to people, they will have achieved a direct bond that most publishers just don’t have.

This is where the challenge will truly arrive, and how we’ll begin to define the roles between creators, publishers and talent managers in coming years. If creators can directly access their fans, then what is the purpose of a publisher? Of an agent? In the past there were barriers for talent to find an audience, but those are gone now. Now with artists and writers able to team up and make their own creations from concept to shelf, publishers and companies will have to truly service them to make themselves useful.

Fulfillment is the area that is going to bite many a creator in the cheeks. Manufacturing, shipping, responding to email inquiries, and following up when someone doesn’t get a shipment…all of this takes a huge amount of effort and organization. The more successful the project, the more backers one will have, and the more tedious it becomes. The key is making sure your reward fulfillment system is scalable. That means that no matter how big or how small, the plan for execution is structured in a way that can be easily handled. If it’s small, you can possibly handle it yourself and still make money, still get the product to the people. If it’s massively successful, you’re able to outsource it or hire help and still get the job done and be profitable.

That’s a key function of successful businesses that often collides with many creatives. There must be systems and procedures developed – like a true business – so that they can take advantage of this creative miracle that is crowd funding. The dirty secret is that these big publishers don’t have those systems in place either. They don’t have a plan for interacting with, and catering to a specific creator’s thousands of fans. They don’t want to be in the business of fulfilling their orders directly. That’s e-commerce. That’s… hard to do

Both the creators and publishers are at a crossroads, with both truly coming full circle and learning what they each value in the respective party.

LESS IS MORE

Here’s another simple fact about crowd funding that slips past most people. You need way less fans to make a project successful when crowd funding than you do producing it the “old” way. By old way I mean giving half of your cut to a publisher (who is going to be selling it at less than half of retail to distributors) and then waiting for months to get your check.

When you crowd fund, not only are you selling your product at full retail value, but you’re selling other merchandise as well. Quickly, a hardcore group of 1500 fans can make you more net profit than selling 10,000 copies of a book to stores. For someone who’s out there pounding the pavement, cultivating a fan base one by one, this could mean the difference in going full time pro right now vs. waiting another five years. And if you really have your shit together, you can both crowd fund and still kick ass in the traditional market without being stressed out about it

Here’s a quick list of items that will make your life way easier if you know about them before starting your Kickstarter campaign (maybe by the time you read this some of them will have changed as they’re constantly improving their technology).

Your survey can only be sent once.

This is the survey the website allows you to send to all backers at once, where they can answer multiple choice questions and give you notes on which options they’re choosing for a specific reward. It spits back a beautiful spreadsheet that allows you to easily fulfill their requests.
Do not make any mistakes before sending a survey to backers. It can add hours, or even weeks to your production if you have to go back and get missing info from them. The only way to do this is by emailing them all directly, and then your pretty spreadsheet becomes a big pain to deal with.

Math Things!

(This applies to most crowd funding platforms, but numbers will vary)
Costs: • Posting a project: Free
• Creating video and graphics for your promotion: varies

• Kickstarter fee from successful funding: 5% off the top Kickstarter uses an “all or nothing” funding system, meaning if you don’t reach your goal, you don’t get any money.

• Stripe (Kickstarter’s credit card processor) fee: 3% to 5% off the top Estimate 10% of your money is gone before you start. • Indiegogo: They offer a similar deal as Kickstarter, but also offer “Flexible Funding,” which allows you to keep the money you receive no matter what, but if you don’t achieve your goal, they will take another 9% of the funds on top of the other processing fees. This discourages abusing the flex-funding system.

• Shipping Costs: varies greatly. Imperative that you plan this out before starting, or you will burn yourself badly.
• Shipping Supplies: Reiterating this— it’s not just shipping supplies, it’s shipping costs • Shipping Services: When it comes to shipping product, if you’re doing it yourself, don’t torture yourself with trips to the post office. Utilize services like Stamps.com and the FedEx and UPS websites.

• Fullfillment Services: If you choose to, you can utilize fulfillment companies which will charge up to 15% to pack and ship product.

Digital Comic Retailers / Distributors

These are third party distributors of digital comic book content. They vary greatly in their reach of readers, and as of press time comiXology dominates this space of the industry by far. Comics are sold through websites and mobile apps for reading on computer tablets, phones and desktops. All digital carriers require you give them a percentage of sales, as much as half after the fee that Apple, Amazon, or whoever they’re selling through takes 20% to 30%, although the details of each agreement are confidential.
While companies like comiXology, iVerse, Drive-Thru Comics, and others can be very beneficial, it also pays to post content on the Amazon.com Kindle yourself, and the Nook. It’s an underserved market and a great place to sell full graphic novels without giving a huge chunk of your net profits to another party.

Consider the two options the difference between selling your content wholesale to a major retailer with a lot of foot traffic vs. selling on your own, directly to the customer. You want to do both.

CHANGES IN THE BOOK STORE LANDSCAPE

In the ‘90s and early 2000s we saw the boom of the mega-size book stores. Borders and Barnes & Noble came in with a force, innovating the way we shop for books, creating a hybrid atmosphere between store, library and coffee shop…all of this as huge music retail operations were crumbling from the advent of digital media. Fast forward to 2011 and 2012 and tablet computers did the same to them. In 2012 Borders went under, to the shock of many people. Just a year earlier few actually believed their demise could happen so quickly. Barnes & Noble was able to save themselves, at least for a while, by throwing everything they had into rushing a tablet reader to market, which we now know as the Nook.

Then, rather surprisingly, the digital sales plateaued and print sales stabilized. The comic book industry actually started seeing increases, and found the beginnings of the new rennaisance it’s currently in.

Did you go into a B&N any time in early 2011? Every one I went into had a huge display right in the front entrance drawing customers’ attention to the new device, usually accompanied by an employee asking me if I’d heard of it. It was the right call for the bottom line, although a bit morbid watching employees help sell the device that were likely about to eliminate their jobs in the very near future.

In 2011, I wrote a blog noting a possible industry collapse following Christmas, when things slowed down in the first quarter of 2012. Fortunately that did not happen, but I think the reasons behind it are still worth keeping fresh in our heads because the problems, as far as I know, have still not gone away.

There are a few black swans that could still occur (black swan is a term for something unexpected that comes out of nowhere and affects a market…Or maybe the term “X-Factors” works better for this audience). There are a few X-factors that could shake up our industry. For one, how will the collapse of Barnes & Noble’s physical stores, should that happen, hurt Diamond Distribution? Or help them? How has the problem of retailers falling behind on their payments to Diamond during the economic recession affected the strength of the industry? Is everything great, what with the rash of new comic shops opening, or is it all hot air?

