Saturday 9 August 2014

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.





















Thursday 7 August 2014

How to Fund a Comic Book (or Any Other Creative Enterprise), Pt 4: Adventures in Crowdfunding

Option (2c): Crowdfunding.

Whenever people mention independent creative projects, you can be sure that the word 'crowdfunding' is not going to be far behind. This has all been made possible by the Internets. Years ago, if you wanted random strangers to give you money you had to be either a hedge fund manager, a busker, or a prostitute (not meaning to disparage the noble professions of prostitution and busking, by the way). Now, you can just set up a Kickstarter. For those not familiar with the concept - I'm assuming you're either over 50 or under 5 - it involves asking for small individual financial pledges in return for rewards, with pledges only being collected if a certain funding total is reached (some crowdfunding sites work on slightly different principles - e.g. allowing fundraisers to keep the money whatever the total raised - but this is the most common approach). Anyway, crowdfunding now seems to have taken off and entered mainstream awareness  - soon, even, online spellcheckers will stop underling its non-hyphenated form in red (along with 'fundraiser' and 'spellchecker'). Then, it will have fully arrived.

For small, independent projects, crowdfunding is great. As long as you are realistic in your goals, your timescale for the project, and calculate the costs of supplying the rewards, then your cut of the profits will be far greater than it would be through any other more traditional channel. So what's the downside?

First of all, the crowdfunding universe is getting very crowded. Remember the innocent days where you'd create a web page and then sit and watch the counter to see the visitors role in? You laugh now at your naivety - you realise that just because you build it, doesn't mean that they will come - but the very same realisation seems to pass many crowdfunding fundraisers. I saw a comic book crowdraiser recently - the art was fantastic, the funding goal was realistic - and yet hardly anyone pledged. It never got made, failing to reach a tenth of its goal. Then I checked the creator's Twitter feed, and not only had he not mentioned his project, but he had hardly tweeted at all. He had also not bothered to connect his Facebook account. And this was a very talented artist with an idea I would have loved see get made.

However, if you're a good organiser and can handle the figures, then crowdfunding makes sense - but you have to sell it. And this is the problem. I've run two small crowdfunding projects over on the French site Ulule, both to fund a yearly caricature calendar. My goals were realistic - humble, even - and I bugged the shit out of everyone on Facebook, Twitter, etc. The first year I ran it, I got almost double my goal; the second year, I got half. Had the novelty worn off? Maybe. But I think also that after the first year I had exhausted the financial goodwill of my acquaintances - not my close friends and family (those who will always support me), or my dedicated fans (be they in single figures, those who really like my work), but those on the outer fringes of my personal acquaintance who obviously thought, 'He's doing it again?! Well, I gave last time to support him - he can't expect that every year' (or something like that). This may or may not be true, but I stand by the underlying realisation: just as "you can't run a war on gusts of emotion" (to quote P. M. S. Blackett), you can't fund a Kickstarter on goodwill contributions. You need to go beyond the realm of people who know you, have met you, or are otherwise acquainted with you, and you need to appeal to the general wallet-owning/Paypal-using populace purely in terms of disinterested interest (er - if you know what I mean?). On the strength of the project idea alone. But just how do you do that?

There would seem to me to two main ways: either you have a great idea, which goes viral; or you build up a cohort of fans, who can be relied upon to support you whatever you do.

Regarding viral Kickstarter type projects, these certainly exist. People with no fan-base have hit upon a project which just seems to have captured the interest of enough people, who have in turn shared and spread it about, and soon you have a runaway success. Max Tempkin's Philosophy Posters Kickstarter would seem to be a good example of this: from what I can work out, Tempkin didn't have any broad and loyal fanbase before he started this Kickstarter (someone correct me if I'm wrong); he simply had an eye for design, and a simple idea (to provide posters of interesting/inspiring/thought provoking quotes, illustrated in a simple, attractive way) - I think he only started with 10 designs. Of his initial goal of $2,000, he ended up raising $41,167. Not bad.

