I’ve pulled this series from my old message board, where it was written nearly ten years ago. I hope you enjoy this look at my early days in comics, and hope you learn something from what I learned.

This is slightly modified from the original post and has been edited for clarity and spelling (but it’s still full of mess.) The publisher is the long defunct Starblaze, though in the original posts I avoided naming the company. However, the company was identified in the comment section immediately after I posted the first installment.

And no matter how bad this series gets, keep in mind it’s the SECOND worst publisher I ever worked for. After these two disasters, every other publisher I have ever encountered seemed like a breeze, a fragrant lawn, and a tall glass of something cool.

I’ve also had no contact with either company since 1989, except for…well, keep reading.

This is a long story, it rambles a bit, and it has a punchline. It’ll take about a week to get all the posts up.

So, here’s one thing I learned from my unhappy experiences with a woman in publishing (no longer in publishing, as far as I know) who shall be known only as The Woman. An editor and a fledgling writer, she had approached me about not only publishing A Distant Soil, but illustrating her GN project as well:

Small presses are very, very concerned about size issues, in the same way that some guys can get insecure about size when they are exposed to the big guys in the bathroom.

They would rather not appear small and vulnerable, even though that is what they actually are. They sometimes try to exploit their little guy status by passing themselves off as friendly mom and pop companies who will embrace you with their warmth and serve you cookies besides. But in the end, most small presses have one very important thing in common with most big publishers:

They are out to make a buck.

If they can’t woo you with the big money that big companies can provide, then they will try to compensate by giving you a better contract than you might be able to wrangle at a major publishing house.

Of course, if you are a newbie or you don’t have a particularly good sales track record on previously published projects, you will still get a crappy contract.

When wooing you away from a project at another publisher, they will often try to inflate their sales records and ability to promote your project. If there is any chance that you have something that might make them really good money, the sales record and promises for promotion may stray into the realm of fiction.

When I was a tot working in the 1980’s, the great unknown realm of publishing for comics was in the bookstore market, also known as the retail trade. If you were not doing superhero comics, you were probably getting a lukewarm response to your work by retailers and fans in the direct market, which is where most comics and graphic novels were sold.

The retail trade allows for returns of unsold product. It is a risky thing to accept returns on unsold product, but it’s a venue everyone in comics wanted to crack because there were tens of thousands of potential outlets for graphic novels that the comic book industry could not reach. The growth potential was unlimited, but no one could really seem to break out of the direct market paradigm.

The direct market allowed for comics and graphic novels to be sold in comic and gaming specialty shops to a very limited market that was, at the time, about 3,000 outlets. Later, it inflated to 10,000 outlets, but is now back down to about 3,000 outlets.

If a direct market retailer does not sell a book, too bad. He cannot return it for credit. However, the discount at which he orders the book from the distributor would be significantly higher then the discount a retail trade bookstore might get to order the same product – to reflect the greater risk of carrying a book he could not return if it went unsold.

OK. So, back in the day, I was pretty certain that my audience for A Distant Soil was somewhere out there in the retail trade, and the comics shops would always find my work to have limited appeal. I was anxious to find an outlet that would get me into retail bookstores after I left my first publisher.

I had several publishers approach me about picking up A Distant Soil including Marvel’s Epic division, and the fledgling Dark Horse.

But there was one publisher willing to promise me what the others would not: retail trade sales.

In fact, they promoted their company as being the biggest seller of graphic novels in the world, and the first to do it besides.

This was a blatant falsehood.

(more…)

Hit the Very Bad Publishers Tab for previous installments.

This series of posts was written nearly ten years ago, and while it may sound as if I’ve spent my every waking moment in publishing running from Duddly Dastardly, I want to emphasize that out of a career that has lasted more than two decades, I have only worked for a small handful of bad publishers. Unfortunately, they were VERY bad publishers. And bad publishers seek out young creators, effectively killing the enthusiasm and drive of most of them.

The upside: none of my Very Bad Publishers is around in comics today to spread bad mojo. A couple of them are still in business, but not in the business of publishing comics as they once did, and it is unlikely you will ever work with them or anyone associated with them.

OK, on to the read. Here’s what I learned from some very bad publishers.

Sometimes you’re the pioneer and sometimes you’re the canary in the coal mine.