Then with recent major events like the purchase of Marvel Comics by Disney, we quickly saw Diamond lose the book distribution for all Marvel products. That couldn’t have hit them lightly. And that affects our industry. Perhaps though, that’s why Image Comics became the second largest book market publisher for 2014 - because Diamond started pushing them out of necessity?

I love seeing Marvel and DC take a smaller chunk of the market while independent companies putting out non-superhero fare grow. And that seems to be the way things are going for a while. Let’s hope it stays that way, and here is why it’s important to get to a point where non-Marvel/DC books thrive.

Most retailers make the majority of their income from Marvel & DC sales. They then purchase all other comics using what money they have left over, and based on pullbox requests, which isn’t a lot.

If any stresses from on high force Diamond to cut off any retailers paying late, that could drive down the independent sales too.
My point is, there are a lot… a lot of very big flaws in a very shaky system that has been run like a boys club for the past couple of decades, and its being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Make sure this screaming kid doesn’t kick you in the face while it’s happening and hopefully we’ll end up with a well-behaved, smarter adult of a business.
It may all work itself out. It may all end in a massive implosion sucking us into one of Darkseid’s boom tubes. I try to prepare for both scenarios, so as to not care which way the business goes, and that comes from focusing on a strong foundation. That foundation is, whether you’re a creator OR a publisher, your readership. Your collectors. Your end users.
It comes from looking forward not to next year, not even five years, but ten, twenty. How are we going to get our content to people in the future, so I can start doing the heavy lifting now? And you know what I find is that it’s bringing me around full circle to when I really just wanted to be a creator putting out my own comic stories.
The advantage is that I have a fresh perspective on what’s going to happen, but with the experience of running a top ten publishing company for many years and managing over fifty employees and contractors at one time. That’s why you felt it worth putting down your money to listen to me yammer on about everything. The flip side is, a lot of what I’ve learned doesn’t apply anymore and I’m at the same starting point as you are in many cases, even if you’ve never published a book. It’s both terrifying and wonderful at the same time.

WE’RE TOUGH BASTARDS!

I’ll give you this: comic book industry veterans are resilient. We’re no wimpy book store cashiers. Oh many of us will whine and complain about it all day long, but we’re not going anywhere. Whether you’re a retailer or an artist, if you’ve been in this business for ten years you’ve no doubt hauled long boxes from the loading dock of a convention to your booth. You’ve taken crazy road trips to promote your product. You’ve cut costs and found ways to make a dime off of a book that you never thought possible a year earlier. You’ve even lost your ass on projects and still came back for more. We don’t have a choice. We’re compelled. Quite frankly I think we all have some sickness that could only have been concocted by a Jack-Kirby-created mad scientist.

Take me. I’ve been on the top, lost money on projects, made a ton of money on projects, even had hundreds of thousands of dollars stolen out from under me and I’m still here. I definitely have the sickness. I think that refusal to simply run away is why Devil’s Due’s relaunch in 2012 was so well received.

This makes us better prepared for the challenges that lie ahead. We’re going to continue. We’re going to charge forward on the front lines, many of us getting knocked on our asses along the way, but will eventually plant our flag in that motherfucker!

CLOSING

A lot of this book is just me rambling on about my experiences over the past fifteen years, but there were many times that it was more difficult to translate from brain to keyboard than I anticipated. When you’ve been doing something for so long it’s easy to leave important chunks of information out that although simple, may be imperative to someone understanding the chain of instructions that follow. I hope I didn’t do that to anyone, although I still hope to have raised many questions in your minds. There’s nothing better than thinking of a question that you previously never even knew you should have asked. When that happens to me, I know it means I’m actually learning something new.

Whether you are a diehard aspiring self-publisher, or if you’re just a casual reader interested in what goes on behind the scenes of this capes-andtights industry, thanks for checking out the series.

And for those of you who are serious, get out there and start working on your game plan. Just don’t do too good of a job and become my competition five years from now.
To hear me discuss more of the subject matter in this book, as well as all things comics and a requisite dose of completely nonsensical things as well, visit me at the following places:

Twitter.com/JoshBlaylock Facebook.com/JoshBlaylock
And visit Devil’s Due Entertainment at:
Twitter.com/DevilsDue Facebook.com/DevilsDueEnt

RECOMMENDED READING

I haven’t read a fiction novel in a decade, just comics, but when it comes to biographies and books on marketing and business from people walking their talk, I devour them. Out of those, here are some I think can greatly benefit your journey, inspire you, and help you better manage your goals and business. I hope that my attempt at writing this book was at least a fraction as helpful to you as these were to me.

Business Stripped Bare & Losing My Virginity
By Richard Branson
The Culting of Brands
By Douglas Atkin
How to Win Friends and Influence People
By Dale Carnegie
The Starbucks Experience
By Joseph A. Michelli
Conspiracy of the Rich
By Robert Kiyosaki
Do You!
By Russel Simmons
The Thank You Economy
By Gary Vaynerchuk
The E-Myth
By Michael Gerber
Choose Yourself
By James Altucher
AND ANYTHING BY SETH GODIN!

HOW TO BE A COMIC BOOK ARTIST …NOT JUST HOW TO DRAW THEM

By Tim Seeley with Updates by Josh Blaylock

COMIC BOOK ARTIST JOB DESCRIPTION

An illustrator who translates a script into sequential illustrations subsequently published in a comic magazine format, shipping on a periodic basis, usually monthly.

INTRODUCTION

In 2006 Devil’s Due Publishing released How to Self-Publish Comics: Not Just Create Them, my first prose book. Originally distributed as a series of pamphlets, it was collected into a book which has sold consistently and (after a much-needed update) is now published by Devil’s Due Entertainment.

Shortly after How to Self-Publish, Tim Seeley became our key fulltime artist at Devil’s Due, drawing everything from G.I. Joe to Forgotten Realms to Sheena: Queen of the Jungle, and making a name for himself as a writer too. So it was a perfect fit for Seeley to write a companion booklet — this very book you’re now holding.

Well, Tim’s since gone on to be one of the busiest, hottest writers in comics, recently topping the charts with Grayson for DC Comics, and his series Hack/Slash, started at Devil’s Due, lives on with a healthy run at Image Comics.

Just as the self-publishing title needed updating, this 2007 release’s tweaks seemed long overdue. While making adjustments for what has changed in the business, I kept Tim’s personal style of writing that can only come out of that funny bastard’s brain.

