Over on the Image Comics forum, Paul Grist teaches from self-publishing experience:
Self publishing is a valid option for getting your work out there, but… if you’re only self publishing because everyone else has rejected your proposal perhaps that might be a warning. I self published my own work for 10 years, but that was because I wanted to Self Publish.
The good news is that a distributors job is just to get your book/comic into the shops. They don’t take any rights to the work, but they’ll be looking at taking about 60% of your cover price. If you sell your book for $10, you get $4 for each one sold. The direct Market (diamond) does mean that when you get an order it’s a guaranteed sale - you will get that money, so you can judge before you actually print a book if likely to make your money back… Diamond are the main comics distributor. If you publish an english language comic and are not distributed by Diamond you’re really going to be pushing uphill with the brakes on.
They will need to see a copy of any comic or book you’re going to publish to prove that if they do get orders you have got something to publish. I understand there is also an approval system to make sure that the finished work is of a reasonable quality (your definition of reasonable may vary).
If anyone is interested in self publishing it’s probably easier to start with comics as a lower priced item (both to print and buy) so easier to get an idea of how much interest there would be in your work. After a few issues you can collect together the issues in a trade and you’ve already got an audience.
More at the link.
January 10th, 2008 at 10:17 am
I couldn’t really disagree more with what Moore says in that thread eek.
January 10th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Who’s in charge of that message board?
Because I tried to register there a few months ago, but never recieved a confirmation email. And there’s no obvious way to get in touch with any of the moderators.
Help!
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