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I still buy some singles, mostly for the nostalgic trip to LCS, because a single issue no longer has a complete story, it's not even a chapter, it's a sliver and it's not a satisfying reading experience anymore. I want to read a complete story or chapter, I like the European hardcover model - nice book, full story!

Joe Kubert School Dover NJ, School of Cartoon and Graphic Art

New subscriber. I'm looking forward to other reviews of yours

Selling directly to COMICS retailers is largely not worth the effort, because most are not interested in doing business of selling your book comparatively to the franchise titles of the corporations. Selling directly to OTHER kinds of retailers who aren't already predisposed to what they prefer to sell, is another matter entirely. This means you have to understand who and what your target audience is, and be able to explain to these other vendors how to market it to those audiences within the context of their businesses. For example, when I was doing ADVENTURES OF SPACEY THE ALIEN back in the 1990s, I did it as a B&W comic with puzzles and games involved as part of the story and I sold the book through mom & pop restaurants, child care centers, barber shops, children's hospitals, laundromats, dentist and other medical offices, arts & crafts shops, hobby stores, and a variety of other businesses. Maybe 275 copies nationally through comics shops out of my 13,500 print run on a monthly basis - 0.02% of my sales through comics shops. The issue there is, you're still going to face rejection 85-90% of the time, just as you will with comics shops. You have to have the drive to continue to push until you get the audience you want, and then you have to fight to serve that audience and maintain it. This is often too heavy a toll for a singular creator trying to market your one book. This is why when I was doing this, I started it through a student organization I founded at Central Michigan University and there were 27 students creating their own books and everybody was responsible to market EVERYBODY's books as best as possible. Now, some comics did piss poorly in sales, and some did amazingly well. My own titles varied anywhere from 3,400 copies to the aforementioned 13,500 for SPACEY. And I was "mid card" seller. We had people who were surpassing 20K. And we were selling in tattoo parlors, biker bars, biker shops, gas stations, auto repair stores, auto dealerships... all kinds of "odd places", depending on what the book was and who the potential audience for a given title would be. You don't sell a horror comic about a rock band comprised of werewolves and vampires trying to stop a serial killer from exposing the existence of their kind to the world to Little Granny Annie at the Arts & Crafts shop. You pitch THAT book to the Tattoo parlor, the vape shop, and the Biker Bar. You pitch a book like SPACEY or OSWALD CHRONICLES or if Randy Zimmerman cleaned up the language to a "G" rating for HERO BOT ZERO to Annie, or to the child care centers, or to a mom & pop restaurant as something to sell at the cash register or as a give away with a kid's meal (to counter the chains that had toys with kids meals). Give these businesses a straight up 55% discount off the cover price. Ask them to keep a good accounting of the copies they carry and sell. When the next issue is out, "buy back" their remainders, if they have any, and count that cost against the number of copies you're going to place for the new issues. Write off "lost / damaged" copies. (Shoplifting happens, unfortunately.) If you're shipping things - ask yourself if it's cheaper to mail it to them or to drive it to them and drop it off in person? If you can run a drop ship market yourself, you can take the miles you drive and the gas you spend on that driving as a tax write off against your business, and you can also create a potential circuit to make store appearances in to do signings where you potentially have more control of how you are presented to the public as opposed to a comics shop or at a comics convention. I've had stores who literally kept a table section open for me or the other members of the Comics Artists Press Alliance at Central Michigan University who showed up to rotate books out and they'd do a 2 hour signing event with 2-3 of us and we'd do 2-3 of those a day at different locales. BTW, this is how I made a living in comics from 1993-2002. And by "a living", I mean I averaged between 90-106K a year after taxes. But it's NOT easy - it's a pain in the butt to keep track of it all and if you're not up for a lot of being on the road while making your books (and many people aren't), it's likely not the business model for you. And I would NOT recommend trying to do it with just one book on your own, folks. Find other creators whose books you like, who you would be happy to help support and who would legitimately return the favor to your own book in their localities. This is why when you see me at shows these days, I sometimes have other people's comics at my table as well as my own. I have been known to buy "retailer" stock from some of the crowdfunders and try to sell that content to people at shows. So don't be afraid to ask if I have any "secret stash" comics. I'll often even do a sketch card of one of the characters of the other people's books, if you buy. ;-) That's all for now, folks. See ya in the funny pages!