So yeah, this has my fingerprints all up on it, but as few as possible. Hope a whole new generation of aspiring artists gets as much value out of this as those who have read it in the past!

• Josh Blaylock

CHAPTER ONE: SO YA WANNA BE A PENCIL-MONKEY…

Slingin’ lead. Drawing hot girls and huge, grimacing dudes. The adoring fans. The huge wads of cash. Oh… the glory. All this and more can be yours when you become a member of one of the most exclusive clubs on Earth: The Legion of Comic Book Artists. Buy this book and find out how…

Did you buy the book? Good, I figured that would do it. Sucker. My name is Tim Seeley and I’m a comic book artist. Within these pages I’m going to attempt to teach you everything I know about being a comic book artist. Now, notice I didn’t say I was going to try to teach you how to draw. The simple fact is, no 22-page manual is going to teach you how to draw. The ability to draw comes from a combination of natural skill, desire, and lots of practice. I mean… lots and lots. This book isn’t going to teach you how to draw the muscles of a forearm or the pleats in a manga chick’s skirt. There are plenty of books out there for that, some of them amazingly good, and a lot of them horribly bad. No, my little friend, this book is going to teach you how to be an honest-to-damngoodness comic book artist.

WHAT DO I KNOW

First thing’s first. You should probably be asking, “Well, who the hell are you?” That’s a good question, buddy. You should check the credentials of anyone who’s trying to sell you something. I mean, you wouldn’t want to learn karate from a guy who sells lawnmowers and happens to watch a lot of chop socky flicks, right? So, here’s my favorite part…the part where I get to talk about myself and you just sit there with a glazed look in your eye and
wait for me to finish.

I’ve been reading comics since I was 5-years-old. I love the damn things. When I was ten, I started doing my own comics, which
I would lend to my friends to read. My first effort was appropriately named Very Very Stupid Comics, which was inspired by my love for Mad and Cracked magazines.

From that I moved on to telling a bunch of overly complex and melodramatic superhero stories, always starring women with very tight costumes and big…hair. Over the years, I’ve figured out that, while I love drawing, it was always the process of making stuff up that I really loved, so I came up with Hack/Slash, a horror/comedy comic about a pair of slasher hunters. It ended up gradually finding an audience and eventually even was optioned
as a movie by Rogue Pictures.

Tim has since created the hit series Revival with fellow Devil’s Due alumni Mike Norton, to write the new Chaos! Comics universe for Dynamite Entertainment, and is now on one of DC Comics’ hottest titles, Grayson, among about a billion other projects…give or take a few hundred million.

I’m a firm believer in art being second to story, and a harmonious relationship between comic art and comic script is very important to me. I know I’m not the most in-demand “hot” artist in the biz and I’m aware that there are lots of old pros who know a lot more than me, but I’ve learned a lot in the time I’ve worked in this field, and I think my track record entitles me to teach a few things. Also, I have a wife who sings when she gets ready in the morning. I like fruity drinks. I wear boxers. Is that enough for ya? Good.

THE AWFUL TRUTH ABOUT BEING A COMIC BOOK ARTIST

All right, I want to get something out of the way right off the bat. Drawing comics probably seems like the coolest job on Earth. I go to a lot of comic conventions and I can tell you, it seems like there’s more people who want to draw comics than there are people who want to read comics. Drawing comics is on the list of creative jobs that people would give their first child to have… somewhere on the list after Rock Star and Salma Hayek’s Personal Masseuse. But, like any job, comic illustration has its downsides. You should know them before you go charging helmet-first into this. Here’s a list of the major ones:

When people think of comic art, they think of the splash pages — the covers, the spreads — basically the really fun shit to draw. The truth is, being a comic book artist is a bit like being a cop. It looks exciting, but it’s mostly paperwork.

1. When drawing, remember the 30/70 rule. 30% of everything you draw is totally fun — big splash pages, cool monsters, cute girls — stuff that really gets your pencil flying. 70% of everything you draw is the obligatory car and garbage cans. It’s the background stuff: the bushes, the rocks in the background, the panels of people sitting in couches watching TV. It ain’t glorious, it can be tedious, and sometimes it saps your will to lift a pencil ever again. But, you have to do it, and do it well. Wipe that drool off your face and get scribbling.

2. Comic book drawing is a lonely job; you’ll likely spend every day in your studio or at the table in your kitchen staring at the same surface, and your social skills may atrophy from lack of human contact. You might say weird things at parties like, “Drawing the muscles on a horse is very sensual.” I work in a studio so I have people to talk to…but I worked freelance for three weeks and it drove me nuts. Everyday I’d lie in wait for my roommate to come home from work, ready to spring and satisfy my need for human conversation. The notion of working at home sounds awesome, but never having to put on pants can be bad for your social life.

3. Like any “art job,” drawing comics can be awful damn stressful for not much pay. At least in the beginning, most comic artists are working another job. Those first gigs pay pretty poorly, if at all. Also, deadlines in comics can be a beast. Comic companies, large and small, are known for changing their deadlines mid-production, leading to all-nighters, eye strain, and…umm…hemorrhoids (I dunno…it could happen). And anyone who does comics thinking they’ll get rich is a moron. A successful comic artist can make a living, but there’s far fewer rich comic artists than there are rich dentists, lawyers, celebrity impersonators or bear trainers. It’s a rough, competitive biz. If you actually break down the numbers, you probably have a better chance of getting rich from the insurance money after being bitten by someone’s poodle. Those few comic creators who get to buy million dollar baseballs and such tend to obtain their wealth not by pushing pencils, but by spinning off their creations and good name into other business ventures.

ON THE UPSIDE

Are you still here? Good, I had to get that out of the way. I just want to make sure people know what they’re getting into…consider that the comic book version of what Guns and Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle” does for bright-eyed starlets heading to L.A. Feel my…my…serpentine.

Of course, there are a million great things about being a comic book artist. I know I personally don’t mind when the weekend ends and I even forget to take my vacation. The fans are great, and when someone really likes your work, there’s not much that’s more fulfilling. Being a comic book artist also comes with a strange sort of minor fame. It’s not intrusive or annoying, but it’s certainly pretty cool when someone is excited to meet you, or when you get to hobnob with real celebrities. Best of all, seeing your name and art published in an honest-togoodness comic book and contributing to the best damn medium in the universe is its own reward.

VIVA LA COMICS!

CHAPTER TWO: WHATCHOO NEED…

One of the first things people usually ask me when I’m sitting at a con (besides “what’s the blue pencil for?” and “is that contagious?”) is “do you have to go to school for this?”