But it's hard to plan for viral, runaway success. By all means, try for original or quirky or whatever you think will have the best chance of being popular, but the best strategy would seem to be to build up a following before you launch. This means that you must either build up a formidable Twitter or Facebook army at your beck and call, or have a hoard of loyal fans that will jump straight over to Kickstarter at your say-so. And herein lies the problem: it's a vicious circle. For to get followers, you need a product to draw their interest; but - in our case - we're looking for followers in order to develop the product. We can make do with samples, of course - a few pages from the forthcoming graphic novel - but my experience suggests that (unless in some way your idea manages to capture the zeitgeist) you'll struggle to generate the numbers, and hence the funding.

So, then, aside from those who manage to pique the ever shifting wind of popular interest - (Pique the wind of interest? Never mind - let it go) - most who are successful on crowdfunding platforms would seem to bring their audience with them, either through an extensive pre-existing social media network, or through a pre-existing fanbase (usually both). Some try to fake this, of course - trying to build up their Facebook 'likes' and Twitter followers through those dubious pay-for-popularity services or automated following robots (I'm not sure if I've just made that up...), but genuine interest is hard to fake (but if you can fake it, you can fake anything!). So how do you create genuine interest? Assuming that you have a product/skills that will be of interest to at least some people somewhere, the challenge is to find those people, connect with them, and when the chance comes, engage their support. Which all seems to come back to having something substantial to engage people with - there would seem to be no shortcut for most of us to achieve this. It's just a matter of hard work.

Comics creator Gannon Beck has written an excellent article on Patreon and Creator Owned Webcomics, where he looks at various crowdfunding models, and applies them to independent comics creators. Patreon is like Kickstarter, but for people, not projects: people fund you. This is a great idea: suddenly, 'I need to pay the bills' becomes a legitimate cost that fans can help you with, because otherwise there will be no comics/creative project for them to be a fan of, because you'll be out washing cars (or whatever - 'working for the man' anyway). This is something that Kickstarter ignores: it's frowned upon there to ask for help with eating and paying rent, because it's considered that the money can only be related to project costs (e.g. printing comics). So, for this and other reasons - though it's only now beginning to catch on - Patreon is the future for independent creatives, I think - you can see my account here... :)

Beck highlights the benefits for independent creators who go the crowdfunding and self-publishing route. If you can build a following, you get £9 of your £10 book, instead of £1 of £10 via the traditional publishing model. However, to do this, you need to be giving your content away for free (in the case of comics, via an online platform - a web comic - or else through free downloadable PDFs). This may stick in the throat of many traditionalists from the copyright-understanding generation: where's the value in that? Well, the value is in creating a fanbase, who then flock over to Patreon and support your continued creative endeavours, or to Kickstarter to fund your printing of back issues of your comic (for those who want physical copies of your free content, or for old content that you've 'archived' - made no longer free).

Before you traditionalists throw your laptop away in disgust, let me point out that this model does work for some. For instance, Ryan North, creator of Dinosaur Comics, has been giving away his content free for years. When he went over to Patreon and asked his followers for a small contribution so that he could do the comics full-time, enough obliged so that he could do that. At the time of writing (7th Aug. 2014), he has 719 followers who collectively contribute $2,285.47 a month. That's not a bad wage - at least, I could live on it. Most followers only contribute $1 (328 people) or $3 (310 people), which in individual terms is actually very little. And 719 people isn't that much either - I'm sure many more people 'freeload' off him by reading and enjoying his comics daily for nothing. But the few principled people who have the generosity and integrity to put their hands in their pockets for the price of a coffee (or less) once a month ensure that he can continue doing what he loves. And it's not as if the rewards he is offering are the reason for this - mostly he's just offering to let people have the comic a day early, or to engage in an online Q & A with him.

A yet more startling example is Kurt J Mac, whose Minecraft videos are extremely popular on Youtube. Just how popular is revealed when he opened a Patreon account: from what I can workout, he started it just over a week ago, and now has 437 patrons who collectively provide him with a monthly income of $4,685. I could live on that, also.

The lesson from all this would seem to be that, unless you're lucky, crowdfunding is not a way to build a following, or to get known, and is no replacement for establishing a reputation the hard, traditional way. What it does provide, however, is a new model for fans to support creators, one where - potentially - creators can have a greater share of the profits (in return for taking on more of the marketing and publishing responsibilities, etc). Patreon would seem to take this a step further, and suggests that a viable living can be made by focusing primarily on building your fanbase (as opposed to your customers) - and the most effective way to do this is to give your stuff away for free, thus ensuring its widest dissemination so that it gets to those people who are principled enough to support you.

