The Daring Comic.com

Hello Samsonites,

Today, I have decided to take a few moments and write a little post giving advice to you writers out there seeking artists for your sequential art projects. It seems like every couple of months or so an aspiring writer will contact me asking if I would be interested in working with them on developing what they believe is going to be the next great Indy comics franchise. Although I am flattered that they think enough of my work that it would help them market their ideas, more often than not their fabulous “going to set the world on fire” intellectual property is not that interesting to me. The main reason being is that I have my own ideas and I’d like to spend my time developing my intellectual properties over those of someone else that I truly do not know. The other being most of them are just the same typical stories that have been regurgitated over and over again in this industry. Now that being said, I am a professional freelance artist and will work on projects that only mildly interest me for a paying client. Often, I quote these upstarts my page rate and that is usually the last I hear of them. You know what, that’s perfectly fine with me. So here comes the advice for all you aspiring writers out there:

1. Do you want to be a writer or a publisher?

This is the question you need to ask yourself first and foremost, because these are 2 totally different things and require different skill sets. Often in the self-publishing game the writer as to take on the role of publisher too. Is that fair? I am not sure, but if you want to develop your own IP and hold the copyrights and trademarks solely to the property, then this might be your best option. This means that you are going to have to come up with  money for printing and paying your creative  team. I’d also advise you to go ahead and set up an LLC too.  You have to consider how you will distribute and market your new terrific IP. It doesn’t matter how utterly fantastic your project is, if no one knows about it or knows how to get it. The distribution game with Diamond is a tough go if you’re not a major publisher.

So what if you don’t want to go the publisher route, and why would you that is a lot of money and time investment to make on an unknown IP (but of course you believe in it fullheartedly). What is your other option? Your other choice is to develop a proposal to send out to publishers like Image, Dark Horse, IDW and Oni that do accept creator owned project proposals. The upside to this is they’ll help with the distribution and printing cost, but often the marketing is left to you and your creative team. The other upside is  you are not requiring as much work from the art team for the proposal. An artist might be more inclined to do five pages on speculation that a major publisher might pick it up. The down side is often these publishers only offer the creative teams a back-end deal. This basically means that the creative team will have to divide what is left of the profits of the book after the publisher takes their cut.  Now, on the surface that doesn’t sound that bad of a deal, and it would not be if you sold a lot of copies of your project. Take some time to do the math. Once you calculate the retailer, distributor, printer and publisher’s cut from the cover price of the book, you are left with the creative team having to split pennies for each copy of the book that gets sold. Now if you have a hit that sells 100,000 copies you’re set, but more than likely you are going to be looking at much smaller numbers for a comic that hasn’t already got a fan base. Now also remember, there is a good chance that none of these companies will choose to produce your proposal even if they think it has potential. This could be because of budgetary concerns, scheduling, or they have another project similar to yours by a well-known creator already in the pipeline. Either way that is the biz.

2. Can you realistically afford to pay your artist?

Let’s be honest here, it takes way less time to write a script for a 20 page comic than it does to actually pencil one (we are not even talking about the time to ink, letter, color, and design the book). If I am humming and inspired I can write a 20 page script in a day (more than likely I spend a week or 2 on it to refine it and make sure it flows well. Also, I am not including the research time in this calculation either.). The best pace I could ever get with penciling and inking is a page a day, and that’s a 10 hour to 15 hour day.

Now obviously you do not have the skills to do this yourself or you wouldn’t be in need of an artist. Do you expect some one else to put in more time and effort into your project than you? This is why the writer of the team is often burden with the marketing chores for a sequential art project. Quite simply the artist doesn’t have the time. Typically the artist is going to spend 5-10 hours on each page just penciling, this doesn’t include the time he is putting in doing concept sketches, thumbnails, and gathering reference for your project. What is adequate compensation for his efforts? A page rate of $50 would mean he’s making less than minimum wage if he spent 10 hours on a page. But that is a fairly common page rate for these Indy comics.

3. Instead of a page rate, let’s share the profits.

Ok let’s be  real here, any small business, especially a small publishing business, you are likely going to be running in the red for a couple of years. There are not going to be any profits to share, and if you do make some, you are going to need to reinvest them to keep the project going and continue building your fan base. The only benefit here for the artist and you is that you get something in print. The other bonus by doing this is that you’ll learn so much about how this business actually works. But don’t expect to make a fortune your first time out. A lot of the time what you are going to gain from this type of experience is knowledge and better understanding how things work.

To me as an artist, I do not like these deals especially from an unknown publisher. Now if the project was being published by Image, Dark Horse, etc., that might bolster the reputation of the artist and writer, it would be something to consider. I’d advise only doing something like that for a short run mini-series though.

4. Get a contract.

Some writers who have been burned, go around complaining that artist are running a scam on them. Most of us are not trying to bleed you dry, we are just trying to make a living off the skills we have been honing and developing most of our lives. Each project is a negotiation, and no work should be started until a contract is finalized. So writers be realistic with what you can afford to pay and what deadlines you are expecting the artist to meet. Talk with the artist extensively before having them begin work, so that you both have a clear understanding of what you each expect of the other. Some artist require a down payment or an escrow account, because more than likely they have been burned too by a client who did not pay them for their efforts. I always advise setting milestones for payment. You can even set these things up so that the artist gets paid more once the book is completed. This is  for those writers that feel like they have been burned by not having their project completed, before the artist loses interest.

5. Pay on time.

Regardless of what payment plan you come up with for your artist, pay them on time. Show your artist that you are a reliable and trustworthy person to work with. Pay them for the work they have completed as soon as you can. Nothing will make an artist lose interest in your project faster than receiving late payments or worse no payment for their efforts.

6. Be willing to collaborate.

Artist are creative people by nature and have many ideas of their own. Some of them can not formulate these ideas into a coherent story, so they need writers. If you are looking for an artist to work cheaply or purely on speculation, you are going to have a much better chance of this, if the artist is involved at the creation of the intellectual property. Now if you approach me with your completed script and character designs already done, you are not looking for a collaborator. You are looking for a hired gun to bring your vision to life. If you really want to collaborate with an artist and create something together, you as a writer need to find out what they enjoy drawing and work together to develop an intellectual property that suits you both. An artist, who feels like his input is valued and that he is emotionally invested in the creation of the characters and plot of the story, is going to be more willing to dedicate his time to getting it produced (often working cheaper or on speculation). Relationships are really what this business is based on.

There is more advice I could give, but I think that is a solid start for you would be writers out there to consider before looking for an artist. I hope you find it helpful.

- Anthony Summey