Beyond 11: You Won’t Get this Chance Again for a Long, Long Time

[Notes_Norton]

 

It's here now, with an accompanying thread.

 

Thanks!

[gubu]

Great articles! If only there was a way to share these on Facebook - I know several people who could benefit from these insights

[Nijyo]

There's a lot of similarity in the discussion here with the comics industry.

 

Bear with me.

 

In an alternate life, I was a digital comic artist. Not a great one, but already I digress. Throughout the entirety of the 2000s it was a constant discussion as to how the industry had basically killed itself through the "big money" marketing of the 80s and 90s. It was nearly impossible to get into a job at one of the big two (DC or Marvel), and the typically work-for-hire contracts basically left you with no rights to your work.

 

Add to that the fact that comics were no longer a limited-run commodity unless you are of the few that were collectors or otherwise *needed* the physical copies. CBR readers made digitally scanned comics into basically infinite-run, no-value widgets.

 

Many years of arguing and angst and drama followed. Some folks were adamant that *somehow* the industry would find a way to return to the "old ways".

 

The end result was, however, that by the late 2000s, "indie" was the way to go. Why? Because it became very apparent that the key to success as an artist wasn't doing something no one had ever done before (100% original ideas are pretty hard to come by, no matter which direction you push). Rather, the key was to do something well and, most importantly, connect with your fans on a much more personal level that people had been used to doing before.

 

Again, why? The answer in comics lay at the graphed intersection of overhead and revenue. Sure, your revenue as an indie (especially at the start) is not at an astronomical level, *but neither is your overhead*. As a matter of fact, it takes surprisingly few "superfans" to support a single, indie, DIY artist. You won't be getting rich, but your chances of making a living are much higher because you don't have to support a huge infrastructure (meanwhile, folks like Penny Arcade, who started with two guys, a scanner, and some really rudimentary HTML skills, are now the head of a company that runs the 3rd largest gaming convention in the US).

 

So how do you develop these superfans? By connecting to people early and often. Okay, fine, but how do you do that?

 

Well, the first thing is that (in comics) you follow the mantra of "significant and consistent" content updates. This means comic strips or pages in the comic world. It used to be "frequent, consistent, and significant", but it became apparent through the years of experience that "frequent" wasn't as firm a term, or as obvious concept, as was first believed. In music, this seems to be moving towards individual song releases on a regular basis, with the albums being collections that are sold later, with add-on features for extra value (see: Jonathan Coulton)

 

But secondly you needed to really connect with your early fans. Laboring in obscurity for a while is the role of nearly every artist when they start out, of course. Throwing content into what seems like an endless, uncaring void is emotionally and mentally tough, but when you do start getting those nibbles, you should leap to connect. Social media is key to this (Twitter, FB, etc).

 

Let's say you have some fans now, and a few "superfans" (those who focus on you as one of their primary fandoms, and buy nearly everything you put out -- getting to this stage can take a long time, endurance has always been the name of the game in art; see also the 10-year "overnight success"). How do you turn that fandom into revenue?

 

For a long time, the answer in comics (aside from providing ad-space on your own site, which only worked if you were already wildly popular) was "merchandise". Fine art prints, selling original art, other things like that and, of course, t-shirts, t-shirts, t-shirts. So much of the latter that some of the traditional comic strip artists (people with King Syndicate Features contracts, for example) would denigrate the new breed of cartoonists as being "glorified t-shirt salesmen." They wanted nothing to do with the business side of things.

 

Some folks went to Kickstarter, though this was primarily for selling collections, and so didn't work particularly well for facilitating regular, consistent revenue streams (not a few artists also got in over the heads by overpromising and underdelivering).

 

Fortunately, in the last couple years a new platform has emerged, called Patreon. Patreon essentially lets you "subscribe" to an artist's output. Different artists handle this different ways, but in essence it's a way to create a more consistent revenue stream than just relying on merchandising or advertising. It's still somewhat new, but many artists both in and out of the comic world have praised the platform for basically changing their lives, both creatively and financially, for the better.

 

From there, you have a lot of possibilities for growth, but many of them facilitated in great part by the fact that you own the IP to every thing you've made. There's news running around over the last few weeks that a company called TokyoPop was doing portfolio reviews at a large convention. This particular company was infamous for their horrible contracts before their last reorganization, and word on the street is that their new ones aren't much better. However, there are other players in the market that are happy to form distribution partnerships with established indie brands and have very reasonable contract terms that benefit both parties. (It's also possible to distribute both digitally and physically on your own, which comes with its own set of pluses and minuses).

 

By now, reading through this, the parallels with the current state of the music industry should be pretty obvious. Artists who don't want anything to do with the business side, contracts that leave the artist with barely any rights, merchandising the crap out of your IP. Sound familiar? That world and those who cling to it are dying. Indie and DIY is the way its all going.

 

The only stand-out difference is that in comics the "gig" is analogous to appearances at conventions. If you've never seen it, the way this works is that the artist pays a flat rate for a table at a comic (or similar) convention and sells merch, does sketches, custom art, interacts with new and long-time fans, etc. (Pay to play?! Kind of...)

 

The key there being that the table cost will vary, and that cost will determine what you need to do to make the appearance "worth it". That is, how far away is it (travel overhead)? What's the table ("booth") cost? How big is the Con(vention)? e.g. If it's a small convention, with a small table cost and it's an hour away, I don't have to merch the hell out of every interaction in order to get "value" out of the appearance. *But*, is the attendance so small that, in the overview, my exposure to new and existing fans would also be small, and, so, my weekend might be better spent making new content to release? But, again, on the other hand, these small cons are often where the really hardcore fans like to go and discover new, hidden "gems" from people, so... (There's also "guest" appearances, but that's much later and a whole different calculation)

 

Anyway, I've gone on long enough already. If you want to watch a really interesting documentary on how this has happened in the comic industry (and, as an aside, the book publishing industry is still in the throes of where comics were about 5 years ago), I highly recommend the documentary "Stripped", by Dave Kellett and Fred Schroeder (full disclosure: I was an early kickstarter supporter of the film). They've presented that documentary to many big-name studios and organizations (not the least of which are Pixar and Lucasfilm) and it's applicability ranges far beyond just comics.

 

The bottom line? As some have said, there's rarely (if ever) been a time in history that has more potential for artists to make a living doing what they love, but, it requires a whole different way of thinking than it did even 15 years ago.