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?
