Making indie comics can be soul crushing, if you give a shit. Seriously, I just look to indulge a hobby of mine and make books nowadays. I’ve cut costs and kept it ‘doable’, but when I look back I sometimes have just a wee bit of regret for the cost. Not the content, the time, the other stuff…just the cost. And that’s with spending the limited amount I currently do, keeping the costs low, which most people doing indies would perhaps be shocked at.
I am not going into actual numbers here, but making comics is not cheap. Even at the level I am doing it the costs can add up, plus I have to deal with my worst employee…myself. At one point I realized I had 8 books (8!) with art finished and some in coloring (more on that later) that just needed letters and to be made ready to print, and so on. That’s all me, and I was behind 8 books. 8…books. That is a lot, folks.
Some indie creators come into this looking to make ‘A THOUSAND BOOKS’. No, really, we see one every few months, ready to become the next Disney…and he just needs your content and you will both be rich! Sigh…
Still…8. Well, now it’s more like 6 1/2, I did some work. But it’s all got me thinking about 2 things, and the first is to stop hiring people to do art for more books. Love you Jo, but I’ve got to stop.
Look, I used to really want to collect original comic book art, and I did. Now? That itch has been scratched and I’m ready to sell most of it off. Making comics is a lot the same for me. I now have 15 books in print and 8 more to come…I think I am done. These books still in the pipeline may be the last.
This allows me to also not worry about saying a few things about making books that others do not say out loud, like cost. Like page rates. Maybe I’ll get into all that, but for now I KNOW that I am on the tail end of making books.
