selling your small press comic
“Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo”
- Don Marquis
Occassionally, for reasons best known only to themselves, a few small press comic artists email me to ask for advice about materials, printers, and what to do with their comic when it is published. I usually try my best to reply but sometimes I just don’t have the time.
But then I also love to procrastinate…
With this in mind, I was looking over John August’s fascinating screenwriting blog and thought that perhaps I could, like him, compile a few blogposts that cover frequently asked questions. One of which being:
Where do I sell my small press comics?
There are several options available to you. Mostly, small pressers rely on their local comic book retailer to stock their comic and encourage their customers to take a chance on new material. Sadly, this sort of thing can be rare which is why some of the more successful self-published comic artists are using the internet and monetising it in a way that is working for them (see Octopus Pie and the TopatoCo collective). So…
1. Sell through your website
It’s easy enough to set up a website using blogspot or wordpress or any of the other million ways in which having a website has been made simple. Paypal or Etsy are probably the best ways of making it easy for you and the customer to exchange goods for money but I’m sure there are, again, several different ways to do this too.
2. Attend comic conventions
There are lots of local, national and international comic conventions throughout the year. Along with all sorts of alternative zine symposiums and DIY events that would suit a small press publisher. Working out which ones suit your material and are helpful to you is trial and error, but most will certainly provide an opportunity to meet other creators. Perhaps the most pleasant aspect of these events is getting a chance to meet people who are interested in small press work and, hopefully, your own. Having said all this, I tend to find these things completely exhausting and have yet to feel totally comfortable when sitting behind a table.
3. Use your local comic store
Most comic stores will probably take your comics on a sale-or-return basis and take somewhere between 20-30%. I can’t speak for the rest of the UK but in London, with McForbidden Planet generally only taking comics distributed through Diamond (which is an entirely different headache) and places like Comicana focusing more on back issue trade, the only viable, centrally located shops are Gosh! and Orbital Comics. Here, in my experience, is how they treat small press material:
Gosh! are well known for their support of alternative and independent comics. They have a great stock and are located opposite the British Museum so receive a great deal of passing traffic. They used to take small press on sale-or-return and offer a 70/30 split but, with the departure of one of their staff who used to oversee the small press section, they have opted for firm-sale (buying the stock from you on the spot) with a 50/50 split. This means they may not take your stock if they don’t feel it is appropriate and will probably buy 3-5 copies in based on whether they think it will sell.
Now, firm-sale is a policy that The Beguling (in Toronto) and a few other stores have for small press. I understand it simplifies the paperwork for the staff and makes things that little bit easier, but predominantly these stores offer a better deal than a 50/50 split. That, for a lot of people, may not even cover printing costs and makes taking comics to Gosh! a choice between getting your comics to a wider audience or making your printing costs back. Which is a shame. The small press scene and local comic stores have always had a natural symbiosis and work together to create an exciting artistic community. This policy doesn’t strike me as something that encourages that.
Which brings me to Orbital Comics. Who have, since day one, had a sale-or-return policy with 100% of the profits going towards the creator. The idea being that if they offer this deal, more creators will use Orbital, and more people seeking small press material will patronise the store (hopefully picking up a book that the store will make profit on while they’re there).
There are other bookstores and art/design shops that your work may be suitable for in London, which leads me neatly into…
4. Target your audience
A lot of the material in my comics focuses on very specific subject matter (art school, music, relationships, auto-immune diseases, american politics) which I’ve always tried to address by getting my books in the relevant places. Taking boooks to independent politics bookshops, to gigs/record stores, to private views/exhibitions… whatever gets my work into the hands of those who may be interested but may not walk into comic stores regularly. It’s always worthwhile trying.
5. Organise a book launch/exhibition
Finally, one way to sell your book and get people to see your work is to do it all yourself. Organise a book launch, hire a venue, get bands to play and then advertise or market it in your own way. It can be stressful, it can be a lot of work, but it can also be a lot of fun. One of the positive aspects of the continuing decline in printed media is that more people are taking it upon themselves to do things like this and it goes a long way towards creating a vibrant and diverse alternative scene.
So there you have it. A small, and by means compressive list of some of the many ways to get your work seen. I’m sure there are better, more viable avenues for you but these are the methods that work for me and might prove useful as a starting point.
