In the winter of 2005, Steve sent out an email announcing his plans to begin self-publishing “The Moth” and “Nexus,” and asking fans what would be the best format. He was leaning toward a bi-monthly book of each, alternating months, or else a double-sized anthology, with both stories in it.
In my opinion, that takes a hell of a lot of balls, being a professional artist, who’s done plenty of work for hire at all the big companies, and has admiration of the professional community and plenty of fans, to say, screw this business of working my balls down to little nubs, trying to get other people interested in a project I want to do. Screw all the big companies who think my project isn’t marketable, isn’t making the sales figures they need. Screw making all these calls and emails, trying to find someone who will back this, and getting the runaround, or else getting demands of what they want, which isn’t what I want.
He said he’d spoken with and gotten advice from Mike Allred, who may be the only established professional I know who is able to regularly, successfully self-publish.
I want to do the stories I want to do, ge decided, and if no one will back me, I’ll put my money where my mouth is, put aside all the hours and hours of extra time to get things printer-ready, get the graphics and logos and letters and title pages together, and just do it myself.
Steve had told me, during our phone call when he was working on my pin-up, that he was never really able to stick with one comics company for this very reason. Doing World’s Finest or Fantastic Four or Spider-Man or Thor or Captain America may pay the bills, and be a nice project for a few issues, but he wanted to do books that satisfied his artistic needs. So he saw himself in me a little, I guess, since I just put it out there and published the stories I wanted.
Now of course the drawback is that these major companies get all the attention. They get all the front pages in the distribution catalogs. They get all the space on the racks in the stores. They can advertise their own books, inside their books, so that everyone who buys one of their books can know all the other books they need to buy. They’ve got all the money, and can afford to spend big on advertising. They have the name recognition from their video games and cartoons and movies and toys. And every time a self-publisher tries to go against that, it’s a hell of fight trying to make it. Most of the time, people don’t even realize you’ve put a book out, because it just gets buried under everything else.
So this is what I felt even a respected, well-established professional like Steve would have to overcome.
I wrote to him about my experiences, and how I’m finding the best bet for making some money would be either to put out one book about one character, or even better, put out one even bigger, more expensive book with one character, because nothing else sells in this market, but if you put out a bigger book, you can charge a higher cover price. I acknowledged that he’s in a very different league than me, as a self-publisher, but that I suspect the principles of self-publishing are the same, big or small.
I never got a reply from that email, but he got a lot of advice from a lot of people. I think he got a lot of good advice, because it looked like a lot of store owners wrote in, further explaining the market and what sells, and all their advice mirrored what I’d experienced myself.
Good luck on this venture, Steve. It’s a hell of an industry, and it seems like not many people can survive the self-publishing fight. But that makes it all the more exciting to root for the big boys who take a chance and try to break even at it. Because that would mean that maybe, if luck swings our way, that there could be some hope for the rest of us.