The Ups and Downs of Collaboration

Back in March of last year, I put out a call for comic book collaborators on my website. I've long been interested in comics/graphic novels, and wanted to give it a go. Thinking it would be easier, first time, to concentrate on the drawing side (and not also be solely responsible for the content and writing side), I asked for suggestions from would-be collaborators for subjects we could develop together.

Over the next few months, I received a number of interesting ideas, and whittled these down to a shortlist based on what I thought was interesting to me personally, and might interest others. Figuring that there were likely to be drop-outs and delays, I decided to say yes to a number of project ideas, in the hope that at least one would make it to completion. Sure enough, this is what happened - well, the first part anyway: of the three projects I'd selected, one pulled out because of work commitments, one I simply never heard from again, and one got some way (a script was started and some sketching done), but then again petered out. I still haven't given up hope on all these projects - the last one especially I think has great potential, and I'm still in contact with the writer from time to time (so we'll see). But it just goes to show that, even with three prospective projects, things can fall through.

From that point on, I was still occasionally contacted by people who were interested in developing something. There were a few interesting ideas, but things either petered out again or it seemed to me that the idea wasn't quite right - either it didn't fit my interests (and if I'm going to spend a year drawing something, it needs to), or else it wasn't defined enough. If my little experience of publishing has taught me anything, it's that you need a strong hook to draw people in. It's not enough to say, 'Let's do a comic about golf' (or whatever); you need to be able to refine it into something specific and engaging about some aspect of golf (yeah, well, good luck with that!). This is why it's so hard to develop original ideas. It's easy for would-be writers to be made bitter and paranoid from constant rejection. We may point to the fact that George Orwell, J. K. Rowling, etc, were all rejected by numerous publishers before they found acceptance. And it's true that an idea may have to wait its time to be recognised - even years. However, it's also true that, like those hapless X-Factor hopefuls who ignore Simon Cowell's cutting advice to go back to their day job, we can hang on to an idea that's never going to make it. It's a difficult call. I've been there, and still occasionally like to holiday there (entertaining old ideas that have gone the rounds of rejection). But if you want to make a living, you have to be a bit tough with yourself. It may be, as publishers and agents are fond of saying, that an idea is simply 'not for them' (which may be true, or may be a polite euphemism for 'this is really shit'). And I think that at times the publishing industry is too concerned with what will sell, and with spotting the next big trend (you can thank them for the ceaseless procession of crappy teen-vampire and zombie books and films). But it just might be the case that your idea isn't strong enough.

Anyway, fast forward to April of this year, and I was contacted by Berit Brogaard, a Danish academic living in America. She wanted to use some of my caricatures for her forthcoming psychology book, and wondered how long it would take to produce more. "By when?" I asked. "Tomorrow," she said. When I'd finished laughing, we set about trying to persuade the publisher to give her an extension on her deadline so that I could provide some decent illustrations whilst getting occasional bouts of sleep (you can see some of them in my portfolio). During the course of our correspondence, it turned out that we both liked comics, and both harboured a half-formed wish to do one. We batted some ideas around, and settled on something to do with Freud (a shared interest). Over the next few weeks, this became 'Light in a Darkened Room'.

Since then, there have been a number of things that have threatened to derail the project - and still might - but we've managed to push through, so far. I'm a fairly stubborn and driven person - I'd probably ignore Simon Cowell's advice about most things - but Berit is something on another level altogether. Within 3 weeks she'd produced a first draft of the script, a fledgling book proposal, and all this whilst teaching, writing, and juggling the thousands little things that all of us have to deal with on a daily basis. Often I'd go on Google docs (which we use to share the script), to see her beavering away at an hour so unearthly as to leave it uncertain whether she'd got up early or simply not gone to bed. Anyway, 'force of nature' doesn't quite describe her. Without that energy and determination, I do wonder whether I would have had enough self belief to progress this far. Personal projects are all about self belief: this is why things like NaNoWriMo are so popular, because there develops a sort of collective will - 'we're all in this together' - that pushes people to achieve things that they might not normally think themselves capable of. 'Better together' is certainly true of such things, and for that reason I'm very glad that I chose to do a collaboration for my first comic book project, otherwise I might not have ended up doing one at all.

How to Fund a Comic Book (or Any Other Creative Enterprise), Pt 3: Traditional Publishing

Right, so let's assume that working to support your creative project leaves you with no time/exhausted, and there are no grants or awards that you're eligible for. What else is there? Well, you could...