The flat answer is “nope.” You don’t need a degree to be a comic book artist. No editor will ever ask for your grade point average or transcripts. If you’re good enough, you don’t need to have gone through seventh grade. No one cares.

Does that mean you shouldn’t go to college? Well, hold on there, bucko. Personally, I highly recommend getting a four year degree. Comic art is a tough field and you may very well need a backup plan. A decent backup plan. Also, a four year school can give you a well-rounded education that can be amazingly useful for drawing comics. I didn’t know Anthropology 101 or History of Native American Art would ever come in handy, but both have found their way into my drawing. And, last but not least, even if all your art teachers are hacks, those Life Drawing courses are invaluable. Without the backdrop of a Liberal Arts education, it can be pretty difficult to convince people with various body types to come to your house and stand there naked. Life Drawing is probably the single most important thing a comic book artist can train in. No matter what you draw, it will involve figures, and no matter what your style is, you need to know the figure before you can mess with it. I see a lot of portfolios and I’m constantly telling people to go draw from life models. It’s just one of those things you can’t learn from looking at other art. Also, please don’t learn Life Drawing from adult magazines if you can avoid it. I’ve got nothing against spank rag, but those magazines tend to only portray one body type, and the poses can be fairly limited with a slightly different focus than you’ll be looking for. A four-year degree in Graphic Design, Illustration, or Architecture is totally worth the time and money, as long as they let you sneak in those Life Drawing classes. That way, if the whole comic thing doesn’t work out right away, you’ll be able to make a living designing ketchup bottle labels and remembering the nude, baby-oiled, hairy fat guy from your Life Drawing class.
Several private colleges have focuses in Sequential Art. If you can get Ma and Pa to pony up the kind of cash it takes to go to these places, be my guest. Personally, I’m of the opinion that a degree in Sequential Art from one of these schools is pretty useless. No one in comics is asking to see your transcript so they couldn’t give a flying fart if you have a degree from some expensive private school. Also, most potential commercial art field employers (where they do care about degrees) think Sequential Art is when you lay four Picassos end to end. I see a huge number of portfolios every year, and, purely based on numbers, I don’t find that people from those schools are generally any better than the artists attending any other school. From what I can see, a degree in Sequential Art from a private school is really only good for self-satisfaction or purely love of the medium. If that’s enough for you though, by all means, have at it.

24-HOUR DRAWING, PEOPLE

The real schooling for drawing comics is just drawing. A lot. All the time. Comic book artists have to be able to draw everything from skyscrapers to squirrels. A good general rule is to draw every day for at least an hour or two. Draw your friends, your friends’ moms, dachshunds, elevators, ranch homes, ranch dressing…everything. Sooner or later, it’ll come in handy. Comic artists really are the most well-rounded illustrators in the world, putting commercial and medical artists to shame with the sheer volume of items they illustrate.

TOOLS OF THE TRADE

That’s all well and good you say, but what do I need to make it happen, Brother Seeley? I usually find that everyone has their own preferences for paper and pencils, honed over time with experience, but here’s a good general overview of supplies. Of course, it’s good to keep in mind that, as technology changes, the way just about everything is done changes. Comic art is no exception. Keep an eye out for new products and changes in technology. You don’t want those young punks to have an edge on you. More and more artists nowadays are converting to digital mediums, such as computer tablets that allow them to draw with a stylus, and using programs like Manga Studio.

DRAFTING TABLE AND CHAIR

You gotta have somewhere to put your paper and your ass, and the kitchen table just ain’t gonna cut it. You’re going to want an adjustable chair. Prices vary, but get something you can be comfortable in. You’re going to be spending a lot of time in this thing.

PAPER

Comic art is drawn bigger than printed size for ease and better reproduction. You’ll need 11 x 17 Bristol drawing boards with a 10 x 15 live area. You can go bigger or smaller if you like, but always make sure it’s in ratio to the size of a comic book page (6.875x10.438). Boards come in a variety of weights and grooves (which is its level of “smoothness”). Artists vary as to what they like working on. Personally, I’ll draw on whatever someone gives me.

PENCILS

Pencils are also going to be a bit of a personal preference item. In general, you should have a full range of hard and soft leads. Pencil lead comes in a range of Hs and Bs (H for hard, B for black). Bs are softer and thus darker, while Hs are harder and thus lighter. The higher the number in front of the H or B, the lighter or darker it is. Most pencillers work with an HB, H, or 2H. I’m an HB man myself. You can use traditional pencils, or buy a lead holder, which is sort of like a mechanical pencil, but nicer and more expensive. I use a Staedtler lead holder. You may want to put one of those pencil grip things on since this is going to be sitting in your hand for eight hours a day.

LIGHTBOX

A light box is one of those things you never think about, but once you have one, you can’t remember how you lived without it. Light boxes are great for tracing over a sketch and allowing you to draw cleanly. Tracing photos is also a time-honored comic artist tradition, and several well-known artists’ entire styles revolve around the light box and traced photos. Don’t feel guilty, but don’t overdo it either.

RULERS, TIRANGLES, T-SQUARES, FRENCH CURVES

In general, you can’t have enough stuff to help you make straight lines and graceful curves. I recommend picking up a set of French curves, a T-square and a set of triangles to start off with. Add to your supply as you find the need. Most art stores carry this stuff, and I usually grab mine at Michael’s, the Arts and Crafts Store.

PERSPECTIVE GUIDE

Perspective tends to be one of the more tedious tasks of drawing comics. Since architects are always drawing buildings and such, I recommend nabbing their books, which often contain templates for drawing in perspective. A variety of interior design books are especially helpful.

MANGA STUDIO, ADOBE PHOTOSHOP, AND ILLUSTRATOR COMPUTER PROGRAMS

These programs can make drawing much easier. You can use Photoshop to compose your reference into panels while Illustrator can be used to figure out especially difficult perspective to a certain degree. Manga Studio is the leader, though, truly made for drawing, and can even help you plan out your perspective grids and change the angle of your backgrounds once you’ve drawn them.

REFERENCE

Unless you have a photographic memory, you’ll probably need to look at books and photos to draw the inside of a 747 or the enraged face of a charging capuchin monkey. Have a computer near you and an online search engine ready at all times. The bonus is that you’ll always have justification for the nekkid photos of your desktop. I also recommend haunting Borders and Barnes & Noble’s clearance shelves for good, cheap reference. You’ll probably want at least one book of nudes, a photo book of cities and buildings, and one of animals (which will also be nude). A few bodybuilding, fashion, and car magazines wouldn’t hurt either.

Got all that stuff? Are you completely broke yet? Good! That’ll give ya serious motivation to get to work!

