It’s always wonderful to see libraries embrace graphic novels, especially local graphic novels by Australia creators. For Aussie comic creators interested in getting their works into libraries through library suppliers, here’s my guide on how to do it. Don’t underestimate the importance of libraries to books and book culture–they and librarians (whether they’re public or school librarians) are very, very important!
Secondly, the comics site GlobalComix interviewed me for Women’s History Month on “The Dreaming” and a host of my other work, so many thanks to Jackson and Nen for doing that and the live broadcast.
For those who don’t know, GlobalComix is the successor to Amazon’s Comixology, where people can read and upload their own comics/manga/graphic novels. They have an app, and Image and Top Cow also publishes on there, so it’s a great place to check things out on.
“The Dreaming” is being republished in 2023 by IPI Comics, an imprint of Australian publisher IFGW Publishing! This story is a Lovecraftian take on the Australian classic “Picnic at Hanging Rock”, about twin sisters who attend a remote Australian boarding school where schoolgirls have been known to disappear.
The original story will have some minor rewrites/updates to suit a more modern audience, so it’ll have some new pages and redrawn art. There will also be a vol4, which will be a standalone story set in the same universe involving characters connected to some of the original characters, and hopefully the main storyline can continue in a part 2 after that.
Here is an interview with Soda and Telepaths about this, thanks to Anthony Pollock.
Here’s an interview with me from a while back, by Bettina Burger who is researching Australian Speculative Fiction. This interview was done before the rights to “The Dreaming” left the previous publisher, so what I say about “The Dreaming” will be different now that the circumstances are different.
I have an interview up with ALIA CYS Scoop, a newsletter for librarians. It’s on my work and also the Australia Comics & GN Database that I set up, and which is managed by ALIA librarians. Many thanks to Petrina for organising the interview and putting it up!
I have an interview with Jun Sugawara-san (and his translator Garrett Hudspeth) of Animator Supporters, who are a charity that supports underpaid animators struggling in the anime industry. Underpaying animators has been a long-time problem with the anime industry, to the extent where the industry could collapse, so here is Jun-san explaining why that happens.
This interview was conducted with a pre-prepared, bilingual Q&A document, so here is the full transcript with the original Japanese text. We didn’t cover the political aspect of underpaid Japanese animators, but that’s in the transcript. This interview was also hosted by the ACA, at their yearly Stanley Conference, many thanks to them.
I recently had an interview with Ervin and Nico at the Youtube channel “Shining Otaku”. It brought back the old days of my pioneering work on “The Dreaming” with TOKYOPOP, as part of the original wave of the so-called “Original English Language” (OEL) manga that was a hallmark of TOKYOPOP’s original manga program. See the video below for the interview.
The term “OEL” was always a problematic term because it excluded non-English speaking global manga artists. However, a bigger problem is that the term became popularised, and then acquired a toxic connotation due to what happened to TOKYOPOP in 2008 and after. Despite this, when the interview brought up the term “OEL v2”, I started wondering if the next generation of non-Japanese manga artists can reclaim the term and use it proudly as a badge of honour.
Since the rise and fall of the TOKYOPOP OEL movement, there has been a new generation of manga artists from around the world who are amazing artists and storytellers (many are interviewed on “Shining Otaku”). Sadly, they don’t have a single banner to unite under, though that can always change.
Instead, due to a lack of print publishing venues, many of them have gone on to create webcomics for Webtoons and Tapas. This is not in itself a problem, but it is something that troubles me, because the same issues of creator exploitation and low pay plague these publishers much like they did back in the days of TOKYOPOP. Only now, they seem worse.
The Problem with Webtoons VS Traditional Print Manga
I’m currently doing a PhD at Macquarie University, and part of my dissertation is on Capitalism, Webtoons and Creative Labour. While I don’t have a problem with Webtoons existing as a platform, and I laud it for its ease of use and accessibility, I can’t argue that it’s a good place for creator rights. Nor are artists properly compensated on it for all the work they do, even as options for payment exist via advertising and Patreon–neither of which involve money paid directly from Webtoons.
In fact, all the research I’ve done on it only highlights the difficult situation of the creative labourer in a globalised digital economy. And this trend only seems to worsen, as the online scene becomes over-saturated with free-to-read manga/comics material, which has the overarching effect of driving artist earnings down across the board.
Thanks to the ease and popularity of the Webtoon free-to-read model, this “produce work for free on Webtoons and hope to get picked up as a paid author” approach has been the dominant mode of publishing for many younger western manga artists. After TOKYOPOP crashed and burned after 2008, the western manga dream seems to have shifted from print-book sales to online views–which unfortunately has become something of a disappointment when it came to financial returns, since earning decent money on Webtoons remains a dubious proposition.
As far as I can tell, while there are certainly success stories, earnings via Patreon and advertising can vary wildly from month to month–assuming you can even get readers who are willing to donate to you. Artists can’t get paid decently via Patreon if your readers don’t care to support you, and earning through advertising is very inconsistent, due to the popularity of ad-blockers and the differing pay rates depending on the region of the world your readers are from (boy, I have a lot to say about how advertising pays on Webtoons, none of it nice).
