Happy Holidays
The gains, deficits and joy of self-publishing.
What started out as a one year recap is turning out to be a 30+ year recap...
After a few humbling attempts to make comic books in the 1980s, I produced mini-comix (the xeroxed, hand folded and hand stapled kind) with Josh Neufeld in the mid-1990s. Outlier efforts that you could buy from me at a small press expo or mailed to your home. You might find a loose copy in a cool comix/zine shop. Some of those mini-comix got picked up and published proper by small press publishers (Keyhole, Billy Dogma) but that didn't last long. Those were the days of Eightball, Love & Rockets, Hate, Dirty Plotte, Minimum Wage, Artbabe, Peep Show, Optic Nerve, Hutch Owen, Magic Whistle, and David Greenberger’s Duplex Planet Illustrated (and so much more). I miss those days.
In the mid-2000s I produced webcomics. Stories you could read for free on a weekly basis from ACT-I-VATE to Zuda (via DC Comics) to Trip City to Webtoon. Most of those webcomics found their way into print collections. I also spent two decades co-producing stories published by Marvel, DC/Vertigo, Archie, Top Shelf, Alternative, Dark Horse, IDW, Heavy Metal, etc./etc. In 2023 I started to self-publish "deep cut" comix. Outlier efforts that you could crowdfund and/or buy directly from me at a convention or mailed to your home. Thirty years later and I've come full circle. I've landed right back into, essentially, the mini-comix grind. What did I learn?
Unless you have the muscle of marketing. Unless you have the wallet-opening power of word-of-mouth influence. Unless you have the bank roll and can take the financial risk to show up on a retailer's shelf for that much coveted impulse buy -- you're relying on pure luck. And luck isn't a business plan. Luck is lightning in a bottle. And no one can predict the weather.
Even though we've been granted self-publishing tools and we’ve been encouraged to be entrepreneurs, personal efforts still have a hard time climbing up that retail hill. The way I see it, self-published creators are either striving for the tippy top of the hill where comix become cinematic merchandise or they roam the very bottom where niche can surprise and, at best, thrive on a smaller scale. Where comix are "cool." But what about the middle? There's a ton of available room in the middle. No?
Alas, the middle is akin to focus-group-inspired safe spaces. Akin to scrolling through a Netflix catalogue for a half hour, watching two-minute trailers that truncate the entire tale; showcasing been there/done that stories until your eyes drift away from existential frustration. Not knocking those types of tales because sometimes you want a good old fashioned story (see: Wagon Train). But the Age of Authenticity challenges creators to slash our wrists to write and draw honest stories with candid blood. Create profound characters that repulse yet provoke.
As we enter 2025 I wrestle with self-publishing. I don't have the funds or the relationships to market my wares. I'm not part of a distribution system that affords me to retail and get reviews. I depend solely on social media and the kindness of friends, family, fans and strangers to promote and "like" my stuff. And my current self-publishing model is NOT a business plan. It's a whim.
Where once we had influential review places like The Comics Buyers Guide, Factsheet 5, The Comics Journal, Pop Candy, Wizard, The Comics Reporter (RIP Tom Spurgeon), Entertainment Weekly, and a plethora of other taste-making venues, we now have an abundance of websites, podcasts, YouTube channels, and algorithm driven social media that levels the playing field and blurs the lines.
What's popular and what's niche is sometimes one and the same. What's true is sometimes false. Unexpurgated autonomy only gets you so far. I cherish the people who believe in my work and who remain loyal to my cause but that begins to plateau when I'm not in the system. What is the system?
Distribution.
Reviews.
Retail.
Reviews galvanize retailers to order your book/s from distributors. Retailers tell their customers about your book/s. That's it. That's what's missing from my "business plan."
Earlier this year I coined the term, “Lean into Dean.” A personal marching order to laser focus on my work. Embolden and expand my dreams. Wholly gamble on myself. Little did I know “lean” would self-prophesize a lean year. Both financially and creatively.
Last week, I had a great, albeit sobering conversation with a smart (and caring) retailer who told me, "Dean, you've been working in comics for 35-years. But most comic book readers only stick around for five years. You haven't published a book with a spine that's been in my store since 2018. It's 2024. Which means 90% of my customers don't know who you are."
The kind retailer also advised that I try to publish stuff for retail stores 3-4 times per year, if possible. Once I command three inches of book shelf space, I might — just might — start to gain traction. If you keep showing up — people have to look. Right?
I've worked on three critically acclaimed graphic novels (The Quitter, The Alcoholic, CUBA: My Revolution) published by DC/Vertigo. I produced a semi-autobio series that got collected into a graphic novel called Beef With Tomato. I co-wrote and drew ten issues of The Fox for Archie Comics that yielded two book collections (and a recent one-shot). I produced 4.5 seasons of The Red Hook at Webtoon that yielded two book collections from Image Comics. I've worked on a plethora of comic books that have been collected (American Splendor, Batman ‘66, Superman, The Fantastic Four, Spider-man, Wonder Woman, Godzilla, Mars Attacks, etc./etc.). Suffice it to say, I have more than three inches worth of book spines to fill a shelf but I don't have a section like Frank Miller, Ed Brubaker, Brian K. Vaughn, The Hernandez Brothers, Terry Moore, and Raina Telgemeier because I never sold that well and, frankly, because my comix career has been, for lack of a better term, schizophrenic.
I'm not popular. At this point, I doubt I'll ever be. But that's not why I do this.
When I catch myself staring into the middle distance at midnight, questioning life choices and goals, wondering how to get more eyes and minds and hearts to pick up what I’m laying down — worried about numbers and how they don’t work; they don’t make profit — I remind myself to do this for the joy. Maybe not for the art or for the love or for the money — but for the joy of it. I know joy is a luxury, and doesn’t pay the rent, but it's gotta be fun.
If we’re not having fun, what's the point?
CHEST FACE is finished and going to print. I hope to get my boxes of books by early January so I can start the process of shipping individual copies to my backers and then make it available for new customers at targeted events and shows. A solid page-turner of meaningful entertainment that will bring heartfelt levity and escapism to what will surely be an interesting 2025.
Thank you for your support and cheer and for reminding me why I do this.
Because of you.
love, Dean
Instagram / Twitter / Website/Blog / Nightwork Studio / Etsy
IN 2025 DEAN WILL BE SEEN
True words. I've been struggling with making comics through Kickstarter since… 2018? And while I'm considered quite successful at it, the reality is it never quite pays for itself. And without a book in the shops, people completely forget who you are and what you've done. (My IMPOSSIBLE JONES book was repackaged and put in shops for a while by Scout Comics, and while I ended that relationship I STILL have people who come up to me who only know IMP through those Scout comics.) If I was smart, or more talented, I would go do commercial art or storyboards or something and my life would be a lot easier (financially, at least). Unfortunately, I really love making comics, and have very little interest in (or marketable skills) for anything beyond that. But like you say: I do it for then JOY. And it does give me a ton of that.
Joy to you, Dean, this Holiday season.