How to Choose between Self Publishing or Publisher Company?

So recent I have choice to pull out of Zazu Zine + Comix Publisher in Oct 2019. This was not an easy decision to come up with, however, it did not sound good for my business. From the beginning, I kept hearing that we will not talk about sponsorship, distribution, and marketing until after we get comic done. As we where getting closer to the deadline for the submitting comic, we start to discuss sponsorship, distribution, and marketing a little.

The conclusion with sponsorship was that it was going to pay for start up cost of publishing and first round of prints of comic. I asked will we have continuously revenue coming in to pay for re-stock and marketing because if we divide up the revenue from sales to all artists, and publisher individual, than where will the money come for paying for re-stock and marketing? However, will you start up a company on the first project without investing money from product to keep it up? The answer I got was we will deal with it when we get there. That answer sound too much like “Lets wing it.” The publisher say that she will pull money from her other business to pay for marketing and more re-stock.

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So I made the decision to pull out because I don’t think this will be any different than publishing myself. Yes, I would not pay for the cost of publisher if I do that, however, I would we be doing more work to promote this publisher and not get much out of it. I believe a company need to invest in it self from the very beginning or it will not be able stand on it own very long. I also believe that many investor would not support a company that is not willing to create it own revenue coming in to keep it running.

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I have deciding to look into self publisher or another publisher company. I am working on writing out the first five chapter of Angie’s Adventures. My plan is to still plan for the release in Oct for Chapter 1. I will be looking at digital comics as well. I am hoping that I could get three Chapter done by Jan 2020. For I have plans to go to Mars Con Jan 2020 in Williamsburg, VA.

I would like to hear your thoughts on self publisher vs publisher company. I know there is more work and investing more money when it come to self publisher. However, I feel it is do able and I have the skills to market myself. Also, I would like to hear your thoughts on how long is a series you enjoy reading. I am looking into making Angie’s Adventure into a long series or break it up in parts. I am also thinking about making one shot comics for individual characters such as Fredrick and Alphonse background and Two-bit background. Fredrick and Alphonse story will be very different from Two-bit story. One will be very serious and the other will be more humor. One story will be around tragic and revenge while the other story will be around heart break and money.

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The good news out of all of this, I will be bringing more content to the viewer than what I had plan previous. Which Chapter 1, I will be able to add more papers to it than what I original plan under ZAZU.

Promoting Artist, Artist Awareness

The way the internet is today, it is hard for small entrepreneur and it is no different for artist. If you are a traditional artist who paint acrylic, oil, watercolor, or mix media; if you do not have money you cannot get into an Art Gallery. Gallery around the USA are high class clubs who draw sunflowers.

If you are comic book writer and you want Diamond Comic Distribution to publish your work in stores, then Diamond will only pay you $0.25 per comic sold which does not faction your print cost. No one want to work for pennies that is not fair.

And it is very hard selling your original work at comic con and anime con because people at these event want to buy fan art. Many artist get stuck spending so much time and money on created fan art that they cannot do the kind of work they would like to do. Art is a way of expressing one point of view so when an artist is stuck at creating work that they don’t want to create, than it turn into any other job and not working for what you love. And this is not just small artist, there are artist who work for Marvel that are stuck drawing heroes when they would like to explore other subject matter.

We need a new way of marketing artist, so I will invited Artist to reach out to me so I can promote them on my blog. This will provide more support and more people will be able to found them. Zazu Zine + Comix publishing is also will be promoting location artist to Virginia with video interview. The video below is an interview of two Artist from Galaxy Con 2019 in Richmond, VA. Zazu is focus on Virginia because Zazu is location in Richmond, VA.

However, for these who are not location, you can contact me on this blog and we can work out a digital interview and promote your art on this blog. The reason why I am doing this is because we need more artist awareness. There are many people who would like to know about new artist and new content.

Artist from Video:

  1. Ed Pokoj, Instagram @edpokojillustrator
  2. Kevin Spain, Instagram @kevinindieart

Reference links:

  1. www.zazuzine.com
  2. www.mariahargis.com
  3. https://richmond.galaxycon.com/