1:40 keep the good work

Keep the good work

There's a lot of false justification to interact with antagonistic people, but he needs to focus on emotional intelligence because it seems all these 40 plus year old men are acting like children keyboard arguing. It isn't that serious. Standing up for yourself is learning to ignore people, get things done, and let things go.

Bloody fantastic!!! I think that it could be of use to research a service such as S M Z E U S!

Indie comics can do it better! Everyone just keep at it. And Larry Higgins is right - if the Big 2 dial down the sexy, the indies should turn it up!

Final comment, then I'll find another video - but when it comes to ignoring the mainstream or big 2 content bc of it's quality (or lack thereof), I say "why shut your door to learning stuff?" Good ideas can come from anywhere, so why limit yourself? I grew up on books from Toronto creators that I think Randy supported like Galaxtion, Xeno's Arrow, Thieves & Kings and that whole crew but I still think that the image guys have some really interesting layouts and storytelling elements. Jim Lee's Hush had soe of the most cinematic looking panels that also inspires me as much as indy stuff. I can't stand Liefeld and McFarlane but their work has energy that grabs your attention and can hold it for a minute. They also give me hope (especially Rob) because they are living proof (like Ben Affleck) that you don't have to be the best (or even good) at your craft to find success. You just have to find your audience. And they've found theirs and can pay the rent. An accomplishment most of us are struggling to achieve. I'm jealous TBH. But yeah. Check out everything, you can learn something from anyone, even what NOT to do 😉 Great show BTW - thanks for the over 2 hours of great engaging content that is interesting and though provoking. You're channel is definitely a diamond in the rough!

Props to Randy for citing Galaxion and Xeno's Arrow!!! I love those and just got my sets off Ebay recently. However I disagree with his stance on the Direct Market. I think that the direct market allows small publisher to exist. I think with the newsstand system there would be fewer companies able to put up the capital to print a million copies and absorb the returns, the industry would be even more gated bc there is more initial investment to take a chance on a title. Doing a creator owned book in that system would be like someone wanting to start a company making cola in a Coke/Pepsi world. The direct market is broken or unhealthy/dying, but its given a lot of people the opportunity to have a career in comics who would not have had the chance.

On the social media topic, I have to say you have to evaluate the ROI and "opportunity cost" much like going to cons. After spending years posting regularly on FB, IG and TikTok I built up about 2k followers on IG and about 15k on TT but did not make a single sale on any of my online stores. No sales, not even for a sticker.. Got ZERO partons on Patreon so I had to wonder why am I putting all this time into putting out daily free content if no one will buy anything to support my work. Someone said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I took that to heart and decided to try spending my time and energy elsewhere, because social media did not move the needle.

I hear you where you ask where is you $5k best spent given the ROI at a con. I want to a con one time and when I came home, came to the realization that for what I spent vs how many books I sold, I could have bought a 55" flat screen TV for every person who bought one of my books. After doing that math, I reevaluated the value of tabling at shows. For what it costs to go to SDCC, you could basically do a 5-10k print run of your book and give it away for free (which I'm actually considering) and get more readers than drowning in the sea of creators for a slice of that pie.

But I love the round table discussion.

Corporations cannot solve small business problems.

Thanks JD, for doing what you do!

If you don’t believe in yourself. Who will ?

I often look at mine as a hobby that makes money.. occasionally. Lol

No more writers, no more artist, no more studios, creatives and fans of sci-fi, fantasy using AI to make and edit the entertainment they want.

Shadow of innsmoth was pretty awesome. It would make a great comic

Brandon Sanderson raised $17 million on Kickstarter by tapping into his high fantasy cosmere readers, offering them a handful of short book he knocked out during the covid lockdown, how can we turn some of those book readers into comic readers.

nice!

