| word from publisher is the opinion column Pedro F Medina †@Studio_Kato), editor-in-chief, responsible for licensing and social networks fandogami and a journalist with the face of an undisguised entertainer in comic book and manga events. |
I’ve been away from the keys for a few days. At least those that are creative are the ones that force me to think a little. My 2022 really starts in March. For the past few weeks, I’ve been working in automatic mode with my calculator in hand, counting the VAT, the personal income tax, the model 340, the amounts of strips sold to pay royalties, justifying some of our projects we bought last year. promise. ..and ‘absolutely’ taking into account that to take on new things we know will work what’s left and risk others who are pure delusions. Certainty is in quotes because you never know what will be better or worse in this box until you post it. but you feel like you haven’t wasted the money, and eventually, even if it takes years, even if you have to wait for an animated series based on the comic book you’ve approved to start, it will eventually return to the treasury. You even win something.
Numbers, huh? What a son of a bitch.
I always knew, but during the pandemic I realized that what you don’t see or talk about on social networks because my REAL editorial work is part of behind the scenes, professional transfer and dirty laundry is keeping money in the box to get “one more sliver”. When the month is over you pay the salaries and you have to print the next batch, all is well. At the end of the year you should have paid enough advances to continue feeding the big machine. When you close the financial year and invest enough to release more the following year and liquidity, blessed liquidity, you can feel like a god.
At least if you want to live with it. If you’re streaming for a hobby or pure art love, who cares what you buy? Publish your spins and assertions when and how you want. But if you need income to keep paychecks coming, then whatever the wheel is, whoever falls can’t stop. There comes a time when you become a part of the system even if you swear that it will not happen to you. You can find another distribution method, sell directly to bookstores at your own risk, target your business in a thousand ways, which is ultimately one of the two: either you quit because it doesn’t go any further and you get tired, or you become another cog in the “industry” that produces more. No courage, no victory, no pain, no gain.
The B-side to cultural comics production is that the balance between income and expense is relentless. This is so with everything that the verb “produce” implies. Have you ever tried Red November? It is a cooperative board game where you play as a group of dwarves who manage a crumbling submarine. On each turn, you must choose the most effective path to avoid damage that will send you to the bottom of the sea. There are shutters clogged, rooms flooded, missile systems fired up and fires all of a sudden… Pressure gauges, temperature gauges… you have to watch out… a few hasty decisions and everything is going to hell. Best analogy I’ve found in the publishing world. Always with one eye on the iron and the other waiting for a hurricane to suddenly appear and send everything to hell. Whoever says it’s the editor’s job to rent licenses and proofread is privileged, so I always write from the dark side. Here you always have to plug holes and dig shit. It’s not a very nice job and you have to be the best at what you do or get as close as possible because the market is not calm and the public will buy whatever you want, even if they tell you it is. pull. spoiler: it’s a lie.
Money. You need a lot of things to make them all work. How much? It depends on how much you plan to earn and the more you post the more you earn, huh. Also, the more you post, the more you can lose. It’s a matter of having an eye, a marketing plan, a rough idea of how marketing works, hiring professionals, and not letting Madame Fortuna screw you. Usually the day you publish something new, the Queen of England doesn’t die or the event where you put thousands of pounds isn’t swept away by torrential rains. Back to the topic, how much? If my numbers help you, we started Fandogamia by investing $10,000 (which we’ve accumulated after eight years of self-publishing) and made a living. We spent a long time demanding nothing, just investing and reinvesting in capital. And learn. We did the same thing we did when we were fanzines, but in the premier league. Today we continue to learn, but we have more money to play and stock to stop thirty cars. To my ears, it sounds like stock, but it’s of no value until I find someone willing to buy it (whether it’s a novelty or something from the back of the catalogue). Just like NFTs, but with 1000% less fraud. I would say as art, but all art has at least 25% scam built in by default. Therefore, it is better to say that books are products: This is absolutely true, and no one can say that you are planning to scam him. You didn’t force them to buy it, and they don’t because they think they can sell it for a higher price later on: They buy comics because they like them and want to consume, collect, or own. Better to clarify this.
Maybe that’s my main job. Create need until people shut up and ask me to take their money. I wanted to tell good stories and what I’m telling in the end is bitches that come and go. As a publisher, as a professional, I hope to contribute something to sell my comics. There will come a time when you doubt. I doubt. At the Twitch director where we started CARTONES DOGS croufando, I asked the authors why they broadcast with Fandogamy, if they could crowdfund what they put on the networks and that’s it. It is secondary to the fact that the public is predominantly on the Internet and then there are those that are sold in bookstores. And they were very sincere in their answers:
“You move boxes like that, that’s the ugly thing.”
They would definitely say it a little longer with exclamations and some jokes, but that’s the gist of it. Publisher boxes move material. A reductionist view? Not much. I have said before that we have done a lot in this work, corrected it a thousand times, agreed with each other, put together the terrible pages that took hours, sent information to the press, made additions and subtractions, and we took a sigh of relief when we saw this. arrow pointing up this month chart. There are new challenges coming up every day, but there is one thing we do all the time: Move the damn boxes full of comics that host a quintet. I’m not complaining, because moving boxes and making money go hand in hand: The more empty packages we recycle and the more packages go out, the more money goes into accounts. This is perfect. Pure magic.
Whoever you are, whether you have committed or planned to do something in the tebeancia sector, whether we know each other or not, we have begun to breed in networks, or at least we have this or that participation figures jointly or separately. In an event where you shared a hotel room or laughed at the same joke on Twitter, I wish you the best: many boxes.
