Taking Back the Means of Production
Oct. 14th, 2020 08:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingComrade Himbo: Send Us Your Comics
https://pome-mag.com/comrade-himbo-a-call-for-submissions/
This is a very clear set of submission guidelines that probably isn't an interesting read for anyone except me. I copied the entire thing into another document to use as a reference for potential future projects of my own, because it's quite good.
I'm especially interested in the compensation rates. What they're offering seems like it's on the low side to me, but it's important to keep in mind that this is a very small press run by volunteers that's basically going from Kickstarter to Kickstarter. It's also important to keep in mind that the shipping costs for ten books are not negligible, especially if they're being mailed overseas.
I ran across a Twitter thread the other day about how artists should expect to be paid well because art is a luxury. I agree in principle - of course I do! - but I think this is a bit trickier in practice. I'm going to say that, in the United States at least, the New York Times (and its subsidiary magazines) set the industry standards for illustration rates. If you're curious, this rate is about $1,200 per color illustration, with some artists being paid a bit less and some artists being paid quite a bit more. As you can imagine, however, not everyone can afford to pay artists on the same scale as the New York Times.
So you run into a Catch-22 situation. Artists should be paid at a fair rate, because of course they should; but, at the same time, it's clearly discriminatory to say that only people who have the money to pay artists at the industry standard set by giant corporations should be allowed to publish.
This Catch-22 has been keeping BIPOC and LGBTQ+ presses and creators out of mainstream publishing up until this very day. To summarize a complicated story, presses aren't allowed to exhibit at most publishing industry trade conventions unless they can prove that they meet certain standards regarding creator contracts. A small press that only publishes, say, crowd-funded anthologies of queer comics from emerging creators is not going to be able to offer the same contracts as, like, a member of the Hachette group - and so they can't exhibit. This is one of the reasons why, for example, even extraordinarily successful small-press publications are never going to be in most bookstores (or their websites).
Publishing is a tricky business, and I don't think it's a reach to say that most small presses don't go into it for the money. I guess what I'd like to argue for is a better sense of scale, as well as a more nuanced understanding of the necessary balance between compensating creators and not hemorrhaging money. Essentially, if you want to support minority and independent creators, you also have to support the independent presses and editors that publish, distribute, and promote their work.
https://pome-mag.com/comrade-himbo-a-call-for-submissions/
- This is a paid project. We will be paying $50 USD/page per creative team for each selected black and white comic, and $100 USD per each selected one-page color illustration.
- In addition to payment, we will provide 10 comp copies for comics submissions and 5 comp copies for illustration submissions for contributors to sell or distribute however they want.
- In addition to payment, we will provide 10 comp copies for comics submissions and 5 comp copies for illustration submissions for contributors to sell or distribute however they want.
This is a very clear set of submission guidelines that probably isn't an interesting read for anyone except me. I copied the entire thing into another document to use as a reference for potential future projects of my own, because it's quite good.
I'm especially interested in the compensation rates. What they're offering seems like it's on the low side to me, but it's important to keep in mind that this is a very small press run by volunteers that's basically going from Kickstarter to Kickstarter. It's also important to keep in mind that the shipping costs for ten books are not negligible, especially if they're being mailed overseas.
I ran across a Twitter thread the other day about how artists should expect to be paid well because art is a luxury. I agree in principle - of course I do! - but I think this is a bit trickier in practice. I'm going to say that, in the United States at least, the New York Times (and its subsidiary magazines) set the industry standards for illustration rates. If you're curious, this rate is about $1,200 per color illustration, with some artists being paid a bit less and some artists being paid quite a bit more. As you can imagine, however, not everyone can afford to pay artists on the same scale as the New York Times.
So you run into a Catch-22 situation. Artists should be paid at a fair rate, because of course they should; but, at the same time, it's clearly discriminatory to say that only people who have the money to pay artists at the industry standard set by giant corporations should be allowed to publish.
This Catch-22 has been keeping BIPOC and LGBTQ+ presses and creators out of mainstream publishing up until this very day. To summarize a complicated story, presses aren't allowed to exhibit at most publishing industry trade conventions unless they can prove that they meet certain standards regarding creator contracts. A small press that only publishes, say, crowd-funded anthologies of queer comics from emerging creators is not going to be able to offer the same contracts as, like, a member of the Hachette group - and so they can't exhibit. This is one of the reasons why, for example, even extraordinarily successful small-press publications are never going to be in most bookstores (or their websites).
Publishing is a tricky business, and I don't think it's a reach to say that most small presses don't go into it for the money. I guess what I'd like to argue for is a better sense of scale, as well as a more nuanced understanding of the necessary balance between compensating creators and not hemorrhaging money. Essentially, if you want to support minority and independent creators, you also have to support the independent presses and editors that publish, distribute, and promote their work.
no subject
Date: 2020-10-20 09:50 pm (UTC)I think it's also complicated because many small presses are, ah, a complete dumpster fire - I have watched the meltdown of a few from various distances and it's genuinely astonishing what bad actors some people running presses are, or what grade of completely incompetent. Publishing is a hard business, but there's a reason something like Writer Beware never runs out of material. I've bought a fair bit from small presses, but I always keep a backup copy for when the outfit goes kaput so I can strip any DRM.
no subject
Date: 2020-10-20 10:56 pm (UTC)Yes yes yes yes yes, a million times yes. Good lord. Yes.
I now take assignments through an agency and don't do freelance translation anymore, but I did a lot of work I never got paid for back when I was just starting out. If you remember Tokyopop, for example, they were especially shit about commissioning work that they would never pay for and might not ever even publish.
At the time, I thought it was just the manga market being unstable, but now I'm older and (somewhat) wiser and understand that a lot of small presses don't devote the necessary resources to accounting and good business decisions. When I read last month that First Second severely underpaid the artists who contributed work to the NYT bestselling Adventure Zone graphic novels, I was like, That really sucks, but sounds about right.
Still, for the past five or six years I've been continually impressed by how "small presses" that are basically three friends with a website manage to pull off incredible Kickstarter campaigns with thousands of backers, all while managing to pay their contributors a fair and reasonable wage while avoiding debt.
This, along with a healthy fear of even so much as reading Writer Beware (which I stopped doing around 2018 or so), is what inspired me to stay away from professional publishing. Even now, when I'm thinking about contacting an agent, I'm just like...
...maybe it's not even worth it, or at least not without the solid backing and connections I currently have no idea how to acquire. But still, as you say, it's complicated.
*deep sigh*
no subject
Date: 2020-10-21 08:04 pm (UTC)*deep sigh* indeed.