• This is part of an on-going blog series called “Being a Professional Manga Artist in the West“. The Table of Contents is here.
• You can buy my “Queenie Chan: Short Stories 2000-2010” collection as a $4.99 ebook. Get it from Smashwords, Amazon, Apple iBooks, Nook.

 

Part 1: Introduction

When people email me asking ‘how do I get published as a manga artist,’ they expect me tell them which manga publisher to submit to. Usually I end up telling them that there are no more publishers in North America who publish western manga exclusively, and even all the publishers I’ve worked for since 2007 are imprints of major book publishers (not comic book publishers). So if I’m going to give advice, it’ll mostly be for book publishers in the bookstore market and not comic book publishers, since that’s my personal experience.

Before I start, I ought to tell you that selling comics in the bookstore market is a different game to selling comics in general. In the bookstore market, you’re part of the book-selling world, a multi-billion dollar industry that dwarfs the comic book market. For that reason, comics and manga are treated as categories in bookstores, rather than mediums (what they rightfully should be) or even genres.

If you’ve ever seen an artsy indie comic being shelved next to Pokemon in a bookstore, I’m sure you know what I mean. It’s an on-going problem that isn’t going to change any time soon (even if big chain bookstores disappear).

Another problem is that unlike prose fiction, manga and comics are rarely created in advance. Most prose fiction writers will finish a book and then mail it off to agents and publishers, but manga artists don’t have that luxury. The costs of producing a comic is so large compared to prose, that few people hoping to get published will attempt it without first getting a publisher’s backing. This is something that definitely makes getting a manga published harder than other kinds of books.

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Anyway, this section of posts intends to cover the entire production process of creating a book, starting from submitting to a publisher, signing a contract, being paid an advance, getting the book edited, having the book ordered, having it shipped, and having it either sold or returned at the end. It’ll also covers any royalties you earn (85% of books don’t earn out their advance, and hence the authors get no royalties), which usually comes after all this. NB. If your work contract is a lump sum of money upfront, then it’s a work-for-hire contract and you never earn any royalties after. You also retain no rights to your work.

Along the way, I’ll try and cover any pitfalls, and what to be mindful of. This is especially important in the contracts section, because contracts are what have undergone drastic changes in book publishing. People have always signed bad publishing contracts, but it only extended to the book they’re signing for, and not to any other work the author produces aside from that book. These days, contract terms may cover what the author can or cannot do outside their book(s) for the publishers, so BEWARE.

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Next Wednesday, I’ll be tackling the easy part. Submitting the story you’ve written to a publisher, and how to compile a submission for an original manga.

• This is part of an on-going blog series called “Being a Professional Manga Artist in the West“. The first post is here.
• You can buy my “Queenie Chan: Short Stories 2000-2010” collection as a $4.99 ebook. Get it from Smashwords, Amazon, Apple iBooks, Nook.

 

Section 1: My Story – Being a Professional Manga-Style Comic Artist in the West

1. Part 1: Introduction
2. Part 2: My Publishing History
3. Part 3: How I Got Started – Drawing my own Manga Series
4. Part 3a: ‘The Dreaming’ Series (2004-2007)
5. Part 3b: The TOKYOPOP Manga Pitching Process
6. Part 3c: The Beginning of the End of TOKYOPOP
7. Part 4: Working as a Manga-Style Comics Illustrator
8. Part 4a: Manga was Either being Pirated, or Considered to be For Kids
9. Part 4b: Dean Koontz and the ‘Odd Thomas’ Series (2007-2010)
10. Part 4c: Manga Bit-Parts of Media Empires
11. Part 5: Comics-Prose with ‘Small Shen’ (2011-2012)
12. Part 5a: ‘I wanted 3 Days of Entertainment from a $10 Book’
13. Part 5b: ‘Manga comes in BOOK form?!’
14. Blog Aside: Never, Ever Work for Free. Ever.
15. Part 5c: Mixing Prose and Comics
16. Part 6: Taking Time Out to Wait a While
17. Blog Aside: Does OEL Manga ‘Sell’ or Not?

 

Section 2: Getting a Manga Published

1. Part 1: Introduction
2. Part 2: Submissions
3. Part 2a: Submission Policies
4. Part 2b: Putting a Submission together
5. Part 2c: Sending a Submission
6. Part 2d: Getting a Rejection from a Publisher
7. Part 2e: Dealing with a Rejection from a Publisher
8. Part 3: Agents
9. Part 3a: What is an Agent?
10. Part 3b: Why do Agents exist?
11. Part 3c: Where can a manga-style comic artist find an Agent?
12. Part 3d: WARNING: Unscrupulous Agents and Scammers Exist
13. Part 4: You got a Publishing Deal!
14. Part 4a: Dealing with a Publishing Contract
15. Part 4b: Firstly, What are you Selling to a Publisher when you enter into a Publishing Agreement?
16. Part 4c: What is Copyright?”
17. Part 4d: If I Sell an Exclusive License to a Publisher, How Long does that License Last For?
18. Part 5: Getting Paid – Publishing Advances
19. Part 6: Books Shipped and Books Returned (FINAL)

• This is part of an on-going blog series called “Being a Professional Manga Artist in the West“. The first post is here.
• You can buy my “Queenie Chan: Short Stories 2000-2010” collection as a $4.99 ebook. Get it from Smashwords, Amazon, Apple iBooks, Nook.