Option 2(b): Go the Traditional Publishing Route. Once upon a time, if you wanted to publish a book, you had to go through a publisher. Publishers were large, prestigious organisations, whose glacial pace made koalas look spritely, and who guarded access to their hallowed halls through a series of intimidating obstacles - piranha-infested moats, drawbridges, and minefields, the usual Indiana Jones sort of thing. They also staffed their offices with minions who adopted a haughty and frosty demeanour to further dissuade anyone who had the bravado to make it past these obstacles (via telephone, post, or - God forbid - drop-in). These minions were paid to treat any unwelcome approaches with curt refusal or dignified silence (depending on the method of communication - it's hard even for haughty and frosty publishers' minions to maintain a dignified silence in front of someone actually standing in their office).

Gradually, however, it became apparent that even these methods were insufficient. The minions were increasingly swamped by misguided individuals who (made giddy, no doubt, by fanciful newspaper tales of the financial independence to be had from writing) were under the illusion that publishers were there to publish books, and that since they had written a book, the publisher might like to see it. A further safeguard was therefore required, and - at some conversation over the post-desert coffee of a long lunch at some select little eatery in some fashionable area of London - The Agent was born, whose job it was to act as a further buffer to unwanted approaches. As the publisher was defended by obstacles, so The Agent, but under the disguise of helping budding writers gain access, set up an intimidating slew of rules and protocols by which aspiring writers must abide (or be binned, unread). These were arbitrary and arcane rulings such as 'only use blue stamps on a Tuesday', and 'embolden every third instance of the word indubitably', which were themselves fiendish traps: nowhere was it stated what colour stamp should be used on other days, or what do if the would-be author's manuscript didn't actually contain the word 'indubitably'.

Overtime, these combined methods had the desired effect, to the extent that, in 1988, only one book was published in the UK (A Field Guide to Mushrooms). Thankfully, shortly after, the Berlin Wall fell, and somebody invented The Internet. That of course had its own repercussions for publishing (of which, more next post). But here we're concerned with the traditional publishing model...

The above isn't true, of course: publishers do want to publish books, and agents want to discover talent, but it can be a very arduous and dispiriting process for budding writers to go through until they find the right idea to pitch to the right person. So, before you go running into the arms of Amazon's self-publishing programme, you owe it to yourself to consider the pro's and con's of the traditional model.

Your options for approaching publishers will depend on what exactly it is that you're looking to get published. If it's fiction (a novel), then it's good to have a more or less finished manuscript. If someone is interested in publishing or representing your book, then there's nothing worse than showing them the first couple of chapters, they like it and ask for more, but you have to admit that you haven't written the rest yet. The exception to this is non-fiction: it's much more acceptable to approach a publisher/agent with a couple of sample chapters to a history or popular philosophy book, accompanied by a book proposal of what you will go on to write. But with fiction, it seems that it's more important to know exactly how the intended plot will read - tone and characterisation are as important as what happens.

But what about graphic novels/comics? Well, this is quite a new area for mainstream publishing. Until relatively recently, if you wanted to publish a graphic novel then you would probably have to approach an independent press that specialised in that. Now, things are changing, and Western publishers seem to have finally woken up to the literary value of 'graphic novels' (as they insist on calling them). I say 'Western', of course, because in places like Japan 'manga' has long been part of mainstream literature. So, in this sense, the time is ripe for independent comics creators to benefit from this trend.

But how do you go about approaching a publisher? Firstly, you'll probably want to avoid the Big Two (Marvel and DC), who mostly use the studio method of comics production: you have a writer, a penciller, an inker, a colourist, a letterer, plus various book and series editors - it's a production line. Also, this system is set up to meet the demands of their most popular titles and characters. If you don't want to draw/write/colour Spiderman/etc - and there's stiff competition for those who do - then you need to look elsewhere. Big publishers often have small imprints (e.g. DC's Vertigo imprint) to handle more niche markets (e.g. horror, fantasy), and if your project falls into one of them then perhaps it's worth hunting down the submission guidelines on their websites. However, if your project is more specialist/quirky (like our LiaDR), then you're better looking elsewhere. More and more big publishers now have a division which looks for and develops graphic novels (e.g. Jonathan Cape's Graphic Novels, which is part of Vintage books, and who also run a yearly graphic novels competition). However, there are lots of good independent presses that are worth checking out: Fantagraphics, Top Shelf Productions, Improper Books, to name a few.