Great show! Great to see James Burton rocking the Indie Comics!!

Listening to this has been fun...then again I look forward to Sundays now for this show. I have bought off Kickstarter, but if you have a website and online store...I am going there. I sometimes feel kickstarter books are a little too expensive for what you get. I just want the book and I assume I can support them through kickstarter or their store...either way. I am waiting for Limbo to hit Unstoppable comics so I can grab my copy. Also think I am going to buy the first Stormchasers graphic novel as well. Also when JD gets his store up and running (Which I think he is) I want to grab some more Oswald for sure. I just never seem to have the money when Kickstarters are going and the online stores allow me to buy the books at my convenience...which helps me. I am a big fan of the Toshigawa Universe comics and I don't think Martheus has ever done a kickstarter, but I buy all his books when he launches them on his store. So I tend to follow more creators with online stores than without. Also from what Jay was saying...is having your own comic website important. He seemed a little fuzzy on his viewpoint:)

Onepunchman is proof that OP can work. the only thing hard for him should be his financial needs as a low allowance teenager lol. give him a stressed out villain trying to beat him.

Look at all the old white guys! Dropping words of wisdom! 😂Go woke go broke!

❤❤❤❤@marcus

I see two camps (Open Source used by cooperate entities and uncreative who need a leg up to play in this sandbox and Closed Source, Writers/Artist/Musicians who can teach the AI to be an extension of themselves becoming their own pocket industry or working with others) there will be others as demand for more fine tuning of AI is inevitable within the restrictions of copyright law, but there is no going back, AI is here to stay.

there was this manua artist using an ai program ended up being sued by a manga company for very similar panels forgot who what it was.

Loved Keown’s work for Aircel. He did progress and I think Paul Pelletier is closer to Dale’s old style. I think Michael Golden stripped down his style as well going in a more Kirby direction. Like Miller, a low volume of current work builds demand from their devoted fans.

If an unknown artis submitted that FM cover, there wouldn't be a debate, it would be rejected by most editors, I applauded the sentiment of mixing up what people are used to consuming, I just think FM execution is terrible. The masses know what they want and don't want, it's up to indies to give it to them in creative ways if they're serious about build a relationship with an audiences, artistic integrity has its place, but this is a commercial art for the masses.

Part of the problem is that the public doesn’t hold bad publishers accountable. Creators and fans alike applaud and support publishers with unfulfilled crowdfunders.

Very cool, there needs to be more pro wrestling comics

Thanks for having me on! It's always a pleasure! And I always find some new amazing indy creators to check out.

Great interview, JD!

lol I am in Diamond

I've been writing, illustrating and self publishing my own manga/comic blithe for over 8 years now. I'm definitely struggling...But over the years I got a LOT of great feed back from those that read my book. I don't think I could sell my rights to it even when I'm having trouble keeping my lights on. I'll get a part time job at a mcdonalds before I do this....unless the amount was VAST and I got to keep a % of it, along with be brought on as a paid consultant with some pull for things they did for it moving forward. I guess a sort of co-ownership I would be okay with, where I still own enough to have a say in things.

🔥🔥🔥

Thanks again for having me !

Yay! Thanks for hanging me

Rosario with the Wonder Duck shout out! What a great co host. lol! Excellent show again brother.

Hey JD congrats on all your success brother!

HONEST TRAILERS

👊 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙢𝙤𝙨𝙢

My first printer and my current publisher... my worlds are colliding! I’m currently in EXCITING COMICS from Antarctic Press. Great interview, JD.

Gravel is my favorite comic series from Avatar Press, it's a thrilling read, Gravel feels like a crossover between Ennis' Punisher MAX & Hellblazer but w/o the angst vibe, it's straight up badass story, specially the 6 B&W mini series.

Another great in-depth chat about my project. Thanks for having me on!

Good Talk, great questions! Thanks for having me on!

Great show 👏

Are Marvin and Ruben twins??!!😁 Great show, guys!