CHAPTER THREE: LAID OUT…

Laying out the page before you get to work drawing is really the most important aspect of drawing comics. You’re supposed to be telling a story and your ability to figure out where to put stuff will determine how good of a comic artist you are.

Comic writers come in a variety of flavors from fruity and sweet to hairy and sweaty. And, wouldn’t you know it, scripts come in a just as many styles. Generally though, there’s a few time-honored script styles you may face.

This refers to a script style used most prominently by Stan Lee at Marvel in the good ol’ days. Using this term also represents my best chance of getting a cease and desist letter…again. Anyway, this kind of script is generally very loose and leaves a lot up to the artist. Marvel-style scripts usually don’t include panels or dialogue, but have general descriptions of the story, and leave the pacing up to the artist. These scripts are also known as “holy shit deadline in 10 minutes” scripts. (Fig. 3.1)

FULL SCRIPT

These scripts come from the super anal writers who feel the need to break down every panel, describing everything in detail and often using full dialogue. Alan Moore is the king of this, writing the panel descriptions that fill pages. These scripts leave less up the artist.

Either way, once you get the script, sit down and give it a good long read. Breathe it. Give it a little lick. Make notes on the margin, or draw on it as images come to mind. You want to make sure you know where everything fits and what’s most important. (Fig. 3.2)

THUMBNAILS

Now you’re ready to start breaking the pages down into thumbnails. Thumbnails are small, loose drawings that represent what you’re going to do with the actual pages. You can do these as tight or as loose as you feel comfortable with, though I can tell you from experience it’s better to make them somewhat clear, because nothing sucks as much as looking at a two-day-old drawing and wondering what the hell you meant. You can decide to thumbnail the entire book before you start drawing, or do it as you go along. (Fig. 3.3)

STORYTELLING

There’s no way I can tell you everything an artist can consider about storytelling in a 22-page book. There are whole big fat books on this subject alone. None is better than Comics and Sequential Art by Will Eisner. Get it.

The Layout stage is where you’ll determine how best to tell the story. American comics read left to right, and then down in a Z-shaped flow (um… duh). You can help the flow of the page by spotting your black shapes in this formation, or subtly composing your panels so that the panel action moves the reader into the next panel. (Fig. 3.4)

Each page generally has a dominant panel. You’ll want to make this panel the biggest one on the page. This isn’t always true though. Some pages will contain panels of all the same size (such as the infamous 9-panel grid page).

It’s important to remember that each panel is like a photograph or a shot from a movie. Make sure it’s well composed: each panel should be its own composition and fit well with the rest of the page. Also, remember to vary your shots. You’re the director of this little paper film, so move the camera around the scene to best tell the story. Use angles to best convey the emotion of the scene. If a character is feeling small, pull back and make the figure smaller. If the expression is the most important, zoom in, and give the reader some face.

Developing storytelling skills is a learning process, one that’s always changing as you work. Most people quickly develop the basics, but it takes a lot of time and thought to get to the really exceptional storytelling skills. There are many classic comics to study for fantastic storytelling. Personally, I recommend studying Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, and Blankets. Also, watching films for the way they go from shot to shot can be incredibly informative. Anything from Citizen Kane to Fight Club can inform your storytelling.

AVOIDING “90’s SYNDROME”

Ah, the 90s. During the 90s, splashy, art-driven comics were all the rage. Splash pages, big “bad ass” shots, and crazy-shaped panels were everywhere. And, sure, it looked kinda cool, but quite often, it told the story like absolute poo poo.

As an artist, it can be difficult to resist the urge to diminish boring-todraw-but-essential-to-story stuff in favor of big, bad ass looking stuff. You must resist. There’s a time and place for the bad ass, but not at the expense of the story! You may note that this is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, but there are still artists working for the Big Two that regularly screw up a completely good read by injecting a double-page spread into a scene and relegating some important moments into tiny panels. It drives me friggin’ batshit. It should do the same for you.

LAYOUT TO PAGE

Now, if you’re all done with your layouts, you can start on the page. Can I get a “Whoo Hoo?” Depending on your preference, you can simply look at your layouts and transfer them to the board, or you can copy your thumbnails, enlarge them, and trace them (this is where that kooky light box comes in). Try it a few ways, and see what works…whatever helps you make the best pages. (Fig. 3.5)

CHAPTER FOUR: IN WHICH WE FINALLY GET TO DRAW THE PAGE

Yes, yes, rejoice…you’re drawing a comic book page. Spiffy.

LAYOUT… AGAIN?

Yeah, I bet you thought you were done with this. When you start on the comic page, you’re going to want to have the best possible underlying structure to draw over. Almost no one can draw without first providing the shape and structure of the objects they’re rendering. So, for every page, you should do a sketch that you can tighten up. If you decided to use your thumbnails as a basis (and they were tight enough), you can simply draw over them on the light box. This works, though I often find these drawings end up a little too tight, and often stiff. Another method is to sketch in with a different colored pencil. This is typically done with no-photo blue, though I’ve seen people use red, or a harder black lead. Whatever the case, you’ll want to make sure it doesn’t show up in the ink stage. This is simple with the blue since it doesn’t photocopy, and the black since it can be erased. If you use any other color, you’ll have to drop it out in Photoshop by adjusting the color channels.

TIGHT OR LOOSE, THIS IS THE QUESTION

Comic artists vary a lot in the “tightness” of their drawings. Some are so tight that they include every line weight, every rendering line, and fill in each and every black shape. Others are extremely loose, indicating some shapes for the inker to finish, and leaving the page in an almost sketch-like state. This will vary for a number of reasons, such as deadlines, what inker you’re working with, whether you’re being inked at all…generally, though, I recommend drawing as tightly as possible, especially when you’re first starting out, or when getting familiar with an inker. Tight pages look much nicer and are more likely to impress your editor, and they leave less chance for your inker to royally screw up your art. Once you’re comfortable with your editor and inker, and if everyone involved is ready, feel free to loosen up and really crank out the art.

