@Charles: The desire to wait for the complete novel has killed serialized mainstream comicbooks. We saw this coming in 1990, honestly; remember long conversations with Dave Sim, Rick Veitch, Neil Gaiman, etc. at the time. The problem is, sans income streams from serialization, there's almost no viable business model to replace the periodical-as-serialized-novel that has nurtured and sustained so much work over the past two+ decades—the comics and graphic novels that changed the whole medium and industry.

We're no longer just at the crossroads: the road has been taken, and we're seeing the consequences. Be careful what you wish for.
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@Mike: Re: "This is the internet. We can't be bothered with people who know what they're talking about."

Now, that earned a chuckle.

The rest... God, what chuckleheads. No wonder I'm blissfully away from comicon.com for weeks, months, years at a stretch.

Jeezus fuck. If you're only going to give Reece any credence on this topic, try reading his posts. He said, "It's better to get an advance and publish the book when it's finished." Y'know, the way REAL authors work, the way they have worked for many decades at least, and the way they probably will continue to work.

That is the model we need to be lobbying the big two to adopt; as well as putting the idea in cartoonists' heads that maybe they should consider submitting their work to real publishers if they have no aspirations to draw Daredevil. Why do I receive such hostility when I suggest this? It's like you don't WANT an answer, and much less to even look for one beyond the failing Direct Market experiment.

Who is doing advances? Why should someone invest in a riskier product with a smaller market? I did a little digging and found a writer stating that 7 out of 10 books are not earning back the advancement money. If so, have you truly outlined a viable model for going forward?

Defiant1

I would like to read what that writer you cite had to say.

And furthermore... this includes the proposed "backend profits" deal, which typically translates into either insultingly low pay or absolutely zero.

Not Marvel or DC, that's for sure.



Why is the market smaller? #1, Because it's been almost exclusively populated with products from the trademark servicing publishers; and #2, becaue we've allowed the Direct Market to become the primary distribution channel for comics. That's why.

I think it's safe to say that Marvel & DC won't offer advances or do anything to expand the distribution system. This is what I cite as a key point in the problem... inadequate marketing. It the monthly books were marketed properly, there would be no problem sustaining the monthly periodical or possibly offering advances for longer projects that might have a guaranteed interest in the market.

The article was here..
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/books/review/Meyer-t.html

It's over a year old, but I doubt anything has changed since then.

Whenever advances are given, the time value of money must also be factored. The advance costs the publisher not only the dollar amount advanced plus the interest that money could have made if it had been invested in something with a faster more immediate guaranteed return. Our company was going to shut our plant down in the late 90's because the profits we were making matched the interest rates that the bank was paying. They'd have made the same money without manufacturing anything and eliminated all the liabilities and potential warranty cost by simply leaving their money in the bank. The only reason I have a job today is because of 9/11 & the wars overseas destroying our economy. Our profits now outpace what banks can pay and I even received a nice bonus this past Christmas.

df1

Thanks for the link.

Marketing is not the only problem, nor even the main one. The bulk of what Marvel and DC are peddling, most people simply don't want.

I agree. We don't need 8 Thor related titles simply because a movie is coming out. Sales on all the book suffered and had their been only one, it probably would have done adequate. Marketing also involves selling products that are not fluff or crap. Marketing is the full picture of getting your product out there, not just an ad on a billboard.

df1

Just so it's clear: What I wish for is the ability to read a work the way I like to and for creators to be able to distribute their work the way they want to. Serialization imposes so many constraints on the way stories are told that it effectively retarded the development of the medium. Europeans published albums and continue to do so. Chester Brown's new work is a book, just like his last one was. And without trade paperbacks, we wouldn't see so many comics in chain bookstores. So the problem seems to me that the major companies have failed to keep up with the marketplace and the intentions of creators. Depending on payment from a monthly just ain't working any more (to the degree that it ever really worked). Mostly what that system did was keep talented people working on serialized shlock, because that's where they could get some regular income. I don't have any solution as to how to get to a book publishing model, but I wouldn't blame readers or creators for wanting to read long-form works in a format more suitable to the intention of the creator. Cerebus didn't work in a serialized fashion -- it was terrible reading it that way, so I gave up and waited for the trades (then I quit it for other reasons).

There's a reason Dan Clowes, Grant Morrison, Mark Millar are going to Hollywood. A struggling screenwriting friend of mine once sold a script to be made by a bigtime director. The standard deal there is you get $75,000 at the time of sale (for the option) and another $75,000 after the greenlight, rewrites, etc. -- that's for a first-time screenwriter. I'm sure these established comics creators would get an advance for a proposal that's a lot bigger than my friend's to-be-revised completed script.

And didn't DC give Frank Miller a massive advance for the Dark Knight sequel? They're aware that advances do exist as a possibility, at least.

(I know that I'm mentioning successful comics writers, but it's a fucked up system that hasn't typically practiced the book model with hot comics creators.)