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I'd like to state right up front that my personal finances are extremely limited, so there is very little chance of any up-front real money being involved. For the right artist, I might be able to scrape up some small pittance as an advance, but it would be a truly insignificant amount compared to professional page rates. In lieu of actual cash, I hope to offer other incentives for artists to work with me. Of course, all participants in any volume would be entitled to a share of any profits generated by sales of the book. If sales are low, however, this may be a negligible amount, particularly when split between a sizable group of artists and myself. If sales are good, all the better - since a POD sales system means that more of the money generated goes directly to the creative team. As long as the books are published through a POD system, I intend to make it possible for any artist participating in the project to purchase copies of the book at its basic cost - that is, the cost Lulu or any other printer charges just to manufacture the book, before any profit is added. What would be so great about that? You'd still have to pay for the books, they wouldn't be free, true? Well, yes. I won't be able to afford to give you more than a couple books for free. But, the books you buy could then be sold by yourself at conventions and shows. You could sell them for the normal cover price, and you could keep the entire profits for yourself (as opposed to the books that sell online, for which you'd only get a certain percentage of the profits). You could even see if you could get your local comic-book shop or bookstore to take your copies of the book on consignment, particularly if you want to promote yourself as a "local artist". In addition, I'm willing to offer participating artists a few pages at the end of the book for self-promotion - such as ads for other projects, websites, what have you. While it's true that I'm not swimming in cash, there may be other forms of payment that could be arranged. If, for instance, you have your own comics project for which you want some writing assistance, I would probably be willing to work on your project in exchange for you working on mine. I am also willing to barter for other goods and services - if there's something you have in mind, let me know and we'll see if we can work something out. For a truly committed artist, I am willing to consider splitting ownership of the character/story that they are drawing. This would be an advantage in cases of licensing - such as if someone wanted to make a movie or video game or toys or something out of the characters. A co-owner would be entitled to a cut of that action. However, this is not something I would do lightly. These characters are mine; I developed them from scratch, and in many cases have already developed their visual appearances. Only an illustrator willing to put in a similar amount of work would be given co-ownership. A creator would need to commit to (and, more importantly, deliver) maybe six chapters of the story they're working on before I would consider granting co-ownership. An artist could not do a few character sketches and expect co-ownership. An artist could not toss one chapter's worth of art at me and expect co-ownership. If you desire co-ownership, be prepared to devote yourself to the project in a serious, long-term manner. (This may sound a bit harsh and demanding, but this has not been the first time I've tried to get this project started, and, with a few exceptions, most of the people who responded in the past have bailed out without completing more than one or two pages of work. I bear them no ill will, and understand that enthusiasm wanes and other more lucrative projects may take precedence, but at the same time I'm not willing to hand over partial ownership of my creations to someone who's just going to disappear tomorrow.) |