If you haven’t checked out the Trip City site, you must. Besides some cool podcasts (Jonathan Lethem, Henry Rollins, etc.), there’s essays, comics and more from some of the same conspirators that formed Act-I-Vate. Dean Haspiel posted a essay today that has some interesting back and forth in the comments. Regarding the new reality in the industry: how do I get my comics ‘out there’? Things have gotten to the point for me where I’m leaning toward focusing on my stuff for a change. I’ve hit some of the same conclusions in the article but I’m at a loss as to how to best distribute this stuff out there… and turn some kind of a profit. Something. Kyle Baker chimes in a lot in the comments so it’s worth a read.
I do enjoy doing what I do, in comics, but I’m not coming at it from a purely hobbyist approach. That was never my intent. Some people are happy trading mini’s back and forth and that’s totally fine. I just want to give what I create the best ‘bang for the buck’.
Kyle Baker says: “Two of my biggest influences are Chuck D and Bill Plympton. The best advice I got from Bill is: Keep the budgets low. I never expected to get rich from a “Nat Turner” educational history book. I knew it wouldn’t be as popular as Batman. So I published it in Black & White on newsprint. It was profitable before the first printing of 3000 sold out. Because I’m cheap!”
You’ve got to have common sense and business savvy to try and navigate the comics market these days. Baker’s a good example of that.