Publisher practices

[grubcubman]

A few recent items on some popular social media networks have gotten me thinking about publisher practices. Most prominent is this lil comic from Derek Ballard:

. In it, he says, "Image Comics pays you zero dollars to make your comic book. And if your comic doesn't sell enough copies then they charge you money!"

I don't know if it's not cool to name names or whatever, but as a reader spending my ducats on comic books, it'd be nice to know at least a little bit about whether a given publisher is great or okay or sucks or whatever.

So to the extent yinz are comfortable sharing, any insight into any certain publisher practices? (I'm also curious about general practices across the industry, either good or bad.)

And I'll be very surprised if it's necessary, but anyone is inclined to comment anonymously, feel free to DM me and I can post whatever. Maybe I'm being dramatic.

[bug0hateme]

Domino pays

[dominocorp]

I love Derek but don't really understand his take here. Image basically asks the author to cover printing costs, but it's not a scam because in exchange you get to keep an insane amount of profits from the book (like 90%?) vs what you'd make from Marvel or DC (20%? correct me if I'm wrong). Essentially, Image is a service for self publishers that grants you amazing distribution. Yes, you are responsible for those printing costs, but you'll also get guaranteed orders from retailers that will always beat what you'd get from the same retailers if you were self publishing without the Image logo on your cover and their great placement in Previews.
It definitely doesnt work for everyone and I'm sure theres lots of cases where people ate the printing cost (as would happen with normal self publishing anyway in those cases). But, for artists with some degree of following, it's probably the best game in town. Derek references Kirkman who, yes, is rich but he's far far richer because of Image's deal than he would be if he'd done Walking Dead through DC Vertigo.