Well, I don't know Jeff. It seems to me you took what I'd consider an advertising gig, and you probably got a good deal for it as such. I mean, how long do commercial illustrators collect on a single job anyway? And like you say, you've paved the way for a future relationship, which means more money so you can take the time to do your stuff.

Hell, man, even Steinbeck worked for Hollywood.

(But, if you simply must eat crow, try it stewed.)

Found a musical example of how Giving It Away can work:

www.fishertheband.com
www.digitalsound.net

These musicians gave it away on the web, then sold a little, then gave more away, then sold more, and so on and so forth. Now they're going major. All the garbage of the music biz aside, these folks made the web work for them in almost precisely the way I've described -- make sure you read the "Media" section bio.

The beauty is, they have an established fan base on the Web, which will not disappear even if the record companies do their usual screw-the-artist thing. If their label winds up ditching them, they have lost nothing (except maybe the rights to some of their music -- and they can make more). THAT is a cool thing.

We can do this. It can work for us. It's already working for some of us.

------------------
Jeff Zugale
Pagan City Comics
www.pagancity.com

If they make their stab at going major and fail, I'm not sure all of their fan base will still be there. After all, it's one thing to be championing an unknown band; it's quite another to be saying "I like you anyway" after they fail in the big league. One should never overlook the value of hipness to the struggling indie artist.

On a side note: one way that Fisher distributed their stuff for free (or at least for no income) was by allowing one of their songs to be included on the CD-ROM that accompanied The Complete Idiot's Guide To MP3... co-written by yours truly (with Rod Underhill), and illustrated by Judd Winnick (Barry Ween, Green Lantern).

Gee, Nat, do your friends ever call you "Scully"?

You've got a point about hipness being a factor, but maybe not so much in this case. Remember, all those people clamoring for more from Fisher heard them first in 2 hi-profile places (movie soundtrack and the radio); meaning the indie-cred thing doesn't so much apply.

And, as it relates to comics, going to a larger publisher, then back to indie didn't hurt either Strangers in Paradise or Bone, did it? I think comics fans are so desperate to get the stuff they like, they won't be so turned off by a venture like that.

While sales of Bone and Strangers appear to continue strong, they both seem to have lost some of their "hipness" sheen. After all, they've been part of the comics scene long enough now that they are no longer rebels, they're the establishment. Certainly, I've heard from the early adopters of both series who are now dropping the books... although it would seem to have less to do with selling out and more to do with the evolving direction in both series (Bone having gotten more into the serious fantasy aspect and less in the slapstick aspect; Strangers having moved from being a light relationship book to one largely focused on organized crime maneuvering.)

Okay, I'm not factoring in the hipness thing here. What I'm trying to point out is that one can do all sorts of promotional stuff and gain fanbase and sales without dealing with monolithic corporations on their terms. That's all. It's possible to build yourself from the bottom up.

I really don't want to get into the little details of what this particular band has done to get where they are. Sound to me like they've been exploring every avenue of promotion they can.

Anyway, let's not be too worried about whether they will stay "hip" and keep their fanbase that way. People who like the band will like the band. They will gain fans and lose fans for various reasons, of course. But they've made enough of a name for themselves and enough of a demand for their work that people who really like them -- as opposed to people who dig them, but not enough to follow them if they get "less hip" -- will continue to seek them out and buy their stuff and go see them live, and they will continue to tell friends about them. Maybe Fisher isn't the best example out there, but they are an example.

I think that a discussion of the inherent fickleness of "style"-based, highly subjective fan bases belongs somewhere else, although it is good to mention potential stumbling blocks to potential ownership-retaining grassroots self-promoters.

After all, I certainly never said that EVERYONE would be SUCCESSFUL if they Give It Away... the issues of MAINTAINING a fanbase once you get it are different from those of retaining your ownership and attempting to build that fanbase without the assistance of great big corporations. I should think that staying "indie" would help you with your street cred, tho. [img]/resources/ubb/smile.gif[/img]

Well, I'm the non-pro here, so, for what its worth, I don't think that's an issue with comics at all. Because comics are already marginalized.

