Vlog 20170326 (Patreon)

Hey guess what, it's hard to make it in comics! We were all discussing this on twitter and I spent this vlog reflecting on that conversation and the broader issues at play. 

Transcript below

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Okay! Hello everyone, it's Sunday. It's a rainy Sunday afternoon here in Vancouver, BC and I-- yeah! I'm just taking it easy this weekend for a change.

This week's been a bit busy at work so I don't really have much to talk about in terms of what I've done for artwork.

It's been all a lot of long hours just trying to push through something kind of urgent at work and that's all I've really been able to take care of this week.

Otherwise I'm working through the final hurdle for the Kickstarter which is getting the stock that I have of book 2 and 3 across the border and into the warehouse where it can be kitted and set up and put out. Which is-- it's very exciting that is of the last thing I have to do other than customizing extreme bookplates and because the survey hasn't been completed yet (I have to kind of finalize and extract all of that information before I can start working on bookplates, and I'm giving people as much time as I can to complete that information.) So I don't I don't have any bookplates of draw yet and it's a very unusual lull in the process where everything is just managing other people doing stuff and I don't have anything to do yet. But that's that situation. As you saw last week the books are in now and I've been reviewing those. I took a read through them last night and yeah I'm happy with these books. I'm really proud of the design work and how everything came together so it's getting it to the end.

The one thing that I wanted to talk about this week is the conversation that was happening on Twitter with... I think it's "financial transparency" is the way that we might be able to describe it. So twitter is a bit of an interesting beast. If you follow a lot of people in the same sphere for example, like, I don't know how many people from comics you follow on Twitter. If you follow one or two you might miss these conversations but I follow closer to 100 probably 200 people who are all within the sphere of comics and are all commenting on different angles and retweeting different threads. So it's really funny to watch how something can become "the conversation of the day".

And recently the conversation of the day was around comics [I think I meant "money"]. And especially since a lot of these conversation topics tend to happen on Twitter nowadays-- they don't necessarily relate to a hashtag, they don't necessarily come from a specific source or event. Someone just decides to start a conversation and it catches on far enough that other people decide to put in their input and their angle on it. So from what I understand, this conversation started with -- I don't know who specifically -- but I believe it started with someone discussing the page rates that professionals are given for professional comics. And for those of you who don't know what page rate is, if you're hired by a publisher to create a comic you're given a certain rate -- usually in the range of, well this is what the conversation is: "what is an appropriate rate" -- but is a certain couple hundred dollars per page to either do the penciling, the lettering, the inking, or all of it depending on your contract and what's being expected of you.  And the conversation is going that the page rates as they currently stand for most major publishers and especially smaller publishers are insufficient for creatives to make a living.  So I think a lot of this has been coming up because most people are doing their taxes (which is something that I have to start getting on soon because they're going to be pretty complicated this year). People are doing their taxes for the year and after just keeping their heads down for the entire year and trying every month to make ends meet, they're taking a hard look at the numbers and realizing that with the amount that they have been working-- which for some of these creatives they do work probably 60+ hours a week just to meet their deadlines-- and do not bring enough income in to make to make a living sustainable, to make it healthy.

And I think that's an important conversation.  A lot of what people have been saying on the Internet is that publishers basically build their entire business model around exploiting young talent. And it's interesting because this conversation has-- I've seen echoes of it in other spaces.  I've seen echoes of it in the animation industry, I've seen echoes of it in the game industry. That all came through probably around 10 years ago in the game industry-- but you saw the exact same thing happening. Basically, in the game industry people were so desperate to work in games that young people were accepting contracts that would not be sustainable long-term and because they were young they did not have the did not perspective to understand that it would not be sustainable long-term. And so they would work through it for, I don't know, five or so years and then basically just burn out of the industry. But the industry didn't care because by the time those people burned out and -- in Vancouver this is a huge industry so I've seen this happen over and over again, with people burning out of one company and then it kind of ripples through the rest of the tech industry.  Like, people leave the game industry and take that experience and go somewhere else where they're better treated.  But there's always a new crop of talent coming through who are like "I really want to work in games! Or in animation, or comics!" There's always new people coming in who are willing to take a sacrifice. And so the industry never corrects themselves. The industry basically is able to say: "Oh, you don't want to work for these rates anymore? Well, bye! Good luck! There is new talent coming in that we can exploit." And so this is not a sustainable business model, but it's something that's been artificially sustained.

