New Comic Business
In the literal sense - I'm starting a comics related business with a friend of mine (who is also a comics person, but on the editing and journalism side).
What we're aiming to do is connect creators with people who can help them make comics. So, initially, this will be letterers, editors, and production people. In the future, we'd like to expand this to colorists, flatters, artists, accountants and, well, everything. The idea is that we'd be able to hook people up with people we've vetted, and (for the vendors) we'd handle them getting paid, customer service, etc. We're starting fairly small, so we can work out the kinks as we go without pissing everyone off.
(We've got some loftier goals, too, honestly, like providing a base for rates to give people something to compare to and what not. )
So the reason I'm posting this, here, is get a feel for what you guys think of this? Is this useful? What sort of stuff would make your lives easier? If you're providing services, does something like this sound half useful?
In case you're wondering: I'll be completely hands off with the actual client work. That's my business partner's purview, both for reasons of skillset and for avoiding any sense of ethics fuckery.
What we're aiming to do is connect creators with people who can help them make comics. So, initially, this will be letterers, editors, and production people. In the future, we'd like to expand this to colorists, flatters, artists, accountants and, well, everything. The idea is that we'd be able to hook people up with people we've vetted, and (for the vendors) we'd handle them getting paid, customer service, etc. We're starting fairly small, so we can work out the kinks as we go without pissing everyone off.
(We've got some loftier goals, too, honestly, like providing a base for rates to give people something to compare to and what not. )
So the reason I'm posting this, here, is get a feel for what you guys think of this? Is this useful? What sort of stuff would make your lives easier? If you're providing services, does something like this sound half useful?
In case you're wondering: I'll be completely hands off with the actual client work. That's my business partner's purview, both for reasons of skillset and for avoiding any sense of ethics fuckery.
Comments
THIS is why artists is later on that list. With editors, letterers and production folks, I know people that have enough stuff that I can get be confident with reason they will deliver. And there's some interchangeability there - if an editor or letterer doesn't work out, it's possible to switch, which is less true with artists.
There are some artists who I absolutely trust, but creating a vetting process there is going to be time intensive, and the risks are higher.
So we may never get there.
But the initial vetting process is having work to show, and references.
"This question really bakes into a larger question of: why does someone
need this service, vs going out and finding their own collaborators on
forums or Facebook? What's the value and unique selling proposition for
this business venture? "
Convenience and security. Part of the reason I'm involved (you know, aside from it being my idea) is that I have a reputation and I'm willing to stand behind this and stake my reputation on it. And money (to a certain extent).
So you can be assured you're not going to lose money and you're going to get what you pay for.
But convenience is probably a bigger thing. Even now, for me, I can put out a call on Facebook and get answers, but I don't have a place where I can go to find printers, or editors, or whatever. So, I'm going with the idea that this is the sort of service I would like and I don't see it existing.
The ideal form of this is that the website will have, basically, a tutorial on making comics (not necessarily from a craft stand point, but the nuts and bolts of 'How do you get from script to holding a copy in your hands') which would be useful on its own, and then you can use the service to make that happen.
Almost like a guild of services.
By the way, if you want help building the web site, or with hosting it: I do that. (And that might also be a production service to include.)
Well, in part. We are taking steps to minimize the amount of work on our end by making sure we can streamline our processes as much as possible, but, yeah, there's going to be surprises.
The response from editors I've talked to (two dozen or so) so far could roughly be summed up as "Fuck yes, please do this" so that end is promising.
If the writer doesn't pay (and we'll know, because they'll be paying US, and we'll have already paid the letterer) we just eat and expunge them from the system. To limit our exposure there, they're going to need to either pre pay or pay in reasonable chunks (we're not going to foot the bill for 1000 pages of lettering on your good name).
That's a financial risk, which is in the business model.
And to the website thing - I will probably take you up on it.
Right now the initial suite of services is probably going to be:
Editing (and this is a range of services from story dev to copy editing)
Lettering
Design and Production
Web Design
For sure the first three, probably the web design as well.
Beyond that, there's stuff we'd like to do, but we need to see if the above stuff is at all viable first. Those were chosen on account of being the ones where people can handle a higher workload, which gives us more flex.
I'd also like to find and vet some lawyers and accountants who would be interested in referrals, but that's down the road a bit. Likewise, making available pre made legal forms and stuff is something to explore, eventually.
Or rather, there's a host of stuff we COULD do but we're trying not to get ahead of ourselves too much.
Quoting us:
"Providing a standardization
of rates that will, hopefully, begin to impact the comics industry at
large over the next couple of years. No one works for free. No one works
for exposure. No one is paid less than a fair wage. Imagine if this
company takes off--slowly, people being approached for work will know that
most other pros are being paid X amount. It will become nearly impossible
to hire someone for less than that amount.
"
- One is the convenience of being able to find people who are pre vetted and easily access.
- The other is security, in a sense. You can feel safe that you're going to get what you're paying for or you will get a discount.
The letterer and client are actually free to cut us out of the equation - I'm not going to do anything to make sure they won't beyond offering something useful and hoping people view our cut as worthwhile. Likewise, from the vendor standpoint, we make sure you get paid, establish a rate floor and hopefully remove the hassles.
Some people are going to cheap out and just go around, I'm sure.
(Which again, is ALSO why I'm not doing this business thing alone)
I can see already established Image books taking advantage of this to make the wheels run better, not just people starting up.
But I'm not risking anything I can't afford to lose, so worse comes to worse, we shut down.