What You Have To Know About Comic Book Publishing
Comic book publishing, like any kind of publishing, is a thing that requires a lot of intensive study. This thing you are reading could not even hope to encompass each and every little thing you would need to know in order to be an expert on the subject. Indeed, you would have to be even geekier than the target demographic of comic book publishers if you do not find the ins and outs of the whole thing boring. However, there are some basic things about comic book publishing that are easily grokked (that means "understood" for you non-geeks out there) by the average Joe.
Comic book publishing is done literally by hundreds of outfits great and small worldwide. Heck of a lot more than what is listed in Wikipedia, that much is sure. Some comic book publishers are veritable cultural and corporate giants, like Marvel Comics and DC Comics. If you ever knew anyone in school who made comics on his notebook and showed them to everyone in class. well that guy was or is not a comic book publisher yet. However, if he made and distributed copies, perhaps over the internet, then he would be a publisher, though not one of any consequence probably.
So basically, that would be it. Comic book publishing is making and distributing comics. What the hypothetical schoolmate did was to self-publish electronically, which is how a lot of material is published nowadays. For conventional paper comic book publishing, the process is of course, more difficult.
The way this happens is kind of like this. First a publisher has to acquire material Remember the major publishers we used as an example earlier? Marvel and DC in most cases use their own writers and artists, but on occasion will agree to buy work (under certain conditions) from outside artists and writers like Neil Gaiman, for example; most of what they will be doing is printing and distribution. Business models and publishing schemes will vary. Some comic book publishers will not even have a single artist making comics for them. Many people who make online comic do all the work of comic book publishing all by their lonesome. In any case when the work is all drawn up, written and edited, a few things can happen: the work is prepared for turning into a webcomic, in which case there is minimal fuss; all that will be left would be to apply web-marketing techniques. If it is to be printed, designs are made for the physical book ergo what glue will be used? Will the inks be soy based? What paper thickness will there be? Will we use holograms? So on and so forth. After the design details are worked out, the comic book is prepped for printing. In the old days, publishers usually had their own printing presses. Now it is much more common to use a "self-publishing service", a sanitized word term for a contractor who will do your paper printing and perhaps your packaging and marketing for you. The services of contractors are often used by small time comic book publishers to help them get started. Underground comics often make use of these services. Underground comic book writer and unlikely American subculture icon Harvey Pekar used these services to publish his popular comic "American Splendor", an anthology of which won the 1991 American Book Award. Comic book publishing can be a lot more complicated than this, and there are probably some points missed. However, always keep in mind that most of the time, it will not be marketing or publishing, but the quality of the material that will enable a comic book writer or artist to capture the imagination or to touch hearts and minds. The ability to do this is what gets people loyal follows of a comic, not the way you published the comic was published.
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