And that's an important conversation I think that's really... it's a huge problem, let's say. It's a huge problem but what's interesting about it even more is that I think the problem is even bigger than comics. As I mentioned before, I've seen this happen in games and animation, but what's an even bigger problem is that there are not a lot of opportunities and jobs for people in general. So a lot of the counter arguments in this conversation yesterday was that: "Look the market for comics just simply is not big enough to sustain it." And that may be the case. But then you have to look a little bit wider. Why is this the case? Is it because the same kind of economic problems that are plaguing the publishers and the creative themselves are also plaguing the readers --  the people who are the target demographic, the people who we are trying to sell comics to are being squeezed in the exact same way.

So of course this is a conversation without an end, without a conclusion, but it makes me very optimistic to see --  not optimistic in general but I'm -- I'm glad that more and more people are talking about the systemic issues rather than pretending that it's a isolated problem. For example, if you can't make a living in comics a lot of people say that that's it problem isolated to the person. Either you're not working hard enough or fast enough, or your just your level of skill is not there yet. And the type of advice that I've seen laid out for these people is like, "Oh you just need to hustle, you just need to work much much harder and then eventually it will pan out." And the reality of the situation that people are starting to realize is that for the vast majority this "eventually it will pan out" does not come to pass. People have been in this industry 10 or 20 years and are still struggling, so there is no light at the end of the tunnel. 

So there's two ways to look at that. One is "where does the industry go from here?" I'm not sure... it's a big conversation that needs to happen and it's fundamentally... we have to change the way that we approach this industry in general, I think.  My perspective is I want to create more resources for people who might approach this part-time the way that I do.  As I mentioned on Twitter, if you did or did not see my thread, I think comics might work a lot better if it's not a full-time pursuit for some. Obviously I think at the end of the day if someone wants to approach this professionally the industry who wants to support having professionals is going to need to supply enough resources for someone to survive if they are at that calibre. But you have to recognize that it's not a binary thing. Being a full-time professional is not the only way to engage in comics, so to  speak. There is a huge amount of opportunity for people who want to approach this in a reduced way and I think if we shut those people out completely, we are ignoring a huge segment of the population who a) would benefit tremendously from that practice -- in that it's really rewarding and fun and good way to encourage self discipline and self growth and self exploration. I think it's tremendously positive for people to be able to contribute to the world comics, and I think comics will be poorer for shutting those people out because we will lose a diversity of perspectives and voices. If the only people who are able to enter the world comics are those who are priviledged enough to withstand the rigours of an unsustainable business model, we're going to have a very -- you know, let's say diversity poor talent pool from which we we get our stories. And comics will be worse for it.

But the other side of the conversation this is bigger picture.  Systemically, how are we going to address the fact that a lot of people are not making ends meet in our current reality. Our current reality is not working out for a lot of people and I've seen that conversation -- that broader conversation --  popping up in a lot of different areas with a lot of different spins and areas of focus. And I'd like to have more that conversation... I don't have any answers, I'm just some random from Vancouver but I want to hear more about that.

But that's all that's on my mind this week. It's hard to stay focused on the micro-issues of comics when there so much going. I was talking to a friend about this just earlier -- it's really interesting to see how this has ripples in tech as well. Soo this has been a conversation that I've been seeing a lot in tech. What is tech's role in the shaping of this economy and the solutions that are being brought out  to the problems that people face?

So a lot of the criticisms that have been coming out recently is that tech is very focused on -- you know -- the next shiny thing. Everyone wants to be the one to make the object (and it always seems to be an object or an app) that is going to solve everyone's problems. And they are not looking at the bigger systemic issues. Tech as a whole is not examining those systemic issues and trying to create solutions for those systemic issues which are causing the problems. And that's causing I think a bit of an essential crisis within the tech community, and it's another thing that doesn't have a solution. So... whatever! We're all having a great time. 

As far as Patreon is concerned, I think I'd like to tackle something a bit lighthearted this week so I'm gonna be putting up a poll for everyone. I'd like to make some comics... some small comics,  we'll see... I don't know. I have a very short window of time before I need to get back to crushing things. So I think I could probably tackle something in that period of time. So let's see what we can make together :) 

That's it for this week. I will see around the Internet, I would love to hear if you have any thoughts on this situation and -- have a good week! Baiee <3