Can Smaller Publishers Survive?

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Can Smaller Publishers Survive?
By Hervé St.Louis
March 4, 2006 - 00:21

Beowulf #1 from Speakeasy

On February 27, 2006, small Canadian publisher, Speakeasy Comics stopped all operations. Books solicited for March 2006 will still be published and shipped to stores, while nothing is certain for May, April and June titles. The announcement has led many industry pundits and fans to comment on the fate of smaller publishers. Blame has been put on publisher and founder Adam Fortier.

Other have compared Speakeasy with other companies that have ended. The main commentaries from all these sources is that publishing comics for the North American market is a difficult endeavour when one is not called DC Comics, Marvel Comics or Dark Horse Comics. Is there hope for smaller publishers like Speakeasy, and other smaller creators who want their book to be commercial business success?

Business or Art?

The problem of publishing comics is similar to that of any business endeavour. It takes a strong business plan where several exit scenarios are studied, an understanding of the market, ones, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. In the real world outside of comics, this is called a SWOT analysis. Yet, the previous sentence partly explains what is wrong in the comic book industry. It is an industry that is not considered as any other industry and thus excluded from rational business logic.

The chief appeal of comic books is their artistic merit. This artistic merit makes comic books one of the few art forms to communicate closely with its audience. The immediacy of comic books makes many fledging fans think that they can create comics too. More than that, any comic book fan can become an authority on this field overnight. Comic books are a democratic art form because of that. This is a good thing.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang From Crossgen

The problem with this populist art form, is that what makes good sense artistically, does not have to make business sense. In other words, the creative task of creating comics, should always be tied to business imperatives when one’s final objective is to make comic books that will be distributed through a commercial channel. In plain English, when one wants to sell comics where comics are sold, one needs to think like a business, not an artist.

Million Dollar Artists

However, I could hardly blame Adam Fortier of handling himself like an artist. The new generation of comic book entrepreneurs understands this, in most cases. Those who don’t like Dreamwave’s Pat Lee and Devil’s Due Josh Blaylock continue to maintain the myth that the artist can be a successful publisher. Publishers such as Viper Comics seem to understand this point very well. All creative tasks of productions are clearly separated from business tasks, such as marketing, sales and finances.

Yet, separating business from art seems like folly in the mind of many comic book publishers. In the case of a self publisher, this is harder to accept. There have been so many great examples of artists who have become great businessmen in the comic book industry and elsewhere, that for many hopefuls, it seems within reach.

Todd McFarlane, has become a millionaire by self publishing Spawn through Image Comics, an imprint he helped found. Many of his original associates, like Jim Valentino and Erik Larsen also succeeded. The creators of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird have created one of the early success stories in the North American comic book industry. Artists like Josh Blaylock had precedents.

Failure Is the Norm

Teenage Mutants Ninja Turtle #26

However, in comic books, as in everything else, for every success, popular beliefs hold that there are nine failures. Recent studies claim that 44% of new companies survive into their fourth year. * In this light, the demise of Speakeasy, Crossgen, Dreamwave and all the other publishers that have come and gone does not indicate that the comic book industry is flawed or incapable of generating successful smaller publishers. In fact the failures of all those publishers should be seen as positive market corrections.

Positive market corrections mean that bad publishers die out. Those with better marketing reach continue to exist. The market correction has nothing to do with the quality of the contents published by the publisher and everything to do with good business preparation and a little luck. As the publisher of The Comic Book Bin, I have to say that neither Speakeasy nor Dreamwave ever went out of their way to reach us.

The potential exposure of a Web site like the Comic Book Bin, may seem limited, compared with some of the best-known alternatives that cover the North American industry. However, neither publisher ever bothered asking us how much exposure we could generate. Speakeasy sent their press releases, but did not do any follow up or offer any incentives for us to do more with them. Neither did they reply to our offer to help a fellow Canadian company . . .

Why would they care about a Canadian-based comic book site? Remember the SWOT analysis above? One of the tools to determine a company’s strategy is to look for opportunities. As a Canadian outfit, we had a natural bias for them, but they never exploited it. There are all types of opportunities, but one needs a good business plan to identify them. Let’s do a complete SWOT analysis of Speakeasy Comics, from the little information available.

Strength

Self Publishing Formula from Devil's Due

Speakeasy had a unique line of comic books and a range of style unmatched by many publishers. Their books looked good. The printing quality of their books was also above average and certainly of professional standards. So much that upon reading Ravenous, one of their books, I once wondered what was their printing costs. Speakeasy also seemed capable of attracting great talents.

Weakness

Speakeasy’s staff was inexperienced in the business of producing comic books. On a technical side, they were adept, but for the business side, they were not well prepared. Most of the artists whose work was published by Speakeasy were unknown to the public. Retailers and customers had no track sheet of past projects to refer to. Making a purchase decision was a risk for Speakeasy’s customers.

Opportunity

There exists a large market of potential comic book readers outside of the traditional North American comic book industry. Reaching them in other formats is easier for a Canadian-based company than an American one. For example, Canadian book publishers can receive grants to promote their books overseas in expositions, such as The San Diego Comic Book Convention. There are many similar opportunities

Threat

Besides the consolidated North American comic industry, smaller comic book publishers have to compete for the limited discretionary entertainment budget of their customers. The competition is not Marvel Comics nor DC Comics. The competition is novels, video games, movies, cigarettes, action figures and café lattés. Is a Speakeasy comic book worth more to me than a café latté with some friends on a Friday night after work? That’s the question Adam Fortier and all other comic book publishers should ask themselves.

Back to The Drawing Table

Middle Man Volume II #1 from Viper

There are many opportunities for new comic book publishers and existing ones. Publishing books through the Direct market, headed by Diamond Comics is only one mean of connecting with the established audience that reads mostly super hero comics published by DC and Marvel Comics. Other distribution channels exist in North America and several other regions. It is up to the new generation of comic book entrepreneurs to identify them and ally themselves with able creators.

* Sources: "Survival and Longevity in the Business Employment Dynamics Database" by Amy E. Knaup, Monthly Labor Review, Volume 128, Number 5 (May 2005), pp. 50-6; "Redefining Business Success: Distinguishing Between Closure and Failure" by Brian Headd, Small Business Economics, Volume 21, Number 1 (August 2003), pp. 51-61.