Comic books. I’ve been known to read one on occasion. I even enjoy them, especially the newer ones like Yak’s Pub. And yet I never gave any thought to the indie spirit behind the comic book phenomenon. At least not until reading Jaebi’s post “What Can Self-Publishers Learn from Comics?“
It seems that many comic book artists began as independent authors of a sort, pouring themselves into creating a quality product and then selling it directly to their readers. Today that same go-getter attitude is still active in the world of graphic novels as market savvy entrepreneurs like Questionable Content‘s creator J. Jacques move into online comics with numerous hard-line products such as t-shirts. For authors this would be similar to serializing a story on a blog and offering books and other products on the side. Not such a bad marketing technique in my opinion.
So what can independent authors learn from these quirky people telling their stories with pictures? A solid product, hard work, and some creative marketing can pay off on The Road to Writing.
This is a reprint from Virginia Ripple‘s The Road to Writing.