I would never tell anyone to not publish on Webtoons, so long as they’re aware of the risks and have a sound level of expectations. However, recent events in Japanese manga-publishing has seen the Webtoon model shakened, and I’m not so certain about recommending Webtoons as the dominant platform for young artists anymore.
Big Japanese Manga Publishers Hit Back
While Webtoons has been conquering the online manga sphere for the past 2 decades, the big four Japanese manga publishers have been playing catch-up. Initially slow to take to the free-to-read online model, the big Japanese publishers prefer to make the bulk of their money through print volume sales (print magazine sales have long been a loss leader), and seem to want to keep it that way. Part of the reason is the desire to keep production and distribution chains for physical books intact in Japan, although the gradual rise of e-manga sales since 2014 as a portion of total manga sales may have pushed them to adapt. Still, there have always been smaller Japanese publishers who experimented with the free-to-read online model since the start of the internet, though it wasn’t until recently that the manga industry have hit back hard with a new model via the Jump magazine online off-shoot Shounen Jump+ (launched in 2013).
One may think that free-to-read manga doesn’t exactly galvanise print or ebook sales, but Jump+ has proven that to be false. This has been made blatant by the recent massive print volume sales of series such as “Spy x Family”, “Kaiju No. 8”, and “DanDanDan”–all free-to-read manga on Jump+–only one of which has an anime adaptation at this point. This not only proves that free-to-read online manga can sell actual manga print volumes (and e-manga), it proves more than that: the opening week sales of the Jump+ series (hundreds of thousands) utterly outsells that of newer series from the Shounen Jump print magazine (mere tens of thousands). Conventional wisdom isn’t just dead–it has been completely overturned.
(That’s not to mention the 500,000+ sales of “Takopii’s Original Sin“, a 2-volume manga that under the previous model would have sunk without a trace. Instead, it became a viral internet sensation that caused actual volumes to fly off actual shelves.)
All My Predictions From a Decade Ago Was Wrong
This news shook me, because it shows that the publishing wisdom of “e-books are the future”–a common refrain from 2011–have not come to pass. Now that we’re all a decade older, e-book sales have steadied as a percentage of total sales and print books are still around, and Lord knows, print books is and always have been where the money is (at least outside of Japan and Korea, which have cultures of e-manga consumption possibly due to limited space in people’s houses. In the US & Europe, e-comic sales barely top 10%, though data for China is missing).
I stand gob-smacked at all the things I’ve gotten wrong. A decade ago in 2011, I lamented that the old school Japanese publishers are not tech-savvy, and will fall far behind and lose their readers to the Korean Webtoon tech mavens. Five years ago in 2017, I praised western manga artists who jumped onto the Webtoon band-wagon with their full-coloured stories produced in the Webtoon vertical-scrolling format (which unfortunately makes it difficult to re-format for print), thinking that it was the way of the future.
Now in 2022, it’s been proven in cold, hard cash that print is far from dead. The Japanese publishers weren’t wrong in moving at a glacial pace–it may be that as book publishers, they understand that what really sells books is not speed in heading to the market, but good, timeless stories that people will still want to read decades later. Case in point: “Dragon Ball”is available to rent on Jump+, despite that series ending in 1995. There are many people alive today paying to read “Dragon Ball” despite being born years after the series’ original run, but more importantly, it proves that there are now many ways to e-monetise an existing manga that weren’t possible before. “Dragon Ball” still sells print volumes, but it also sells e-manga, and money from e-rentals also count. Previously, publishers weren’t able to profit the manga rental market, but now they can with the internet.
More than that, encouraging fledgling young artists to go onto Webtoons might have been a mistake. While there have certainly been success stories on Webtoons, they are hardly the norm–it would seem that those with the first mover advantage in Webtoons netted most of the benefits back in 2015, and anyone joining Webtoons in 2022 are probably struggling to be seen. Webtoons are also usually in colour and formatted in a way that ill-suits a printed book, two things that makes the “web to print” plan difficult (or even “web to e-comic”–the current Amazon Comixology reader still requires a page-by-page layout). Patreon and advertising money also haven’t panned out as hoped, due to over-saturation and the ease of anyone uploading their own work–though Webtoon needn’t worry, as they have an infinite supply of wannabe artists who will replace anyone who drops out.
There’s not much to conclude from this semi-long spiel, except that the battle for the future of being a paid manga artist is far from settled. What was conventional wisdom in 2011 is no longer wise in 2022, so I loathe to make any more predictions. There is much to be said on this subject, and I hope to place everything relevant from my PhD online once it’s completed in May 2024.
Edit (20th July 2022): Well, seems that Webtoons caught on faster than I did! In this piece of news from Publishing Weekly, “Wattpad Webtoon Launches Print Graphic Novel Imprint” will see Webtoon launching a new graphic novel imprint called Webtoon Unscrolled that will start publishing in September 2022! Now I have to update my PhD on Webtoons yet again!
