First and foremost, I hope this email finds you and your loved ones healthy and safe. My thanks to first responders, doctors, nurses, military personnel, and everyone helping combat this challenge and keep deliveries, and groceries coming.
We face another Wednesday without new comics and growing uncertainty about the future of the medium I love. I've had a lot of time to think about what things might look like for comics moving forward. I write more about that below.
Right now, I am running a relief from isolation and no new comics campaign on Kickstarter that is already over 200% funded. It is all digital and germ free! The campaign includes a wide range of comics from all-ages to mature. There are Superheroes, Fantasy, Science Fiction, and of course, Spicy Pulp Comics. Fun for the whole family! If you want you can check that out here:
SPICY PULP 15-DAY DIGITAL CAMPAIGN.
Anyway...
Having one primary distributor between the people that make comics and the people that sell them was always a flawed and unfair system. It is the old way of doing business. Now we see just how fragile that system is as large comic companies have shut down production, and some publishers, as well as retailers, are unlikely to survive this.
Having worked in comics for almost two decades, I have always felt that direct sales from creators, be they to retailers or to those of us that love comics, were the future for all indie comics. Comic books are not a large industry, and yet they have been devoured, strip-mined, and exploited by massive corporations to the tune of billions. Individual creators and freelancers make a fraction of the revenue generated from mainstream published superhero and licensed comics. We rarely make decent money on "Hollywood" deals. When you look at how many people work in the industry, there are not many with the success of Mark Millar or Robert Kirkman. A comic at a major publisher that sells 8000 copies is a failure. Those same numbers for an indie comic are a massive success, with the majority of the money going directly to those creators.
When I started using Kickstarter as a platform to create comics, the intention was to have a finished product I could take to a publisher, preferably one that offered a creator-owned deal. At that point, I would not need to use crowdfunding. The problem is, there are all kinds of contracts out there, and most disproportionately benefit the publisher, be they big or small. There are contracts where you do all of the work, invest all of the initial capital, the publisher must recover the cost of placement of a diamond ad, and printing. Once they make back their costs, they then take 50-60% of the revenue. Often they like to have exclusive rights to shop the property should a larger media company want to "option" it.
Also, there are layers of people deciding what comics get distribution and what people get to make comics. At the same time, the leading publishers with deep pockets shove tons of books into an already overcrowded market. This not only smothers indie comics, but it also dictates trends, content, and what voices are heard. Now I know there are bad books at every level, and retailers cannot possibly shoulder the volume and uncertainty that comes with so many titles.
But now we see just how antiquated a single distribution chain is. One provider means less innovation because there is no competition, no need to improve the quality of their services. There has to be a breaking away, and a change of habits. People have been trained to order and seek out comics in a very specific way for their entire lives. The internet has helped facilitate some change, but I still strongly believe Comixology was a better platform before Amazon changed it. The old platform exposed me to tons of comics I wouldn't be able to find under the new interface. Also, if you were not aware of this, these digital retail platforms take 50% of cover price.
I much prefer some of what is going on in Korean digital comics with a site like Toomics. Free comics to start and then a subscription base. I'm pointing them out because they are, in my experience, using a higher quality filter on content. There are other examples of course. Buying directly from people who create comics you want is an invaluable resource for those creators regardless of what platform it is on - websites, patreon, kickstarter, indiegogo, and so on. I'm a capitalist and I believe the market should dictate success, not the distribution chain. Thank you so much for your support and stay safe!
Justin