I still don't know what to think of all this, to be honest. I see the logic in it - but also the risk. Giving away stuff for free implies (initially) working for nothing - and how can you live while you do that? In terms of the comics funding conundrum we've been considering, how can I survive while I produce my free comic (to acquire a fan base that will support me in my future creative endeavours)? Once again, the circularity seems unavoidable. Someone has to pay the bills somehow.

So...

Pros: Greater share of the profits, greater creative control, direct contact with and development of a fanbase. Cons: Usually requires a pre-existing fanbase to succeed, difficult to organise and manage, hard to see how it can work independently of some other form of funding (e.g. job that pays for development of the project in its initial phase).

Next: A short word on advertising and marketing.

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



How to Fund a Comic Book (or Any Other Creative Enterprise), Pt 2: Grants and Awards

Last post I looked at option (1): treating your project as a hobby. On the one hand, this gives you security, but it also takes its toll on your energies and family life, plus it makes progress slow. So, a far more preferable option - if you can make it work - is...

Option (2): Find funding. There are various forms of funding. You may be lucky enough to have extensive savings, independent wealth (a trust fund or a rich, supportive family), a patron who recognises the value of your work, etc, but most of us aren't in this position. Besides, if you are in this position, then you don't really need to be reading this! You could work hard to save up to take a sabbatical from work, or take out a bank loan, but again, this presumes that you are in a position to do so. Even if your employer lets you take time off, it might take you years to save up enough money to support yourself over 6 months or a year (and comic book and other creative projects can take much longer than that). Bank loans are also chancy: you need to be in a secure financial position to be able to pay it back, because you don't want to assume that your project will be financially successful, because that's just a form of very expensive wager - there's not a huge amount of money in comics (or art in general), some notable exceptions aside.

So, let's assume that - like me - none of the above are open to you. What else can you do? We can split this into various sub-options: (2a) Look for grants and awards, (2b) Go the traditional publishing route, (2c) Go the crowdfunding route, or (2d) Seek advertising or sponsorship. For the rest of this post I'll look at the first option.

(2a): Grants and Awards. I live in the UK, so most of what I'm about to say simply reflects my experience - things will no doubt be different in other countries (let me know if they are). Also, I won't pretend that I'm an authority on this route, or that I've exhausted it, but I have gone some way down that road - and found it largely a dead end. However, please feel free to correct me on anything - I would love to be wrong on this occasion!

Firstly, there is public or government funding. In the UK, this mostly means lottery money, a percentage of which supports the arts. This is distributed regionally. Where I live, therefore, arts funding is distributed by the Arts Council of Wales (but there will probably be something similar in your area). The problem with this, however, is that any viable project must be (a) non commercial, and (b) provide public benefit. So, even if I could persuade them that might graphic novel about Sigmund Freud would help engage the public with the arts in Wales, I wouldn't be able to make any direct money from the project (i.e. sell the graphic novel). Also, I would be up against the type of artist that the council was setup to support: the traditional gallery-exhibiting, public space using painter/sculptor/etc. So, if you're a graphic/comic book artist looking to fund a definite product, then this is likely to be an unfruitful option. You could of course try to broaden the scope of your project - the council are keen on collaboration (especially international), on 'exploring' themes and ways of working, so I could have said that I'd travel to the US to work with my collaborator to 'explore Freud's concept of the unconscious in the medium of sequential graphic art' (or something equally dubious), but it seemed to me to be taking me too far from what I wanted to do (make a comic book), and also somewhat dishonest. It's a shame that there's simply no money to fund that simple ambition, but that seems to be the case regarding public money.

However, remember, comics are also a form of writing. So, if you're also scripting your own comic, then you are also eligible for literary grants and bursaries (unfortunately, in this instance, I'm just drawing). For instance, Literature Wales supplies bursaries for just this purpose. This is also public money (made up of lottery, local council and private trust funding), but there seems to be no restriction on commercial publication. So, if you're writing a comic for yourself or someone else, then it might be worth you checking it out (or whatever the equivalent is where you live). Remember, though, that this is a competition - to stand any chance, your project needs to show potential/be some way along, or else you need to show that you have some literary track record (which, again, will debar many first-time creators).