The NBN has come and gone the Internet seems to be working so far… hopefully it stays working so there won’t be any problems. On the other hand, this post will be the second-last one. The next one after this will address royalties and returns – and then Section 2 (about manga publishing) will end, and I’ll be getting back to drawing my next story!
This is part of an on-going blog series called “Being a Professional Manga Artist in the West“. The Table of Contents is here.
My comics-prose stories “Short Ghost Stories: The Man with the Axe in his Back” is available on Smashwords and Amazon. Read more at this link.
Part 5: Getting Paid – Advances
When people talk about publishing contracts, the first thing that comes to mind is probably money. How much will I get paid, and how will I get paid?
Money’s obviously very important, but the general answer to that question if you’re a manga-style artist in the West is: “Not that much,” and “in chunks.” Usually, the money you get is paid in 3 parts – once on signing the contract, once when you’ve reached a milestone, and once when the project is complete. Regardless of the sum, the money is called an ‘advance’, and regardless of whether it fulfils the normal definition of an ‘advance,’ (like in the event of work-for-hire), the money will usually be called an advance.
The first thing you must know about an advance that a lot of people don’t know:
An advance is technically a loan.
That’s right. It’s not ‘free money,’ or ‘payment for your writing of your book which we are now going to license the rights and then publish.’ The money you get paid upfront… isn’t actually yours, though you get to keep all of it, even if your book doesn’t sell well. However, if you screw up your end of the deal and don’t deliver your book on time (or to the publisher’s satisfaction), then the publisher has the right to demand the advance money back from you. Usually they’re highly unlikely to do so, due to the time and costs involved, but sometimes they may.
The advance is money the publisher lends you, in the expectation that you’ll have something to live on while you’re working on your book. When the book is done and published, the publisher fully expects you to repay that money. In other words, if a publisher advances you $10,000 to do your book, your book is expected to earn them that $10,000 back – not through the money they make, but through the money you make.
How?
Well, I’m sure you’ve heard of this thing called royalties. I’m sure you’ve heard that writers (and musicians, etc) get royalties from publishers, which are a small percentage of the sale of each book. Typically, royalties are 8-10% of the list price (15% for hardcovers). This means that if your book’s retail price is $10, then you’ll earn 80c to $1 for each copy of your book sold.
You are expected to earn your advance back through royalty payments, before you’ll see any actual royalty cheques from your publisher.
MATH TIME!
Say I wrote ‘Awesome Story,’ and I sign a publishing contract with QC Publishing to publish the book. The advance was $20,000 at a gross royalty rate of 10% of the list price. The book will be sold at $10. The book just got published.
Question: So, how much royalties will I be getting right off the bat?
Answer: NONE. I’m in the hole to QC Publishing for $20,000, due to the advance they paid me. An advance is a loan, remember? It’s money I technically owe QC Publishing, which I have to recoup for them.
Each copy of ‘Awesome Story’ sold at $10 gets me $1 per copy. If I sold 1000 copies of ‘Awesome Story,’ then I’ve made $1000 worth of royalty money. Take that out of the $20,000 I owe QC Publishing, and I still owe $19,000.
Anyway, I need to sell 20,000 copies of ‘Awesome Story’ before I will see a single cent in royalties. If I don’t sell those 20,000 copies, then I’m in debt to the publisher, and the publisher may not want to publish my next book.
This is why 85% of all books don’t earn back their advance. It’s because not that many books will sell consistently over 20,000 (this is too small a number, actually).
Now, if ‘Awesome Story’ sold only 18,000 copies, QC Publishing is highly unlikely to ask for that remaining $2000 back from me. It’s simply a dick move, and no publisher does it because it’s unfair. Once a publisher pays an advance, the author usually keeps all the money, regardless of the outcome. However, nobody will be impressed when they look at your royalty statement either.
But hey! The Publisher lost money too, right? They took a risk and paid me $20,000, so they lost $2000 on the gamble, right?
Not necessarily.
Retailers take a 40-60% cut of a book’s retail price, so if a book is sold for $10, then $6 go to the retailer (whoever it is). The remaining 4% will be split between the publisher, publishing costs and the author. If the author gets $1 per book, the publishing house gets $3, which has to cover printing, shipping, warehousing, cover design, formatting, copy-editing and all the overheads of running a publishing house.
Anyway, assuming I sold 18,000 copies of ‘Awesome Story,’ then it means my publisher grossed 18,000 x $3 = $54000. Did they lose money? Depends. Generally speaking, publishers calculate print runs through mathematical formulas that will give them an idea of how many copies a particular book will sell. They will usually print a number of copies close to how they think the book will sell, and they will definitely make sure they’ll recoup their costs. The number of copies they print of a particular book isn’t a wild stab in the dark. It’s calculated to ensure that the publisher at least breaks even. If they don’t do that, they’ll go out of business real soon.
*****
Next Wednesday – royalties and returns! Last post on this!