 

I’m putting this post up because last week I had a mild discussion with someone about the assertion that ‘OEL Manga does not sell‘. This person was replying to a post that someone else made with that statement, referring to a 2013 article called “The Problems of OEL Mangaka” by Nattosoup. To give some history on this post, this post went viral sometime last year (which I missed), and it appeared that this article had been misinterpreted and in some cases misread right from the start.

If you read the article properly, the gist of Nattosoup’s article isn’t really that ‘OEL Manga does not sell’ on principle, but that SHE HAS TROUBLE selling her manga-influenced Western comics to publishers and people at anime conventions. Most of her points are perfectly valid and not limited to manga-style Western comics, yet people still seem to take parts of her article out of context, going around declaring that ‘OEL Manga does not sell‘. So, I decided to write this post to try and give a more DEFINITIVE answer to the ‘OEL MANGA DOESN’T SELL’ statements people keep see floating around the Internet.

 

Does OEL Manga sell?

If your question is ‘Does well-drawn, well-written comics that have a manga-influenced style sell to readers in the West?’, then the answer is YES.

If your question is ‘Does manga-style comics sell to comic book publishers, or book publishers?‘, the answer is IT CAN HAPPEN, BUT NOT OFTEN.

If your question is ‘Does manga-style comics by westerners sell, just because they’re manga-style comics by westerners?‘, the answer is I DOUBT IT.

 

Does OEL Manga Sell to Publishers?

When people make statements about “OEL Manga doesn’t sell” on the Internet, 9 times out of 10, they’re referring to something an editor said to them when they pitched their work to a publisher. They’re not referring to readers in general.

Here’s the bad news: publishing isn’t really driven by what an editor likes or finds good, folks. Instead, publishing tends to be driven by things like trends, which genres/categories are ‘hot’, the ‘next big thing’, office politics and the need to MAKE MONEY. The “making money” part is especially important – publishing is a business, and if a publisher doesn’t make enough profit to cover their costs, they’ll be out of business.

Right now, the sales chart says that ‘Manga drawn by Westerners don’t sell well’, so a publisher will be exceptionally foolish to publish an OEL manga when they can publish something that’s from a better selling category. And no, you don’t get to decide what looks ‘manga-influenced’, and what isn’t. The publisher does, because they’re the one who makes that judgement call to publish you or not.

This isn’t a big deal though. Business comes in cycles. As a business, book-selling is subject to the ‘next big thing’ trends, and while this whole aversion to manga-influenced comics is deeply entrenched right now, it won’t always be like this. Trends change all the time.

 

Does Well-Drawn, Well-Written OEL Manga Sell to Readers?

Well-drawn, well-written stories, manga or otherwise, will always sell. They may not sell like gangbusters, they may not sell fast enough to satisfy a publisher’s requirements, but they do sell. The question is, what are your expectations, and how quickly do you expect to achieve them? People believe that the ‘magic powers of marketing’ will somehow turn them into the next JK Rowling, but you know what? JK Rowling only had 1000 copies of the first Harry Potter book printed back in 1997. That’s hardly a vote of confidence from her UK publisher, Bloomsbury – especially when 500 of these were given to libraries right off the bat.

There’s only one reliable way of selling anything, and that’s WORD OF MOUTH. And word of mouth can sometimes take years to generate.

 

Does OEL Manga sell just because it’s OEL Manga?

Of course not. In the nicest possible way, I must tell you that no one actually cares that you draw in a manga-influenced style. At least, not anymore.

I’ve been going to anime and pop culture conventions since 2004, and I can’t say that comics have ever sold particularly well in the Artist’s Alley. Con-goers almost never buy comics of any kind, mostly because they’re there for anime, merchandising and cosplay (or pop-culture, if it’s a general pop-culture convention). They also tend to ask ‘Can I read this online?‘, and if the answer is yes, you’ve got someone who’ll just go online to read your work. The expectation is that comics should be free and online, and piracy hasn’t helped either. (Next time someone asks you ‘is it online’ at a con, try saying ‘half of it is, but the rest you have to buy.’ Then watch them dance around, trying to figure out whether to buy your book or not).

That said, I go to conventions all the time in Australia (I get free tables), but 90% of my readers are American. Go figure. That said, as a group, they are readers, not really manga artists (wannabes or not). If you want to attract a paying audience, you’ll best pitch your work at readers, rather than fellow manga artists.