YOU GOT STYLE

“Style” is one of those things you hear about often in conversations concerning comic artists. Style is actually fairly difficult to categorize and define. There’s the dynamic cross hatcher types, and the minimalist, black shape types, the scratchy types and the animated style types…whatever the case may be, over time, you’ll develop your own style, which will derive from practice, comfort, and interests. My personal style comes from a lifetime of influences from Art Adams to Bernie Wrightson, factoring in the level of detail I can do at a comfortable speed. Hell, when it comes down to it, my style probably has something to do with the length of my arms and the granola bar I had for breakfast. Whatever causes it, you’ll get it. Don’t be afraid to have obvious influences from other creators, but try to avoid being an exact clone or outright swiping. There’s a famous Wally Wood quote along these lines, “A good artist knows when to copy, a great artist knows when to steal.” In today’s market, with hawk-eyed fans and internet press, I’d say “swiping” should definitely be used in moderation. Swiping gets noticed by readers and editors pretty quickly and usually doesn’t make for a great career path (although, admittedly, there are a few complete swipers and clones who make more money that I’ll ever make). Your style is your individual “voice.” Put as much “you” into it as possible.

INKING — LIVING WITH YOUR TRACER

While more and more books are being drawn digitally, or without inkers, inking is still a big part of the comic book making process. If you’re like most American comic artists, you won’t have the time each month to ink your own pencil work, so you’ll likely be paired with an inker. Pencillers, notoriously an anal bunch, often need inkers, who are an even more anal bunch, to truly make their art sing. But, working with an inker can be a stressful proposition. Will they accurately portray your work? Is their style appropriate for yours? The truth is a good inker can make a shitty penciller great, but the opposite is also true: A bad inker can ruin you.

Generally, when working for bigger companies, you won’t get to pick your inker. But, in cases where you can, it’s good to know a few inkers that you like and trust. Wannabe pencillers should cruise websites, picking up good wannabe inkers. This is actually easier than picking up a good date on the internet; it won’t matter if your inker has a hair lip and goiters.

If you do end up at one of the majors and are paired with an inker you don’t like…take a deep breath. Most likely, it’s not as bad as you think. It’s hard to look at your own work when you’re in the middle of it, but fans will most likely respond to it just fine. If it does truly suck chicken butt, calmly ask your editor if he or she thinks it looks okay, and suggest that perhaps this inker is not the absolute best for your style. In comics, as in life, you catch more bees with honey and you’ll get better ink if you aren’t a dink.

TORTOISE AND HARE

There’s 22 pages in the average monthly comic book and roughly 20 weekdays in a month. This means that if you’re drawing one monthly book you should be doing a page a day with those two extra pages thrown in there, perhaps following an easier page. This should be more than enough time to do a comic book. On average, if you want to maintain the schedule of the rest of the world, it should take you about 6-7 hours (or less) per page (this includes the layout stage). If it’s taking you 14 hours to pencil a page, you may be getting some incredibly beautiful pages, but you should probably move to Spain and work in the European album format. In America, most comics come out monthly. You will have to develop your art to fit this timetable, or it’s off to the world of Original Graphic Novels for you. The best way to get comics done is to actually draw them. Set up a schedule. In the morning, get up with the rest of the world. Eat breakfast and take the commute across your house to your desk. Sit down. Work for hour. Take a lunch. Draw for four more hours. Now you can hop on your PlayStation. If every comic artist just followed this simple advice, there’d be a lot fewer late comics…and a lot fewer editors with bleeding ulcers and patchy hair.

CHAPTER FIVE: WORKING IN THE BIZ

THE MYTH OF “BREAKING IN”

Comic pros will tell you that the one question they’re asked above all others is: How do I break in? I think I speak for most of us when I say we hate that question, since it’s not an easy answer, and also because we wish people gave more of a shit about our work instead of trying to get their own work out there as competition. But, the simple truth is, there really is no “breaking in” point at which you’re suddenly going to get regular work for the rest of your life. Working in any entertainment field is a constant process, not one act that suddenly sets you up. One job leads to a second, which leads to a new friend which leads to another job, etc. It’s also possible to get “knocked out” of the field since it’s a constantly changing, competitive market— and then it’s equally possible to come back and do more work.

PORTFOLIOLOGY 101

The item you’re going to need in order to look for work is a portfolio. You should have some kind of binder to contain your best work to show at cons as well as copies of these same pages to distribute to editors. Your portfolio should contain about 8-10 pages of your absolute best sequential art and maybe an attentiongrabbing cover or two. For the love of God, don’t put in pages that aren’t your best and then tell me, “Oh, those are old.” Do not include pages that don’t represent your best stuff. Leave them at home. Line the cat litter with ‘em. Tear them up and make a weird paper nest for yourself. Whatever it is, don’t show them to potential employers!

Also, this is the place to show your tightest, most complete pages. Fill in all the blacks. Spiff up the pages…not a smudge on ‘em. Keep your portfolio nice and clean. Remove the napkins with ideas scrawled on them and the four leaf clover you found last week. This is the comic industry version of a resume. I have seen some of the worst portfolios on Earth. Please, don’t make me go through that again.

You’ll most likely be showing your portfolio at comic book conventions. This can be a daunting process; you’ll be in line with a hundred other artists, trying to impress a guy who stayed out too late the night before. Keep at it. If you’re good you will get noticed. And be nice. Be humble and friendly to the editor. When you’re an old pro, you can be a raving jerk.

Sending packets through the mail to big companies is almost useless. Sometimes they won’t even take unsolicited submissions, and when they do they’re so busy it may take a year or two before your sample gets looked at. I say, do it anyway, but don’t be surprised if you don’t hear back. It’s nothing personal.

THE LITTLE GUYS

Remember this section. This is the best way to get work in comics and also the best way to drive you to an early grave. Though the comic industry is dominated by two corporate giants, there’s a whole host of B level, C level, even P level companies. Small press is an extremely important aspect of the comic book industry, providing diversity and a fresh flow of new voices and creators. Though a good portion of small press books suck wind, a number are as good as or better than anything put out by Marvel and DC. Your best chance at rising through the comic industry is to draw a good indie comic. When a small press book is good, it will get recognized. Those books’ artists get picked up to do other books, often by enterprising Image Comics creators.

Ah, but here’s the rub: you’ll probably be working for a big wad of jack shit. Small press comic books…even the “successful” ones, sell like crap. Comic readers are so busy spending money on Spider-Man and other classics, that most are unlikely to drop the three bucks to make your month of drawing financially worthwhile. You’ll just have to get used to this. The majority of one’s earliest work in any entertainment field is less lucrative than being a beggar or giving blood. I know actors, book authors, playwrights, jugglers…all of them worked for free for some time before they worked their way into the bigger leagues. It’s all about the love of the art, bucko…if you’ve got what it takes, you’ll get there. If not, there are plenty of office jobs that pay right from the first God-awful day.