Being the first mover in a new market can be a real advantage. I’ve been on the first mover end of a lot of comics industry events: the black and white boom of the 1980’s, the self publishing boom, the independent press, yadda yadda.

While being a pioneer gives you the opportunity to scope out a new arena and experience explosive growth in a market without much competition, pioneering anything is high risk. You experience the explosive growth before you can build up a back end plan to minimize risk. And since you start off with little or no competition, you may not be prepared the day the competition shows up.

Being the first mover gets you the new territory, but there’s no guarantee you get to keep it.

For example, lots of early US manga pioneers are sitting around with their mouths hanging open because they helped open a whole new market they are no longer in a position to take advantage of (which is why second mover advantage may be even more important than first mover advantage: you get to learn from your predecessor’s mistakes.)

Almost everyone I knew (including me) who self published experienced a blissful period where we managed to move a kajillion copies of comics one day that we couldn’t give away the next year. When there were 7 self publishers, it was easy, but when there were 100 of them, we had a problem.

(more…)

Many professional artists – including cartoonists whose names you know well – have day jobs. And this post will give you some idea why.

Commercial artists don’t get a lot of commerce. Last time I looked, the average income for a professional artist was only about $15,000.

These events happened between 1986 and 1989. Click HERE for previous installments. First posted about ten years ago, I’ve tried to edit for clarity and spelling.

I pondered weak and weary whether to dredge all this stuff up again, but I am frequently contacted by creators who have signed contracts that had the same clauses in them that mine did 20 years ago.

“Creator owned” contracts and the companies that tout them may leave with you a copyright (or a portion thereof) and nothing else. “Creator owned” for many is not about fairness, or making good books; it’s a marketing tool. And you, the creator, are buying it.

The comics industry is everything you ever heard about Motown, only without the glitter

The good news: remember, these sad events took place 20 years ago. Now I have great work, good friends, terrific publishers, a comfortable studio, wonderful books to work on, and sometimes…every once in awhile…OK, there’s even a little glitter after all.

Look out for yourself, and don’t give up hope.

Now, on to today’s nitty gritty.

Creative Accounting

In the old days of comics, the work for hire contract was simple. Working for Marvel meant you got a little stamp on your check that stated Marvel’s rights to your work, or you got a payment voucher that you signed when you turned in your pages. Two weeks later, you got a check.

Beyond your initial page rate you were unlikely to see any more money on your book, nor did you expect any. A decent page rate at a major publisher could be solid money for an illustrator. At the time, The Graphic Artists Guild Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines stated that the average American illustrator pulled in less than $10,000 a year. So a decent comic book artist who could pull in $40,000 or more a year was doing better than OK. And $40,000 went a lot farther in the 1980’s than it does now.

The simplicity of comic book agreements that reserved all publishing rights for the publisher in exchange for a guarantee of upfront income left most comic artists unprepared for the complexity of the retail trade publishing paradigm. When I got into comics, publishers were only just starting to pay royalty rates!

In standard book publishing, no page rates were paid. Instead, an advance fee was paid against royalties; the author/artist gets a flat amount of money up front that is deducted from later book sales.

Say you agree to do a book for $3,000. If the book sells a lot of copies, whee! You get more money. If not, $3,000 is all you will ever see. If you spent six months working on your book baby, you just worked six months for $3,000.

(more…)

For previous posts in this series, hit the VERY BAD PUBLISHERS link.

Comments from the original message board posts are included below. Apparently, it was not hard to figure out who The Woman was, for though her professional life was short, her life in fandom went on…

Also, additional commentary about remaindered books and the accounting for same.

OK, back to our story.

We didn’t quite hit rock bottom on that misery mine yet.

Now, in an ideal world, IF my book with The Woman had been getting an 8% of cover price royalty, it would still have to have sold over four times the 3,000 copies it actually DID sell to earn out the advance. My original understanding was that my advance would have been ammortized equally over the books in the contract (instead of being lumped against the first one) and, of course, I had no idea that the accounts would be cross-collatoralized over all books in the series and all books on contract I had with the company.

Unfortunately, after deductions for net costs, my meagre advance, and slashing half the royalty for sales at discounts of 50% or greater, and cutting another half for holds against returns, there was no way that a 12,000 advance sale on A Distant Soil would bring in any royalties either.