Manga artists (wannabes or not) spend most of their time drawing manga and trying to get people to look at their work. Some of them make good readers, but most of them don’t – they’re too busy drawing/writing (and trying to get people to look at their work). Readers are people who are interested in good stories, and will buy something if they want to read it and the price isn’t unreasonable. That doesn’t mean you don’t need to tell people about your work as a manga artist, but it does mean that the most important thing you can do is to tell a good story. There’s probably more to post on this subject another time, but for now, I’d leave it.

(Lastly, I’m fairly sure that the people who buy my books aren’t the same people who read these posts. I’ve gotten a bunch of ‘friends+’ on whatever website I’m posting this on, but I’m under the impression that few of these people are my actual readers. Some of my readers, it seems, don’t even bother joining websites. They bookmark and they lurk, and if they buy my work, they’re often do so without talking to me about it. Which is fine. It’s a different crowd. I’m grateful for their support.)

• This post is part of a on-going series called “Being a Professional Manga Artist in the West“. The first post is here.
• Buy my short story collection from Bento Comic’s Smashwords storefront @ US$4.99.

 

Part 6: Taking Time Out to Wait a While

When I finished ‘Small Shen,’ I spent some time off to do some soul-searching.

Having a look at my work over the years, I suddenly realised that I’d spent 5 of those 10 years doing illustration work for other people. The other 5 years was spent pitching to TOKYOPOP and drawing “The Dreaming” – something I enjoyed, but which was done ‘on spec’ (ie. I was asked to write a haunted school story).

That saddened me a little – I learned a lot by illustrating for other people, but it’s not what I got into comics to do. I’m a writer who draws, and I want to write and draw my own stories, not those of other writers, no matter how wonderful they were as people. However, I’d spent a decade of my life doing work for other people, rather than doing my own work. When I realised that, it hit me hard, because a decade is a long time.

From then onwards, I made a decision. From now on, I would only do work I wanted to do. I would only draw and write whatever I wanted, and since the amount of money I made as a pro was never all that much, I wouldn’t care if anyone wanted to buy/read it. I’d do it in my spare time, like most people I knew who did similar stuff, and if I get a publishing deal, then great.

Since then, I have drawn three chapters of a ‘comic-prose’ story, a fairy-tale inspired fantasy story. I had great fun creating it, and for the first time in years, I felt a certain kind of happiness I’ve missed. It was still hard work doing comics-prose, but it’s not as time-consuming as traditional comics. I decided to give that story to my agent to sell, but I promised myself that regardless of whether my story gets picked up by a publisher or not, I’ll continue working on it.

My agent pitched the story to a large publisher I’ve already worked with in August 2013, and got accepted. Unfortunately, even more has changed since the last time I scored a contract, because traditional publishing is now under-going another dreadful change – draconian contracts to fight the dreary economic times.

The editors I pitched to at a major publisher loved my work, but sales and marketing wasn’t sure of the comics-prose format. It was a risky thing to push in this climate, so they could only offer me a contract that wasn’t advantageous to me (from my point of view). I was offered a contract that was actually worse than the first publishing contract I ever signed – at least I got paid an advance for that. When I saw the new contract, it was for no advance, and with a 25% net profit.

My heart sank when I saw what was being offered. I’m quite knowledgeable about the accounting systems of the music and movie industries, and I knew what I was seeing. It has finally happened, folks. Book publishers have finally figured out how to count money like the music and movie industry.

(Conversely, if you have no idea what an ‘advance’ or ‘net’ is, you better read my next section, especially on contracts. A lot of people don’t understand contracts, or even money.)

 

 

For people who are curious, it appeared to have similar terms to one of these contracts, which is being offered by a big publisher. To be honest, most publishers these days have e-book only imprints, and this is one of them: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/03/06/note-to-sff-writers-random-houses-hydra-imprint-has-appallingly-bad-contract-terms/

I did some research, and reading the blogs of prose writers across the net revealed that this practice has been widespread since 2011. I was shocked and horrified – net profits in book contracts have always been notoriously difficult to define, and I have never worked without an advance. I couldn’t believe that this has become the standard for new writers. No one in their right mind would sign such a contract (but believe it or not, lots of people do)!

Anyway, I don’t have anything against traditional publishing houses. These are indeed difficult times for publishing, so I intend to sit back, self-publish for a while and see whether things turn around. The good news about me is that after working 10 years in publishing, is that by now, my expectations are realistic. Unless you win the pop-culture equivalent of the lottery, the truth is that most comic artists have day jobs, the same as most writers of prose fiction.

I’m proud to have worked with all the people I did, and produced the books I have, but having experienced what I have at the beginning of my career, I would never sign a bad contract just to get published again.

(Which is why I wrote this series of posts. It’s intended to be educational, so artists can learn to protect themselves, or at least be less clueless.)

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This pretty much concludes this part of the posts, so thanks for reading. For the next part, I’ll talk about how the book and comics publishing industries work, what to look for in terms of contracts, agents, editors, copyright, etc.