NEPOTISM AND HOW TO MAKE IT WORK FOR YOU

Here’s a little known secret: potential employers hire people that they like. Yes, I know, it’s shocking, but you’ll find this is true all the way from comic books to the highest levels of government. The truth is, I got my job because Josh Blaylock and I met years ago at a comic convention. This really cute blonde girl was at my booth asking for a sketch, and Josh and his friends came over to hit on her. Instead, they ended up talking to me, and we all became buddies. (Thank you Kate, the super cute blonde girl!)

The comics industry isn’t that big of a place. If you have the social skills, and are a likeable person, you’ll find you get more work. (Special note to my friends in the industry: I’m not your friend just to get work. I actually like most of you. Well, some of you.) To this end, I highly recommend you employ a time-tested comic industry technique: Go to the bar. At every convention you’ll find that tired, burnt-out industry professionals and up-and-comers like to hang out at a nearby bar. “Bar-Con,” as they call it at Devil’s Due, is just as important as the show floor for those working in comics. Of course, if you drink too much and tell the Editor in Chief of DC Comics you’d have sex with his mom, Bar-Con can work against you.

EDIT-OR: MASTER OF YOUR UNIVERSE

Editors are going to be your contacts at the companies you’re working for, whatever shape or guise they may take. The editor is a very busy, underpaid individual with his or her own opinions, tastes, and preferences. You would do well to be nice to your editor, as they determine how long your ass stays on the book, and thus, how long you’ll be getting a paycheck (or not, I guess, if it’s one of the aforementioned small companies). In any case, you may find that you get along with your editor really well, and that you agree with all of his suggested changes. You may also find that your editor is a blind, deluded asshole. Either way, you’re at the mercy of this saint or tyrant, so make the best of it. Editors will often ask for changes to your art. If you’re like most artists, the notion of this makes you quite angry. Change it anyway. If you have a very informed and rational argument to the contrary, bring it up, but approach it like hostage negotiations.
Speaking of hostage negotiation, always remember to communicate with your editor. Most likely you won’t be in the same office with your editor like I am, feeling his cold, dead eyes staring at the back of your head all day. You’ll probably have space between you, so emails and phone calls are a must. Editors firmly believe artists to be flakey weirdos who at any moment could drop the whole project and join a Sherpa and a llama on a worldwide trek. This opinion is not completely unfounded. Let him know you’re still alive, answer his calls and inform him the second you get behind schedule. The editor/artist relationship is important to the creation of good comics…don’t be the weak end of the partnership.

HACK/TRASH

Occasionally while working in comics, an editor will have a script come in late, or have a book fast-tracked. In this case, they may ask an artist to “hack” a book out. Hacking, in comics, refers to doing a book at a much faster rate than normal, generally at a lower quality to get the book done in time. Some artists find their work isn’t affected by upping the rate, others find it makes them crank out more crap than a lactose intolerant person at Cold Stone Creamery. I have buddies who’ve been asked to hack a book in a week. That’s 4 pages a day, minimum. Hacking will endear you to the editor, give you a nice check, and destroy your will to live. Readers may notice that the work is suffering, but won’t know that it’s because someone told you to do it in a week. The reader will simply assume you suck now. Be wary, and hack with caution.

CHAPTER SIX: HOLDING ON

Okay, you’re working in the biz. You’ve got a monthly gig. You’re meeting people, signing books, and your pencil has been surgically affixed to your hand. Now, all you have to do is keep it up.

PROMOTE YOURSELF!

These days, the comic industry is moving closer to the “celebrity hype” model of mainstream media; often enough the creators are as well-known as the project. This has its ups and downs, depending upon whether or not you can work the “famous” angle rather than the “infamous” angle. It’s also something you can exploit to keep yourself working and moving up the ladder.

There are plenty of websites interested in posting interviews with comic creators. Among the best are www.comicbookresources.com and www.bleedingcool. com. There are also a number of great podcasts, such as Word Balloon with John Siuntres, that do online radio shows. Sign up on the forums at these sites, on their social media pages, and on their other pages to talk about your new projects.

Posting on forums is a tricky game, with a number of creators coming across as the assholes they truly are. Watch what you type, avoid insulting anyone, and take criticism. After all, in an industry as small as comics, you never know who will be your boss tomorrow.

Establishing a personal website and social media presence is key, since it allows for interested readers to see what else you’ve worked on, as well as contact you directly. This is also invaluable for potential work since editors can look you up and see recent projects.

A personal site can also be a great place to sell your original art or solicit commissions. *From the perspective of someone always seeking talent, I take this further nowadays, and feel that if someone has not taken the time to create their own online presence they likely lack the necessary initiative (or, just as bad, they lack the technical skill to interact with us online, properly scan and send files, etc.). If you take your desire to get into the business seriously, you will do these things for yourself.

– Josh*

CHAPTER SEVEN: THE END IS THE BEGINNING

There ya have it. As much wisdom as I can pour out, appropriate to a 22-page book shelved near Hulk and The Adventures of Baby Huey at your local comic shop. I hope I’ve helped point you in the right direction.

If anything, I think it’s best to consider this volume a primer, as the majority of other “How to Draw” books focus on methods of making the art and not the realities and smart ass remarks that I’ve tried to share with you. I’ve been where you are. I remember not working in comics and looking through my favorite books knowing I could do it if I was given the chance. The key is to know you can do it, to work tirelessly, never think you’re better than you are, and treat everyone you meet in the field with respect.

The job requires so much more than your ability to draw, but you should always be working to keep your art at the top of your game. I’ve figured out what’s keeping me here…I’m a decent illustrator who gets his shit done. But, if it makes you feel better, I’m still working at it…trying to choose new projects that excite me and push my skills, trying to be nice to editors even when they drive me nuts, working to find new readers for my books. There’s no “breaking in” point…just a constantly evolving process.

So, I put down my How-To writer hat, and step back into the world of the comic book artist. Slingin’ lead. Drawing hot girls and huge, grimacing dudes. The adoring fans. The huge wads of cash.

Okay…maybe not. But I won’t mind waking up to do it again tomorrow morning.

GLOSSARY

Big Two - Used to reference Marvel Comics and DC Comics, the dominating comic book publishers in North America. In addition to the Big Two, there are second, third and fourth tier comic book publishers. Most often, an aspiring artist will not receive their first official gig from a Big Two publisher, but rather from any number of other publishers.

Caption Bios - A title or series of words superimposed over comic book panel action to move the story along. Captions are often first person or third person point of view.

Colorist - The term given to an artist designated to add color to a comic book page following pencilling and sometimes inking stages. Comic book colorists come in many varieties, from cartoony to painterly, from duel-tone to watercolored. Today, the predominant number of published comics are colored using computers.