But things get even worse when you realize that, because The Woman was entitled to a half royalty share on the GN I had illustrated for her, I wouldn’t be getting 4% of cover, I would be getting more like 2% of cover, or about 14 cents per copy sold.

Now, to be fair, The Woman took no advance on the book herself which was generous of her, but then, she sure as hell didn’t need an advance, either. She not only got royalties on several books she edited at the company (even when the creators did not), she also got a salary that made her New York editor counterparts envious. She was permitted to work half days at home writing. She often didn’t come into the office until 1PM. The publisher was subsidizing her writing ambitions by paying salary for her to stay home and write at least a half dozen projects only one of which, to my knowledge, ever saw the light of day – the book I illustrated. (EDIT: To clarify, mine was the only FICTION project she had published there, that I know of. I think she had one or two non-fiction projects.)

So, simply to earn out the entire advance which was paid out over the course of a year and a few months (one year’s advance plus a short extension), the book would have had to sell almost 35,000 copies JUST TO PAY OUT THE ADVANCE of $300 a month and that DID NOT COUNT all the net deductions, 50% held against returns, etc. That was just to earn back what I had been paid even though what I had been paid amounted to the worst page rate I ever received in my entire career.

35,000 copies is good sales by any standard and I didn’t see that happening on this book.

To ALSO earn out enough to pay the colorist and letterer – and to pay the writer their 50% share – for me to even begin to see any more money on the project, it would have to sell between 60,000-70,000 copies.

Moreoever, for the entire time the book was earning out at a loss, ANY AND ALL losses would be deducted from profits on A Distant Soil. In the end, A Distant Soil would be forced to subsidize the book I was illustrating for The Woman.

(more…)

Oh my goodness, isn’t this just timely? And right in the middle of my VERY BAD PUBLISHER reposts!

GO READ RIGHT NOW!!!

OK, a publisher is approaching creators asking them to work on spec on a MR T project, and promises BIG RETURNS on the back end.

That’s what they ALL say.

This publisher’s previous graphic novel featuring MR T was touted in this press release. Did anyone ever see this? Did it sell? Did it make any money for the creators?

Buckley continues: ‘Most so-called “graphic novels” are reprints of comics, the equivalent of cobbling together a bunch of episodes of a TV show and calling it a “movie”; or works that, in their desire to be highbrow, determinedly distance themselves from their comic forefather.

‘Neither makes full use of the inherent potential in graphic novel storytelling. This book – an all-original like Mr. T himself – does.’

Good lord.

One wouldn’t want to be distanced from one’s “comic forefather”.

LESSON FOR TODAY:

Working on spec NEVER WORKS. At least, not in my experience.

Rarely does ANY celebrity-related project pay off for the comic creator. I’ve NEVER had a celebrity related project do diddly squat for my career. Ever. Period.

If JK Rowling waves her magic wand and gives you the Harry Potter assignment, you can bet the publisher will pay you up front.

A lot.

If MR T is all that and a bag of chips like his press release claims, he ought to be able to afford to pay the artist up front, too. One thing’s for damn sure: someone can afford a lawyer.

I spent years doing free crap on a small press author’s books, and at no time ever did a single one of those free jobs (correction: for one job in ten, I was paid a WHOPPING $500) pay off in terms of future work, prestige, better work, or anything else. Ever!

PROFESSIONALS GET PAID!!!

And as you know from my previous VERY BAD PUBLISHER posts, creative accounting can keep you from ever seeing any profits on the back end.

The other lesson for today: some Very Bad Publishers shut down and reopen under new names. Why, one of my old Very Bad Publishers did this years ago, then tried to get me to sign a contract with them all over again.

Yet they did not let me know they were on the Board of Directors for the new company. They simply had an editor call me up and make me an offer. It was some time before I found out that they were the exact same people whose company I had just left, using a new name.

Nice one, hunh?

No, didn’t fall for it.

AND BY THE WAY, a few words about those STUPID EMAIL DISCLAIMERS. Just because you send someone an email, that does not force a contract upon the recipient.

A secret shared with dozens of freelance artists you do not know, and with whom you have no prior professional experience, and whom you do not necessarily intend to pay for their work is no secret at all.