i was round my old pal gareth man man brookes' house this weekend and he was showing me some of the small press he'd picked up from gosh! comics. it's good to see theres a wide ranges of styles and some are undeniably arty-farty, which i suppose you either subscribe to or you dont, and they must appeal more to artists than comics buyers. This is fair enough, and there is definitely room for all that stuff, particularly when its high quality, but what did make me raise my eyebrows was the price of some of these things. pricing is very difficult, but it's kind of taken for granted that all the time you've spent creating this stuff is never going to be compensated, so £5 for a few sheets of A4 does seem pretty steep. i try to base my price on the printing cost alone, and even then i cant compete with the big published comics (obviously) but i always try to be good value, and want to make something that i'd buy.
this kind of leads onto another point about the small press scene today, the fact that there is your also-rans, the weak home published stuff, and the fantagraphics/top shelf stuff and there's the middle ground, high quality small press stuff which is too small scale to go into diamond (the major comics distribution catalogue) and as a result will always struggle to be seen by its potential audience. obviously the web has helped this immensely- i cant imagine how difficult it was before to sell more than 10 comics- but i've got it at the back of my mind that there's an untapped potential thing that could unify and promote all the excellent small press creators there is out there.
a uk small press version of diamond sent out to all the shops in the uk who stock small press comics so they could contact the makers diractly, or at least have a previous knowledge of the comics when approached would be a good idea i think, and if it was put together by the makers themselves it would mean no-one else would take a slice of the pie.
good idea, this sort of thing takes time and effort that i havent got after working all the time and actually making comics... any volunteers?
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smallzone have something along these lines called Frontline or something. however, all the comic shops i've spoken to have never heard of either Frontline or smallzone. it's a good idea though and shane smallzone seems to be in a good postision to impliment it, but it doesn't look like he's pulling it off. he carries a lot of good stock so it should be working already.
yes i think we can do something as a community where we dont have to give some guy a slice of the pie.
we could expand the catalouge thing you did for bristol. maybe have some online resource, with all tiltes on it with a downloadable pdf to print off and distribute as contributors pleased?
yes thats the spirit!
yeah, the small press community spirit will go a long way, but we also need the retailers to get on board. PDFs and webwebweberry is an awesome way forward.
once again, steve, an insightful post. incidentally, my comics retail at £1.50 ... Cheap as chips.
My local big comic shop, Nostalgia and Comics, used to have quite a big small press section (is that an oxymoron?), but I went in the other day and what used to be two whole shelves of books is now one poxy wire rack with about six books in it. If this is indicative of all the other retailers then it's an uphill struggle to get them to stock the books, catalogue or not. We need to convince the big shops that there's a large audience for this stuff, and judging by the crowds at Bristol Con, there is an appetite for self-published books.
on the positive side of things; Travelling Man Manchester has moved it's small press shelves nearer the front door. alright, they've upped their cut to 35% and there's less shelf space. but it's all made up by the fact that the small press stuff is the first stuff you see when you come in and right next to the superhereo stuff. little steps.
i suppose from a retailers point of view you've got to be a bit ruthless as its all very well supporting all small pressers, but the more unsellable crap there is, the more drowned out the good stuff becomes.
then again, everyone deserves a fair crack o' the whip. it's tricky...
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