Comicon (Comic-Con) - An event gathering comic book fans, creators, publishers, retailers, and a wide variety of other interests. Comic book conventions exist across the world and have seen record-breaking increases in attendance in recent years. Short for “Comic Book Convention,” Comicons also bring in guests from film studios, TV networks, video game publishers, and more.

Editor - The sometimes maligned manager and policy-maker responsible for the editorial part of publishing. This person is usually an artists’ main contact with a comic book publisher.

Fanboy / Fangirl - A person utterly devoted to a single subject, such as comic books, often to the point of obsession. A fanboy is usually hateful toward the competing subject or viewpoint to his own; these personas can be easily found spending endless hours on internet message boards. They can also be your most loyal, friendly supporters if they like what you produce.

Freelancer - A person pursuing a profession without long-term commitment or formal alliance to any single employer, selling work or services by hour, day, or project, rather than on a regular salary basis.

Graphic Novel (or OGN / Trade Paperback) - A distinctly larger, usually perfect bound original work of sequential art. Literally: a novel in the form of comic strips.

Inker - The artist responsible for adding black line (today, whether physical or digital) over a penciller’s work.
Layout - A plan or sketch of a comic book page designed to indicate the arrangement and relationship of components.

Panel - A distinct portion of a comic page (sometimes called “a shot”) in which action takes place. Penciller (sometimes Penciler) - The artist who provides penciled artwork for a comic book, usually from the sketch stage, through thumbnails and layout, to the finished pencil art.

Script - A document by a comic book writer detailing the direction an issue or graphic novel will take. Scripts come in many shapes and sizes, some taking a form akin to a Hollywood screenplay, others more similar to a theatrical manuscript.

Sequential Art (sometimes, comics, graphic novels) - A form of visual storytelling combining cartoon paneling and test captions and balloons. Originally used to illustrate newspaper caricatures and entertain children, it has now grown to become a literary medium with many genres.

Speech Balloon / Word Balloon - A balloon-shape encircling dialog from a character, sometimes used to represent thoughts as well as spoken words. Splash Page - A comic book page consisting of a single panel covering the entirely of the page, including bleed. A splash page is usually utilized in order to draw attention toward a tense or dramatic moment of the story.

Spread page - A spread page consists of two full comic pages taken up by a single panel or image, including bleed. A spread page is usually utilized in order to draw attention toward a tense or dramatic moment of the story, or to provide an establishing shot from a story location.

Storytelling - The telling, writing, or conveyance of stories. For a comic book artist, storytelling is the developed ability to display story details through illustration.

Submissions Packet - An assemblage of copies of an artist’s best materials presented in order to garner attention from comic book publishers at comic book conventions, or sent to publishers through mail or email.

UNDERSTANDING YOUR COMIC PAGE

A standard art board measures 11 inches x 17 inches. While most art boards have important areas such as bleed, trim, and safe area marked, the labels can be difficult to understand.

SAFE AREA: Active area for panel artwork, captions, balloons, SFX. All elements will be visible in printed version.
TRIM LINE: Printer cutoff line; any elements outside this line will not show up in print.
BLEED AREA: In print, elements in this area will extend to page edge. Some elements may not be visible.

HOW TO BUILD A DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD

STEP 1:
Get 2 peices of 11x17 art board. STEP 2:
Next, using a ruler and an exacto knife, vertically cut off 5/8 of an inch along the corresponding trim lines of each board.

STEP 3:
Place both boards securely against eachother at the severed trim line, taping firmly along the back. The unified baords should now measure 20 inches from left trim line to right trim line, and 20.75 inches across the totality of the boards.

SUBMITTING FINISHED ARTWORK TO YOUR EDITOR

Sending off your finished pages to the editor requires formatting changes, titling, and file specifications that, while pesky and annoying, are just as important as the drawing part of the process. Most editors will have their own stipulations, but here’s Devil’s Due’s golden rules for submitting finished art for our creators:

SAVING YOUR FILE

Despite the enlarged size of the art boards you will be working on (if you use traditional media), after scanning, your file dimensions should be manually set to 6.875 inches x 10.438 inches. Follow art board guidelines on the previous pages for cropping advice, keeping 1/4 of an inch at the edge of your artwork for bleed.

Depending on your artistic role, image mode is important to consider before sending your files to the editor. • A penciller will usually submit files in either grayscale or CMYK image modes, depending upon whether or not blue line is used (blue line can only be removed if the file is scanned in color).
• An inker will save their files as either grayscale or bitmap files; bitmap can only be used if the inks were scanned in bitmap (sometimes labeled “black” on a scanner), but does make the coloring process simpler in most cases.
• Colorists should always remember that comic books are printed in CMYK image mode, rather than RGB, which is used for online media. If a page is colored in RGB and must be changed to CMYK, pay close attention to changes that occur: colors in RGB image mode may not transfer to CMYK.

TITLING YOUR FILE

Titling your file will also depend greatly on the editor’s specifications. When in doubt, Devil’s Due asks artists to title files as follows: TITLE_issue#_page

#
Example:
Mercy_Sparx_08_004
Depending on your artistic role, place a “p” for pencils or an “i” for inks following the information. Colorists need not add any differentiation to their documents.

Example:
Pencils - Mercy_Sparx_08_004p Inks - Mercy_Sparx_08_004i Colors - Mercy_Sparx_08_004

Titling is vitally important when submitting artwork. An editor sometimes handles well over one hundred pieces of individual artwork in a month’s time, and unclear designation can make his or her job much more difficult. Refrain from sending files with titles like “Timmyhack/slashpage2;” your editor might not appreciate the extra effort of trying to figure out what the file you have sent actually is.

SAVING YOUR FILE

While saving, designate your file TIFF (.tif) with Image Compression LZW checked and with layer compression ZIP.
Hit save. Again, check with your editor for unique requirements. This is how artists are required to submit artwork to Devil’s Due, but better safe than sorry. A comic book artist should strive to send files per specifications, maintain professionalism, and make certain not to be at fault for any errors throughout the remainder of the publishing process.

BUY STUFF

LEAD HOLDERS:
People always ask me where I got my lead holder. Ask no more!!!

• www.staedtler.com
  -www.officeworld.com/Worlds-Biggest-Selection/SAN02022/05Q4
• www.artsuppliesonline.com

PORTFOLIOS:

• www.portfolios-and-art-cases.com
• www.dickblick.com

COMIC BOOK PAPER

• www.bluelinepro.com GENERAL DRAFTING SUPPLIES
• www.dickblick.com
• www.suppliesnet.com
• www.draftingsteals.com

THE END!

Now get out there and make some comics!