The Small Press Blues

It’s tough running a small press.

I’ve got some experience with it, having helped self-published a couple of anthologies, and it’s nothing I’d want to go into full time. A lot of it is fun. If you’re also the creator, it’s an amazing feeling seeing your work evolve and become a bona fide book. It’s even kinda nifty promoting it to whomever will let you. What sucks though, is the money. It’s expensive as hell.

The biggest cost is getting the book printed. Print on demand has helped out a lot in this area, but it’s still not cheap. And you pay for every book they print, even the ones you can’t sell because they got ruined in the shipping process. Every review copy you send out is money out of your pocket that you hope you can consider a good investment when you get a positive review. Of course, there’s no guarantee of that. You like your book. Your mom liked your book. Your friends like your book. But will Alan David Doane? Will Johanna Draper Carlson? Will Steven Grant?

Once you’ve weeded out the ruined copies and the review copies and any free ones you want to give to your mom and your friends for being so supportive, you’ve still got to sell the ones that are left over, ‘cause they sure aren’t doing you any good sitting in a box in your closet. Are you going to use a distributor who will take still more money from you, but will get your book into more shops? Or will you try to sell it on your own, saving money but dramatically increasing the likelihood that the box in your closet is going stay full? Conventions are great places to sell comics without a distributor, but even then you have to rent a table or booth and have travel expenses and hotel rooms to account for.

You can see how small-press folks get stressed out over this stuff. It’s not an endeavor you want to go into half-assed. And just like in every other aspect of life, there are different ways of coping with that stress, some effective, some not so much.

Johanna pointed out the other day a story about a small-press publisher who dealt with a bad review by suggesting that the critic remove it from the website. When the critic refused, the publisher called her unprofessional and a Nazi (amongst other names). Not a particularly effective stress-relief technique seeing as how the incident was quickly shared from blog to blog and now the only thing that comes up when you Google the publisher’s name is accounts of her ridiculous behavior. I’m not thinking she’s going to be emptying the box in her closet any more quickly out of infamy.

That publisher’s not a comics publisher, but her business is similar enough to that of small press comics publishers to make it worth bringing up. This kind of thing happens in comics too. Though infinitely more polite than the previous publisher, comics creator and self-publisher Saul Colt suggests that “it would do more for the industry to NOT mention bad reviews.” Which, of course, is ridiculous from the critic’s standpoint, but you can see how it would be tempting for a small-press publisher to wish it.

I bring all of this up because of how refreshingly creative I found one particular small-press publisher’s coping technique this week. In a business where every dollar is precious, Best Friends Productions is seeking sponsorship by whoever will pony up. In return for help with convention expenses, Best Friends will use their table to promote the sponsors’ products or projects.

Now, I don’t know if this is a good idea. If Best Friends is just selling ad space in their comics, that’s one thing, but I’ve got this image in my head of a something that looks more like a NASCAR racer than a convention table. Whether or not it’s a good idea isn’t my point though (though I’d love to see discussion on it). My point is that Best Friends isn't whining about how people need to make its job easier out of “respect” for the industry. The publisher's trying to figure that out for itself. I like that way of thinking and even if this isn’t the idea that does it for them, maybe the next one will be.