Should Publishers Simply Pay Their Creators More?

There's a longish piece over at the French-language comics news clearinghouse ActuaBD.com that engages a bunch of issues of potential interest to North American cartoonists and publishing professionals, all through the potentially helpful mirror that is an entirely different industry. From my reading -- and I supplemented my reading with a basic google translation, which is what I'm suggesting if this kind of thing intrigues you -- a comics author is suggesting that publishers should pay more for work because a) the cost of living is way up, b) many of the traditional costs of publishing are way down, c) the failure of the publisher to sell books, and particularly the problems they have due to how they've actively shaped their market, well, that's the publisher's problem. The basic argument against this seems to be that a book that sells 800 copies simply isn't going to be profitable for anyone. I'm sure I'm not getting a lot of that, but if the French-language market is indeed as over-crowded as frequently claimed, that would make it a perfect place to set a conversation about the profits of publishers vis-a-vis how creators make their money when it's a lot of books driving sales rather than a few -- a set-up which the North American market seems more determined than ever to match.

The original Facebook essay from the writer Kris that prompted the post is here.
 
posted 8:34 am PST | Permalink
 

---

 
Daily Blog Archives
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
 
Full Archives