Pitching Your Comic

How to pitch your comic (article) - 8th Wonder Press

Pitches and Submissions (podcast) - Dirty Old Ladies

Here Comes The Pitch (article) - Jim Zub

The future of your comic depends on who is going to publish it so it’s important to put effort into your submissions. Here are a few short tips on how to be successful when pitching your comic.

• Research the publisher. Don’t just blindly submit to every publisher. Know each one’s guidelines and what kind of content they produce. Find the publishers that will be most interested in your work and target those. Similarly…

• Personalize your pitch. Publishers receive a ton of submissions so the cookie cutter “Dear <insert publisher name here>” pitches won’t stand out among the crowd. Do the heavy lifting for them and include some reasons for why they’d want to produce your work. What’s so special about your comic? Why does it fit in with that publisher specifically? How is it similar to books that the publisher has previously published? How is it different? How does it appeal to that publisher’s audience?

• Give them something to look at. Whether it’s character designs, photos of your previous work, or a link to the entire completed comic, you should include at least some visual piece to go with your pitch. This is mainly to help you stand out, as most publishers will get bored if all you provide is a script. That said…

• Follow the publisher’s submission guidelines. This is the most important step when submitting to a publisher. The fastest way of getting ignored is by not following a publisher’s guidelines. By obeying them, you’re showing the publisher that you’re responsible and know how to listen to instructions. If all they want is a script, give them a script. Some publishers want to receive very specific things so again make sure to read their guidelines thoroughly before submitting.

List of Publishers

While this list by Jason Thibault hasn’t been updated for a while, it still covers a vast number of publishers and their submission guidelines. It should be enough to at least get you started on your search.

If you just want a straight up list, Wikipedia is your friend.

Createspace

Another “publisher” (distributor is probably a better word) worth mentioning is Amazon Createspace.

Createspace is unique in that they offer printing, selling AND distribution of your books. In this way, they somewhat act as a publisher but aren’t officially.

I went through some of the steps to get a book published through Createspace and found their process very intuitive to follow.

While their primary focus is prose novels, I know of a few people who have distributed their graphic novels through Createspace and were happy with the process. Plus you get the added bonus of automatically having your book available directly through Amazon.

If you’re interested, here’s a video guide for publishing comics with Createspace by Texan in Tokyo.

NOTE: Amazon requires your book to have an ISBN, so they may not be an option for single issue floppies (which require UPC codes instead). Createspace offers their own ISBN if you don’t have one BUT if you use their ISBN, you can’t publish the book with any other publisher. If you want to apply through any official publisher, you’re going to need to get your own ISBN. (Canadians get ISBNs for free.)

NOTE 2: Because Createspace is primarily for prose books, they use that rough, uncoated paper you see in most books. You’re not going to get the nice, glossy look that most comics have. It’s up to you to decide if you’re okay with that.