alexdecampi:

Apologies for taking a while to answer this, it was definitely a “wait until you’re at the computer” question, versus a “bash out an answer on the phone” one. 

Most comic book series don’t make money. A first comic with an unknown name on it (eg yours) is almost certain not to make money straight out of the gate. Might get optioned, but won’t wash its face on print sales. (Good old comics: you can’t make a living at it, but you can get rich.) 

So what I was saying was, if you want to be published by Image / Dark Horse / Oni / IDW / Boom, you should pitch your first book in a way it is most likely to get accepted by them: a four-issue, self-contained mini with a conclusive ending. (Anything shorter is considered too short to collect in trade; anything longer, too risky for a n00b team). I have seen B and C list writers get their pitches knocked down recently because the publisher was getting cold feet about 6-8 issue minis. (Another ugly secret: getting in isn’t the problem. Staying in? Hoc opus, hic labour est.) Oh, and don’t expect an advance.

Sure, in your heart of hearts you may want this 4 issue mini-series to be a wild success and opened up to an ongoing. Statistically, there is almost no chance of this. That’s okay. Don’t be precious. You’ll have lots of other ideas, if you’re a pro. You better. (Hoc opus…)

We also need to talk about what a “beginner” is. Anyone can write a story. Hate to tell you, scout, but it’s not that hard. Considerably fewer can produce a comic and act like a professional. Fewer than that can cope with making a whole new comic issue every goddamn month for six to nine months while still not picking fights on twitter. A lot of what publishers are looking at when they consider you is: what have you done on your own? how do you present yourself online? how much buzz is around you?

How do you create buzz? Well, you make stuff. Nobody’s going to help you make your first stuff – the black secret of the creative arts is that nobody helps you in a meaningful way (in the way you dream about) until you don’t need it any more. So you apply to anthologies (I really like Iron Circus Comics, but there are great things going on everywhere) and start off with eight-pagers. Then you may do a single issue thing, or Kickstart a little 48 page book. (Don’t end it on a cliffhanger. Just don’t.) 

But crucially, by the time you start approaching actual publishers to do your first big indie (Dark Horse, Image, Oni, IDW, Boom, etc) book, you’ve proven your ability to produce all aspects of a book yourself, and not be a jerk online, above and beyond the basic hurdle of writing compelling and original stories with a unique voice. 

(The original voice is so important. Please have an original voice. It’s fine to have influences, but be yourself. It also means you get very zen about your position in the industry. Nobody writes like me. So I never feel like I have competition, except myself.)

Are you ready? How can you tell? I always say to go to a convention and look at all the books being sold by your desired publisher. Your work has to be solidly, unequivocably as good or better than the majority of what they are producing right now. And by “your”, I mean everything about the comic you are showing them. 

I’m going to tell you the most difficult lesson I ever learned in filmmaking: nobody cares how hard you tried. You took $1000 and some favours and made a video that looks like $12k, for an artist who normally makes $15k videos? Nobody cares about the $11k of production value that you wove out of thin air. Not even your mom. Everyone will look at your video then look at the $15k videos and say, “yours is pretty cool, but it looks a little cheap”. Same thing with your comic. Close only counts with hand grenades. 

There have been plenty of truly wonderful long-form comics published as first books: Finder, A Distant Soil, Cerberus are a few. Bone. But they were all self published for many, many years before they were picked up by an indie publisher. That’s a completely respectable way to go, if your heart’s just not in the publisher-hustle game. There are lots of ways in… I haven’t even really gotten in to webcomics, or Kickstarter. Doing your book as a webcomic then taking it to publishers (like DWJ’s Space-Mullet.com) is another completely legit way to do it. 

Comics is a much, much broader church than it often seems, especially as the industry news sites focus only on the monthly “pamphlet” publishers. There is a place for everyone, no matter how they want to make their story, or what its topic is. So don’t be disheartened if pitching monthly comics, or a 4-issue mini, seems utterly against everything you want to accomplish.

But nobody’s going to do the work for you. (And it’s a fuckton of work.) Like anything else, if you want it hard enough, you’ll make the space in your life for it. It is also a choice – and a weirdly attractive one, to some – to be a person of ever-unrealised potential, a forever could have been with a romantic, wounded air of being wronged by the industry. I’m not at home to that. 

(I did a couple podcasts in November where I delved into a lot of the inside baseball of making comics. thejaqofspades heard me on Word Balloon, but there’s also the Image Comics podcast too.)