Having struck out with both of these, I moved on to look at private trusts and funding. The Wellcome Trust, who support biomedical research and the medical humanities, have some money to help engage and inform the public about scientific issues. Given that our book is about Freud (and psychology - according to some, anyway - is a science!), then I thought maybe I was in luck. However, once again there is a restriction here to do with commercial exploitation - I couldn't sell the book I'd made.

And this is the problem with private trusts and funding. Each has their own specific set of criteria and priorities. You may indeed be lucky enough to find that you meet those criteria, but often you'll find that there is some public or charitable goal that the money is tied to, or that applications are geared to organisations with those goals in mind. So, you are welcome to plough through the lists of grants that are available - see e.g. Esmee Fairbairn - but there's slim pickings for commercially orientated comic book projects that I can see.

Which isn't to say that there aren't such grants. Until recently, in the US, the Xeric Foundation funded comics creators to self publish (however, as of 2012, they now only fund non-profit or charitable projects). But apart from being hard to find, such grants are also hugely competitive, and you'd be up against established professionals - and being creative and expressing yourself shouldn't really be about winning a competition.

Again, in summary...

Pros: Can dedicate all your time to your project, can treat it like a normal job (time off for leisure and family). Cons: grants are highly competitive, they are difficult to find, and favour those with a track record or who are a certain type of artist.

How to Fund a Comic Book (or Any Other Creative Enterprise), Pt 1: The Ties that Bind

Firstly, I should point out that the title of this blog entry is more of a question - I don't really know. But I do have some thoughts.

Any independent creator making something for themselves is likely to face the financial conundrum: how to make a living whilst doing what you love. There seem to me to be two main options: treat your project as a hobby, or find funding. Let's look at the first option.

Option (1): Do it in your spare time. You have a job, and evenings and weekends you spend developing your dream project. This is fine, in terms of security, but takes a heavy load on your energies, time spent with family, etc. The other downside is that progress will be slow. You're unlikely to have much spare in the tank once your main job is finished for the day/week, and your family will eventually begrudge you spending all your time away from them (as much as my family may resent being described as 'ties that bind' perhaps...). Nate Simpson's comic 'Nonplayer' is a good example, here. It's been in development for about 5 years, in which time he's published a single 32 page issue. Admittedly, Nate works in excruciating detail and is a perfectionist, but his struggles are fairly typical of those faced by people trying to fit their project around their day job (read his honest and inspiring blog and see his amazing work here).

There are sub-options within this option: you could take on part-time work. However, unless your PT work is well-paid and can be contained into set times (it doesn't spread into the week), then you face other problems. However, unless you're lucky, PT/casual work tends to be less well paid (requiring you to supplement it with other work - which defeats the point), or can spread out into the week (irregular shifts) - the fact that it's PT/casual tends to suit the employer (especially with the advent of zero hour contracts...). However, if you can find PT work that is both well-paid and self-contained, then this might make this option viable. In my experience, though (and this is my current financial model), it seems to be increasingly difficult to find this type of work.

So, in conclusion...

Pros: security. Cons: slow progress, fatigue, toll on family and personal life.

Next time - Pt 2: Finding funding...

Sunday 3 August 2014

Page 1 finished

Here, finally, is the finished version of page 1 (colours by Eliot Southwell):


Thoughts welcome! More on process and background over at Patreon.com/woodpig

Saturday 2 August 2014

Patreon

In a further attempt to get some funding to complete the comic, I've opened a Patreon account. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it's a crowdfunding website that allows supporters to back individuals rather than projects. So, rather than (say) support a comic, you give a certain amount per month in order to support the comic maker, and whatever else he or she may be doing.

For me, this is great, because it frees me up to do whatever I want - and I've got a fairly diverse range of interests/skills (illustration, comics, cartoons, fiction, non-fiction, etc). This means that if I can get enough people who are willing to pledge a small monthly amount, then I can use that to develop projects that wouldn't take place otherwise (like this one).

However, there are some consequences for this blog. Since some of the rewards for Patreon supporters will be to get a behind-the-scenes look at the production of the comic, then that won't be material I will be sharing here. I'll still post things from time to time, but my main energies will be on developing content that will keep Patreon supporters happy.

I'll also use Patreon to share stuff I don't share here - some of my writing (short stories and longer works), board and card game designs, and other comics. So, if any or all of these interest you, then please head over there and take a look: http://www.patreon.com/woodpig