In terms of how much material you need before you approach a publisher, graphic novels are probably closer to non-fiction than fiction. I've heard conflicting advice on this, but in general it seems that you can approach a publisher with a graphic novel idea and just a few finished sample pages, as long as you have a complete script. This means that publishers/editors can suggest script changes (if they want) without you having to redraw anything (which would be immensely time consuming). This is actually the stage that we're at with the Freud comic: we have three inked and lettered pages, which are in the process of being coloured, but the script is finished. Hopefully, with a couple more pages this will be enough to show how the story will translate, give an indication of drawing style and finish, etc. Once you have that, then you just need to write a short book proposal - give an overview of the book, its intended readership, analyse competition, give background on yourself (and your collaborator, if you have one) - for those new to this, see how to write a book proposal. By the way, as a quick survey: Jonathan Cape will not accept submissions unless represented by an agent, Fantagraphics want a minimum of 5 pages, and Top Shelf Productions want a minimum of 10 pages (neither accept email submissions). So there you go.

Of course, all publishers are different - best always to check the guidelines of those you plan to submit to. Which brings us to the next issue: Do I need an agent? Well, again, this depends. I've got one - the lovely people at Hardman & Swainson - but that's also because I've published non-fiction, popular philosophy books, and I was hoping that they would help me branch out more and get access to the bigger publishers. However, even here, I have to admit that my first book deals were achieved without an agent - I was just lucky that one of the publishers I approached liked my idea (that said, many didn't even bother to reply - or at least their frosty, haughty minions didn't). The Internet has changed a lot of things - for good and bad. It's now much easier to contact publishers directly, but also as easy to be ignored - much simpler to ignore an email than a physical envelope, which at least you have to open read a bit of. Agents take a cut, of course - usually about 15% (but varying between 10% and 20%), as do publishers themselves. I'll talk about this more in the next post, when we look at crowdfunding and self-publishing, but the big downside to traditional publishing is that you see much less of your profits than with other avenues. The upside - they would argue - is that your profits are much greater than they would otherwise be: you get more exposure, more prestige attached, more advertising, and so on. You also get an advance.

Advances are commonly misunderstood by non-literary folk. I myself used to think that it was simply money that a publisher gives you as a sort of bonus to run off and buy sweets, and then you earn royalties for each book you sell. But this isn't precisely true: an advance is literally that, a sort of loan on anticipated sales. If you get an advance of £5k, then that is money that has to be earned back by sales of the book. So, you won't see another penny until your book sells more than £5k's worth of author royalties. And, to put this in perspective, to earn £5k in royalties may take a long time. This is because your royalty rate will be a percentage of what the book sells for. So, let's say your book sells for £10 in Waterstones, and the publisher sold it to Waterstones for £6. Let's say the royalty rate here is 10%, which means that the most you will get is £1 per book. To earn back your advance, therefore, and get into credit, you'd have to sell 5,000 books. This situation is all much more complicated than I've suggested here - your royalty may be a percentage of net receipts (what the retailer sells it for), or RRP (the Recommended Retail Price set by the publisher) - which is one good reason to have an agent who will negotiate the best rates for you. However, your percentage may still seem like a smallish cut, which means that anyone going the traditional publishing route has to weigh up the extra benefits of exposure, prestige, marketing, quality control, etc, and the cut taken by the various parties involved, with the greater percentage retained by the author in self-publishing, but the greater difficulties of getting your book known (but, as I said, I'll leave this discussion to next time).

But let's think positive, and that you get a publisher interested, and that you're lucky enough to get an advance - let's say it's £10k. Sounds like a lot of money, but you have to survive on that while you finish your comic - and how long will that take you? Could take you 6 months, could take you a year and half. If it goes beyond 6 months, you'll probably have to start looking for other work to supplement your income - and we're back where we started. Furthermore, publishers will want to tie you in to a contract - they'll have schedules for delivery, proofreading, marketing and printing, all of which can be tinkered with but not ignored (it's a business, after all). Self-publishing, on the other hand, can go at your own pace. So you have to weigh it all up. Speaking of which, here are the pros and cons:

Pros: the publisher (and agent) takes care of most of the technical issues, marketing, etc, and you get greater exposure (arguably) and therefore more sales; you can also live off the advance while you finish the book.

Cons: the advance may not be enough, you percentage will be a lot lower than if you published the book yourself, and you may wait years before you can find the right agent/publisher.

Next: Crowdfunding and Self-Publishing