New Publishers in Comics – What to Watch For

In the last few years, we’ve seen a lot of new publishers launch or at least get announced. And just last month we got another new one.

Now let me start off by saying I’m all for new publishers and new tactics and new business models. Love the competition and love the innovation!

With that out of the way, let’s talk about what readers and creators should likely be looking for in these announcements.

For readers, it’s pretty simple. What kind of books are they going to do? Where and when will they be available? And what are they going to cost me for what I’m getting? Those are straightforward enough. For comics fans who know their stuff and pay attention to things like who is writing and drawing their books, I’d say who the creators involved are likely is of big importance.

I’d encourage readers to look a little deeper than that if they can spare the time and effort. One can learn a lot about a company by who they’re partnering with and what else they say they’re involved in besides publishing comics.

For example, about 15 years ago, Radical Entertainment announced their big graphic novel pushes with Hollywood writers and directors. Not much ever came out–an OBLIVION graphic novel was announced, but was never actually published. But I guess they did enough groundwork on it to sell the movie rights and make a Tom Cruise movie. Even with that level of star power and success, Radical closed its doors after just a few years.

Who is funding these publishers and to what end? Most people or businesses that invest in publishers know that publishing rarely leads to big returns on investment and almost never quickly. So, from that standpoint, publishing is typically a bad investment if all you care about is ROI (return on investment) and the time in which you can expect it.

What that usually means is that there’s more of interest than the publishing business itself. Typically, we think of publishers with big investors as IP (Intellectual Property) farms. What the investors are really interested in are the ideas and concepts and stories so that they can exploit them in other media or license them out or make merchandise, all of which has bigger ROI than publishing, typically.

The issue that tends to pop up in these companies is that the people running the publishing company are interested in publishing comics and graphic novels while the investors are interested in what they can do with the property in the comics–which tends to lead to investors wanting the comics to be made as cheaply as possible, and with an eye toward what would make a good movie, rather than making a beautiful comic with an eye toward what would make a great comic.

The above said, I’m not at all disparaging the people making the comics. Usually they’re all about the comics, and don’t expect the investors to assert as much control or pressure as they (eventually) do.

It leads to conflict within their ranks and usually some kind of fallout. Not every time, but more often than you likely realize. Because it happens a ton to publishers before they ever really get going and establish themselves.

So I try to encourage readers to look at the announcements and at least see if they can divine what the real goal is with the company. Is it to make comics or is it to make IP? And hey, great comics can come from a company interested in making IP, and great IP can come from companies that just want to make great comics. In fact, I’d say that’s more likely to happen because audiences and creators can smell an IP farm and what they’re smelling is that the people pushing the product (probably not the creators themselves) don’t really care about the comic. And who wants to read a comic when they don’t think the publisher cares about it?

Switching gears to creators and what they look for with new publishers, in addition to the above, is what are the deals with creators going to look like?

When I started CEX Publishing, I made it clear that we were a creator-oriented company. Part of the way I showed that was by NOT taking on outside investment. But also, and likely more importantly, by creating contracts that were what I would want to see as a creator. I asked myself what contracts I had been given as a writer that I liked, and what was it about them that I liked, and what was it about the ones I didn’t like that made me not like them.

And from there, I built a contract that favored creators over publisher profits. The deals are very important. As is the budget the publisher has. Again, using CEX Publishing as an example, without outside investment, our budgets and bandwidth were quite limited. And that’s been a constant thorn in our side. But we still think it was the right call because we get to work with creators whose work we love, who we enjoy being partners with and who enjoy working with us.

As a creator, you want to look for who you can trust in the industry and who is willing to put that trust in writing. And I’ll be the first to tell you, I’m resistant to changing my contracts for a single person. Not because I’m unwilling to make adjustments, but because we’re too small to be able to track every little change that someone asks for, but if they want something specific, we can usually make it happen, I just don’t want to be in breach because I forgot we changed the spelling of a word.

What rights is the publisher going to ask you to give up to do your book with them? What are they going to share with you? What do you get approval over? And here’s a big one, when (or at least how) do you get your rights back?

Publishers that I hope readers want to support are the ones who care first about the projects and their creators and then Hollywood is just in a “bonus category.” If it happens, great, but if it doesn’t, we’re not depending on it. And ones who offer fair and creator-friendly contracts and then carry through with how they behave with their creators. We’ve often made deals with creators that we don’t have to by the letter of the contract because it’s important that our creators understand and know, not just hope or even believe, but know, that we do care what’s best for them, and if we can make something work that doesn’t harm us, we want to be able to do that, even when we don’t have to.

So the next time you see a new publisher pop up, start looking for clues to determine what they’re about. There’s not a lot of money in comics, so where you spend your dollars makes a very real difference in the lives of creators. In the words of that super old Knights Templar dude in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: “Choose wisely.”

That’s my two staples worth…

Andy

If interested in creator-friendly comics, we’d love for you to check out our sister company, CEX Publishing and support the creators of any of our books by purchasing a copy or joining our newsletter.