I had a conversation with someone a while ago about my self-publishing experience, and after reading about other people’s experiences, it made me realize how unique it can be for everyone who has been brave enough to attempt this. Here’s how it went for me, be scared or be dared!

Like most cartoonists, I started out with zines throughout high school and college. I would spend hours at the photocopy shops, carefully laying out my pages, photocopying the reverse sides, assembling, stapling and folding them. Then I would go out and about to sell them, doing my usual rounds in zine-friendly stores in Ottawa and Montreal. When this website first went online in 1999, I started selling them online and actually got a few orders! But by then, my interest and available time for making zines started to wane as I started working full time in web and graphic design.

I decided to start again slowly with an online comic, with the help of another underground artist who has a serious inclination towards gory comics. Once our strip reached the page count of a full print comics pamphlet, I decided to put it in print.

The adventure began at that point. I had prepared all the pages into a print-ready layout and created a few versions of the cover, which I showed around online for feedback and suggestions (someone had pointed out that the placement of my title on the bottom was a very bad idea, considering comics placement on shelves: keep your title on top for everyone to see). One of the best marketing aspects of my comic was its very title: Zombie Commandos From Hell! Which was a sure attention grabber. There weren’t nearly as many zombie comics around back then. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if mine was the only one with zombie in the title.

I then did some research about printers. My decision rested between Preney Print & Litho in my city of birth, Windsor (Ontario) and the multinational Quebecor here in Quebec. Turned out the latter offered a good price for good paper stock. The great thing about printers who deal with comic publishers is that they already have a setup for shipping to the comic distributor warehouses. I actually went to print with my first issue before submitting it to distributors, but made sure I did for the next issues, as having them ship orders directly avoids extra shipping costs and much hassle.

At Quebecor, the minimum print run was 1000, but I went for 2000, as the costs weren’t that far apart for double the quantity. In the end, I managed to sell over 1000 books, so that decision was justified. The cost at that time, circa 2000/2001, was about $CAN 2200.00, taxes included. With shipping and everything, that ammounted to a little over a buck for each book, which I sold for US$ 2.95 each, an average price for b&w books at the time. I immediatly started selling them online and soliciting stores myself.

I then submitted the comic (online) to Diamond Distribution, the major player, and Cold Cut Distribution, who specialized in indie comics. They have submission guidelines online, which I followed, and all went well. You normally send them some samples they can publish in their catalogs and hope for the best. They eventually send you an email with a list of orders. This does not list actual comic shops (sadly), only shipping warehouses. Still, this gives you an idea of the general area where your comics will find themselves, which happened to be all across the US for me, plus the UK and Australia.

The next step was important: pimp your book! I went all over the online forums, photocopied some flyers and gave my sales pitch at anyone who listened. I teamed up with record labels to produce a soundtrack to sell with the next issues, thus crossing over into another market. Unfortunately, most of my readers were into metal, while the music circles I was involved with were on the industrial side, with not as much interest in comics. But I still managed to turn in a little profit from this exercise, initially. Mind you, I didn’t make the bucks from the distributors, but more from my online sales in the end, spread out over about 4 years. Of course, it all depends on the kind of book you produce. Mine was for a pretty specific niche, with a small but hardcore fanbase.

These fans were people who ordered all 5 of my printed books, who sticked around and gave me the motivation to carry on with Zombie Commandos From Hell. Each issue came out about a year apart, some with collaborators.

I took things further by allying myself with the notorious Boneyard Press, hoping their reputation might draw in more of the people who were into my kind of comics. That worked out ok, except that distribution was now dealt through the publisher, while I still paid for printing and shipping. This was a terrible mistake, as the publisher never paid me back the money he received from the distributors for books 2, 3 and 4. In other words, his cut turned out to be 100% for those three issues. I was only paid for the newly distributed issues One. I didn’t get any contract written down, naively trusting someone I have never met in the flesh. You can guess that dealing with legal issues is very important. Also, consider registering a trademark for you book if you expect it to be a hit (haha), and get informed about copyrights.

For my fifth issue, things changed drastically, as I found a full fledged publisher, who took care of production, let me do a 94 page glossy cover book and paid me. I also retained all the rights. So having it published was obviously a better experience than self-publishing, but I probably would not have had as much success at getting that final issue published if I hadn’t proven the book’s worth with the previous 32 page pamphlet issues.

The whole process was a labour of love, which in the end barely allowed me to brake even, but I am happy and proud of what I have achieved. Thanks to this, I became confident enough in my craft to contribute to some anthologies, a high profile series and even a full colour graphic novel.

The plan is to eventually bring my new online comic to print, but I won’t rush things. Self-publishing online gives me the opportunity to go through an ongoing editorial process, until everything is just right for print.

My advice? Go for it, you’ll grow from it.