Jeff Smith on His Self-Publishing Series and The Criticism of Alt-Publishing

After my initial post about the Self-Publishing Movement of the '90s series that Jeff Smith is doing at the Boneville blog, Jeff sent me a note about one of the points I made that I thought was worth sharing. Smith agreed to let me publish it here:

"Saw the nice write-up you did on the announcement of self-publishing guest blogs over at Boneville. Thanks for picking it up.

"I want to respond to your comment about self-publishers knocking reputable houses like Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly just because they were publishing houses.

"I know a lot of self-publishers were more dogmatic than me, so I don't doubt you ran into this snarky type of thing a lot, but speaking for myself, I always thought of good, small publishers like Fantagraphics and D & Q as partners in crime... rebels advancing the cause of good and different comics.

"I've always maintained that there were financial advantages to self-publishing -- if you could make it.

"Clearly, though, Fantagraphics and other smaller art houses led the way in terms of creator's rights, and more often than not, I'm sure the wants and needs of the artists were put first.

"I'm just curious about the period now that we can look back at it. There has been very little written about it. I don't think it was a mere blip. There was a huge flowering of interest in non-mainstream comics, and in trade book formats that wasn't there before.

"SPX, the backbone of the current Indie scene grew out of a self-publishing tour. In the early days of the show, Fantagraphics didn't even exhibit there, but the self-publishers were there. And so were the people who would shortly begin to create the boutique houses, like Jeff Mason, Chris Pitzer, and Chris Staros.

"Anyway, just wanted to say Fantagraphics is good."

The reason I wanted to publish this is because I think one of the interesting things about that period in comics was this bizarre attack by self-publisher on creators rights-supporting small publishers on what seemed like purely dogmatic grounds. What was fascinating about this kind of rigid assumption that all publishers were corrupt no matter what is that I think self-publishing as its existed in American comic books can be seen as an effective criticism of certain publishers -- who unlike the best alternative comics publishers -- seem to operate without providing the kind of fundamental capital and services (publicity, printing, warehousing) that one might reasonably expect of someone taking a cut of the final product.

Today's entry in the series from Colleen Doran hints at that notion in this funny line. "I was 20-ish and had no business skills, and only one-year's experience working as an unpaid gopher in a trade publishing house. All of which made me about as qualified to publish as anyone who had ever published my work in the small press."

I look forward to future entries.
 
posted 9:15 am PST | Permalink
 

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