In Part 1, we chatted about writing a book; in Part 2, we talked about selling your comic book; and here in Part 3, award-winning comic book author Justin Hall talks about the changes faced by the publishing industry in the Internet age, as well as the still-uncertain intersection of comic books and mainstream publishing.
How has the comics industry changed along with the larger publishing industry?
It’s going to be interesting to see how that develops in the future, because I think a lot of that has to change. Comic books stores are going out of business, so comic books and graphic novel material are moving over into a mainstream audience. The mainstream is finally realizing that comic books aren’t just for children; it’s a medium that can used for any kind of story.
A lot of mainstream book publishers now are looking for graphic novel material, and this is a huge change. But it’s going to change the dynamic within the medium. Because if you’re going to survive as a cartoonist now, you’re going to have to start looking beyond the strange little subculture of comics, and look out to a wider audience and the bigger book publishers and be less underground.
You especially see that with queer comics. Gay comics have been even isolated even without the underground comic community. LGBT comics were only serialized in LGBT papers, carried in gay book stores, published by gay publishers; and now that that queer media ghetto is disintegrating, that whole little subterranean world of queer comics has to move out to the mainstream.
And some of them are doing that in a big way, like Allison Bechtel. She did Dykes to Watch Out For for 25 to 30 years in the gay media ghetto. But then she was able to create a graphic novel called Funhome which was named by Time magazine as the best book of 2006. Not just the best comic book, but the best book.
We’re going through the radical paradigm shift and no one’s really sure where we’re going to end up. And comics are going to be a part of that in some way. Where will the graphic novel land? Will it land on the iPad? We’ll see. In some ways, it’s positioned really well, because it has a visial component to it. In other ways it would seem kind of antiquated because it’s not interactive, it doesn’t move, it’s a static form. Who knows what’ll happen to it?
Do you think of yourself as both an artist and a business?
On one hand, coming out of the world of independent comics is actually a boon, because I’ve had to self-publish from the get-go.
For my first comic book, I had to draw up a business plan, and it took off from there. So I’ve always had to think of myself in those terms.
I’m doing bigger projects now that I really don’t want to have to be the primary businessman on, so I’m looking for publishers on a couple projects. I’ve done my time in the trenches of self-publishing. Even with having your own publisher, you still have to think of yourself that way. I’m actually excited about that, I’m happy about that. I like marketing my work; I like doing readings; I like getting out there and promoting stuff. What I’m terrible at is the math.
Coming out of independent self-publishing is a boon in that way. It’s probably different in the book market, where self-publishing is kind of looked down upon; but in comic books, self-publishing is kind of a badge of honor. It means you’ve done your time. It gives you street cred. You’ve done your time in the trenches.
How do the comic book and book-publishing industries get along these days?
It’s interesting seeing book publishers deal with the comic book market. It does function slightly differently, so I think having the self-publishing background is especially good in that circumstance. Because someone like me is in the position of understanding how the comic book market works, or at least part of it, so I can advise my publisher — if it is a book publisher — on how to function within this market.
For example, I was at this comic book convention, and this woman had just got a contract with a book publisher who’d never done a comic book before. And they gave her a certain amount of books to hand out at the convention, which I guess is a fairly common practice within book-publishing cons. Book publishing conventions tend to be more industry insiders that come, so it’s worth your while to hand out free material; but that’s not true of comic book conventions, where the majority are the public, so you don’t want to just hand those books out.
How carefully do you evaluate your marketing and business practices?
To be perfectly honest, I don’t count how much money I make at all.
I go to conventions with all of my change in a Wonder Woman lunchbox, and I don’t even count it before I go to these conventions. And then at the end of the convention I sell as many as I sell, and I pluck out the 20s from that lunchbox, and I bring it to the next convention. Which is just an accountant’s nightmare.
But it stops me from having to do math, and it stops me from realizing that the amount of money I make related to the amount of money I put in to this — I’m probably making child-labor wages.
Don’t do it for the money, for God’s sake.
So why do you do it?
It’s really kind of wonderful to not have to worry about what gives my life meaning.
Related posts:
- How to Sell Your Comic Book: An Interview with Justin Hall, Part 2 of 3
- How to Write Comics from the Mekong River to San Francisco: Interview with Justin Hall, Part 1 of 3
- Naughty Comic Book Author Justin Hall Gets All Hands-On
- Big Time Literary Agent Ted Weinstein Talks About Forming Your Own Nitty Gritty Literary Committee
- When is Taking an eBook Stealing?
I'm a writer and photographer in San Francisco, curious about how people can get away with writing all day while also being able to afford to buy groceries. 