But, to bring it back to logistics, this band's "success" brings up an interesting point: people had to hear their music to be interested in them. They had a song on a soundtrack, on the CD Nat worked on, the dj took a chance and played them on the radio, and Tori Amos gave them lip service on her site. With an idependent comic, you don't have that initial push something like a soundtrack could give you (Lisa Loeb got known the same way). In writing, there's tons of journals that can publish a short story, etc. Film has the festival circuit, and many cities have 1 or 2 arthouses (not to mention IFC and Bravo on cable). Comics has nothing like this. And I think any website that tried to be that would need (at least at first) a real-world analog that would get noticed. Without the push of ubiquitous TV and print advertising (and yeah, I'm glad "push" technology bit the dust, too), it don't matter how great your website is. People have to know about it, and want to see it.

So, how does one approach this hurdle?

Well, let's separate work from creator; if one says that Lisa Loeb (who I'll be seeing on Thursday, as it happens) got a push from a soundtrack, then one could claim that Jim Mahfood may have gotten a push by doing an X-Book, despite mainly working on indie fare. Did any of that feed back to his indie work? Danged if I know.
But even if it's a new series that you want to expose, there are ways to do that. There are fewer anthologies these days, but they aren't entirely extinct; certainly folks try to use short stories in the SPX anthologies to draw attention to their series. And there are other ways of creating exposure, if you're willing to try. For example, if I had a new indie SF series coming up, I'd contact Carla Speed McNeil (Finder) and Tara Jenkins (Galaxion), and I'd try to cut a deal with them: get them to expand their book to 48 pages for one issue, including an 16 page short story of my new series. I'd pay the additional costs for printing (adding interior pages is really not that expensive) and possibly some additional bucks or something of value (paying for a shared table at a con... Carla gets free space, and I get her audience drawn to my table!)
And every time an indie creator has table space at a major con, it's like being an opening act. Sure, no one ever went to the San Diego Con hoping to see Nat Gertler (some old girlfriends excluded)... but after they got their Colleen Doran signature and were scared away by the length of lines waiting for Jim Lee, they sauntered by my table and got exposed to my work. And while tens of thousands of people at the con utterly ignored me, hundreds tried The Factor for the first time.

Well that's a successful example of small-scale (financially) marketing, assuming you made back your booth cost in sales... we certainly haven't with Pagan City, but we met a lot of people and had a lot of fun with our booth in '98 and '99. We didn't have a booth for 2000, cuz we had nothing new to offer. We're still not sure we'll have a booth for 2001, depends on whether I can get the online version going well enough to maybe offer graphic novels for the con.

But anyway I stress again that any effort made by creators to promote themselves and build audience themselves without the involvement of big companies that steal their stuff is a good thing IMO.

BTW, Wired.com had a story on Fisher, which says:



Sluggish... well, sure, if you go by established industry practices and sales expectations. There hasn't really been much in the way of sales hype or promotion for this CD so far anyway, since they pushed the release date up 4 months, thus pre-empting Universal's planned advertising campaign.

2892 CDs in ONE WEEK sold online and in stores is excellent for any band that almost nobody knows about. Big record co's expect a heavily-promoted album to sell tens or hundreds of thousands right out of the gate; of course this CD hasn't been promoted, and it's selling anyway. I think this article is WAY premature, and that as the word gets out and they get more airplay, you'll see that number growing steadily over several months. If Universal gets behind the promotion it will happen faster... but I think the online-related sales world is a whole different animal from the "risk lots, try to make it back fast" world of regular retail. I think it will make it feasible for everyone, including big pubs, to do longer-term, lower-risk, smaller-investment promotions of all sorts of different media creations.

Hell, if any of us could sell 2892 comic books in one week, we'd be doing GREAT!! So this sort of thing bears watching, even though it's music and not comics. If it works, we might have some good ideas to apply to our own promotions; if not, maybe we can learn from their mistakes.

Full article: www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,40435,00.html

I don't think there was a single con where I took The Factor where I didn't make back my booth cost in sales, and often I made hotel costs back as well. Of course, we here at About Comics have some advantages. For one, we didn't go for the big-ol end booth like you fine Pagan folks. At San Diego, we either split tables or got one of the cheaper indie booths. Plus, most of the time we had more issues out than you did; with five issues to sell, it's a lot easier to make money than with just 2.

Besides, you're a genial and kindly guy, while I'm a hard-selling SOB when I'm working my booth. The Factor is a book with a hook for everyone, so when I see someone walking up I just look at their T-shirt, figure out what they're into, and explain to them why my book is just like that!

I've been off the con circuit for more than a year, but I'm planning to do one more con before doing the TPB. APE just looked soooo lucrative last year that I can't resist being there myself this year. Still haven't bought my space... trying to make sure I'll still be living in CA by then... but I'll probably sign up in a week or two.