Get in touch
Leave a comment if you think of some obvious alternatives I’ve neglected to mention. And if you have any pressing questions you want a rank amateur like me to answer then by all means email and maybe I’ll blog about it in the future.
Great blog Tom, this is exactly the sort of info I was looking for when I first got in to small press, while it’s something I now know it’s good to know someone else is spreading the word….saying that, I’ve still yet to do step 3, something I keep putting off out of fear of rejection.
thanks phil. likewise, this would have been useful for me back in the day so thought it could be helpful for others. make sure you take your stuff down to orbital asap – your stuff is great and they’d love it in there!
very interesting and pertinent article Tom. There’s also the aspect of promotion of your small press book.
I write at the Forbidden Planet International Blog and we’re part of a small group of news blogs and websites that regularly like to promote the small press. There’s definitely the same mentality at Down The Tubes and Bugpowder. Send us your press releases, keep us up to date on releases and other news, we’ll put at least some of it up on these well read blogs.
Plus, and I’m speaking just for the FPI blog here, small press gets equal review time with major releases. And as a reviewer I like to help out where I can, so any small presser who sends stuff for review may be surprised to realise that I’ll get your stuff, review it and then send it back to you. The only cost is postage to us. We think it’s a great deal for some much needed exposure. You can get in touch via the FPI blog.
[...] Tom Humberstone offers tips on how to sell your minicomic. [...]
[...] my post about selling small press comics I threw in a little illustration of comic shop retailer. I drew this on a small square of stretched [...]
It’s a tough call for a store. Gosh have long supported small press and people there (myself included) really do want to encourage people to do their own thing. It’s always a real pleasure to discover new, exciting material. The change in policy for us was not ideal, but one we had to make simply because we were flooded with new minicomics and no longer had anyone on staff who could spare the time to administer the clunky old sale or return system. I admire Orbital’s continuation of their 100% SOR system, but we just couldn’t justify it.
The fact is, too, that while we were still taking in everything on SOR we just couldn’t display all the books we were taking in. Chances are that books we might now turn down on the firm sale policy wouldn’t have had any shelf time anyway. We’re a tiny store, after all! Actually, at the moment we’re not really taking anything at all just for that very reason. We need to cycle through stock we have bought in before we take more new stuff, though we are always happy to look at what people have done with a mind to taking some in the future.
Rest assured, we do still support the small press scene. We’re helping sponsor the upcoming LUC event and will continue to look at similar options in the future.
Thanks Richard. That’s very helpful indeed. Anyone at all interested in the UK’s small press scene should bookmark the FPI blog immediately!
Andrew: I completely understand the staff/time/space reasons for introducing the firm-sale 50/50 policy and don’t argue that it must make pragmatic sense. Like I said in the article, it just seems a shame.
The 50/50 split means that, on a purely personal level, I won’t make any money on any comics I sell in Gosh. Which isn’t the point of producing the comics of course, but it helps to make printing costs back in order to go to second print runs.
I like Gosh and continue to shop there. It’s a great shop. I’m just a little sad to see the choices available to small press creators shrink when it comes to using their LCS.
[...] of you are budding comic book makers you might want to check out Tom Humberstone’s article on selling small press comics, well worth the read and full of helpful advice. CommentSubscribe Email or Share [...]
Our experiences so far…
Conventions and fairs are good but it can be a bit pricey attending them. The shops that are prepared to display small press and allow people flick through them might shift a few too. In Ireland the shops usually ask for a third of the cost. We are Irish based but have a few copies in Gosh and in Manhattan (fancy eh?).
It’s early days for us on the web ( http://www.windellcomics.com ) but without a lot of reviews elsewhere, which we haven’t got yet, people seem reluctant to part with their cash. The next phase for us is getting our comic reviewed by popular review sites. We put a lot of thought and work into our demented comic and feel it’s quality stuff so we’re confident enough to send it out there. It’s gone down really well at home.
We have this too…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-ZxZvezA8Q
It got a bit of interest but that hasn’t transferred into sales yet.
Small Press comics are hard to sell. The way most printing costs work out you’re as well off getting larger runs of a good few hundred than just a small run of two or three hundred but that usually results in boxes of comics left lying in the spare room, …if you have a spare room.