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Don't quit your day job
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America guild is considering allowing membership to people who create comics. They did a survey on how much comic creators get paid, and it's depressing:
https://www.sfwa.org/2021/08/17/surveys-comics-graphic-novelists-pay/
I'm looking really hard at that $9,400 median advance for a graphic novel. So basically, to earn full-time minimum wage (which is comically low), you'd have to sell two graphic novels every year. Neat.
Meanwhile, I was looking at the publisher's webpage for my book, and it apparently has more than 3.5k downloads. Directly from the publisher's page. At $45 for the ebook. I'm not sure if that's a lot for an academic monograph, but... I mean, I don't get royalties. I don't get anything. I got an $800 direct deposit, but only after delivery of the final manuscript. To put this in perspective, in order to deliver the final manuscript, I was responsible for paying $1200 for the cover image rights, $750 for copy editing, and $100 for indexing. Palgrave isn't a vanity publisher by any means, as the peer review to get this book published was a nightmare, but it is predatory.
In most Humanities disciplines at most R1 universities in America, you have to publish a monograph through an academic press in order to get tenure. I didn't get tenure on the technicality that my monograph publication date was "suspiciously" pushed back by supply chain issues resulting from the pandemic. Which is shit, and I think it's acceptable for me to be bitter about it.
Still, even if I had known that this book wouldn't get me tenure, I'm not sure how else I would have gotten it published, or whether it would be possible for me to have earned money from its publication.
I just don't think people make money from writing (or drawing) books. I guess it's cool that unions like the SFWA exist to fight the good fight, but I suspect that won't really change anything for the vast majority of writers and artists.
https://www.sfwa.org/2021/08/17/surveys-comics-graphic-novelists-pay/
I'm looking really hard at that $9,400 median advance for a graphic novel. So basically, to earn full-time minimum wage (which is comically low), you'd have to sell two graphic novels every year. Neat.
Meanwhile, I was looking at the publisher's webpage for my book, and it apparently has more than 3.5k downloads. Directly from the publisher's page. At $45 for the ebook. I'm not sure if that's a lot for an academic monograph, but... I mean, I don't get royalties. I don't get anything. I got an $800 direct deposit, but only after delivery of the final manuscript. To put this in perspective, in order to deliver the final manuscript, I was responsible for paying $1200 for the cover image rights, $750 for copy editing, and $100 for indexing. Palgrave isn't a vanity publisher by any means, as the peer review to get this book published was a nightmare, but it is predatory.
In most Humanities disciplines at most R1 universities in America, you have to publish a monograph through an academic press in order to get tenure. I didn't get tenure on the technicality that my monograph publication date was "suspiciously" pushed back by supply chain issues resulting from the pandemic. Which is shit, and I think it's acceptable for me to be bitter about it.
Still, even if I had known that this book wouldn't get me tenure, I'm not sure how else I would have gotten it published, or whether it would be possible for me to have earned money from its publication.
I just don't think people make money from writing (or drawing) books. I guess it's cool that unions like the SFWA exist to fight the good fight, but I suspect that won't really change anything for the vast majority of writers and artists.