Three years ago, I wrote up a little treatise on the importance of financial (as well as emotional) engagement in our comics and manga ecosystem in Supporting Your Comics Ecosystem in 2015. And I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how things have, not so much changed, but we are able to see the situation with more nuance. So today, I wanted revisit this topic (although I am also behind on reviews and have some other writing to share with you, as well….!) because we’re at an extraordinary point in the evolution of comics – a term I will use here to include manga, doujinshi, webcomics, zines and mini-comics for the purposes of saving a few key strokes. If you haven’t read the original essay, go do that first. I’ll assume that you have, and then move forward.
The Macro-Level
In 2015, I focused on the importance on purchasing comics through legitimate licensed dealers with the understanding that our money supports the companies and that they are in turn supposed to support their employees and the industry. It is a reality that we live with that this is only partially true now. Yes, while supporting the companies does provide jobs to people at all levels, from the artists through to the kid shelving the books, it is also true that many of these jobs are not paid living wages nor do they have reasonable working conditions. Nonetheless, I still believe that purchases made on what I am now calling a macro-level of consumption does put some money back into the larger economy through wages, and taxes for all levels of employment, even though we must know also recognize that corporations are not paying their fair share.
That said, this macro-level, which we can also look at as the more traditional model, also includes small businesses like local comics shops (LCS) and online retailers. When you think about how many layers your dollars get sliced into, it can be very hard to believe that not paying for a comic will affect anyone negatively, but the drain from the ecosystem can be death to smaller pieces of that larger system. We’ve seen how the erosion has affected LCSs, for instance. There’s a certain amount of inevitability in this erosion. When a store opens up near you that has everything you might want, the one store that only carries some of what you want will suffer. The LCSs I see surviving have taken one of two tacks – they’ve evolved to be community centers for the comics audience, running gaming nights and events, opening shelf space up to a more diverse audience or they’ve hunkered down, watching a shrinking audience stick to formats and characters with whom they are comfortable.
In the meantime, large retailers have seen sales go up and down in waves, but when we look at the larger ecosystem of comics, and include graphic novels outside the traditional LCS market we can see that it is young and diversifying.
I buy a lot of my comics through major retailers. I buy Sweet Blue Flowers from Viz on Amazon, and pick up my Comic Yuri Hime by Ichijinsha at Kinokuniya (and while I am there, maybe I buy Slumbering Beauty by Seven Seas or Nakayoshi from Kodansha as well.) Of these, only Viz and Seven Seas are “small” companies and they legitimately have larger companies invested in them. These purchases are the lifeblood of the traditional comics ecosystem.
Comics in the Middle
By 2015, we saw the creative success of a meso-level of consumption. When we pay money to projects on crowdfunding platforms we are injecting much-needed funds into what might otherwise be a closed system.
What do I mean by a “closed system”? When I was younger, I would attend events like pagan festivals and various “culture” festivals. At all these events, you could see the same vendors and performers on a circuit. And, at all these events, someone might have a personal life change- a marriage, a baby, etc. The vendors and performers who all knew each other, would often chip in to pay for expenses or buy gifts. This is where the system was closed – people might give this person a gift or money, and then next time a gift or that money was returned for something else. That same amount would cycle through the community. I’d buy a necklace from someone that bought a piece of art my wife was selling. We both “made” money, but nothing was gained or lost. Outsiders and spectators were the lifeblood of these events. They brought in new money to the community. If I bought a piece of jewelry and was not there to accept something back because I was not part of the community, then that money remains with the community. This does not really apply to vendors at anime cons, except, maybe among the smaller sellers and artists, because vendors are not making or consuming their or other people’s goods. A dealer buys 200 DVDs to sell, they sells them, but doesn’t take that money to the artist’s alley or buy a figurine from someone else. They then pocket that money. It may go to con expenses, but doesn’t get recycled back into the community by purchase of good or services from the community.
Crowdfunding has changed the way we perceive this meso-level comics market. Smaller publishing companies have a chance to put out nicher material – material that may well be appealing to a diverse audience, but will not or cannot be published by larger corporate publishing companies who rely on traditional models of printing, logistics, wholesale and retail. These meso-level publishers often have condensed staffing with only a few people for multiple tasks, and they often prioritize creator’s income over their own. They use social media and crowdfunding to recruit talent, staff, buyers and utilize customized distribution models that the macro-level publishers do not need. Again, some of this money goes to outside expenses, but a large portion of it gets recycled into the community directly in the form of paying artists and staff because that is what encourages backers to commit. Few backers are enthused by the idea of giving more money to support company costs, and in one notable case, the direct request for corporate expenses to be covered by backers tanked an already tenuous campaign.
I put my money behind crowdfunded publications as often as I can. Right now I’m hoping that Lemonade Summer, a kid-friendly LGBTQ novel makes its goal! I’m much more likely to back original, niche work than I am reboots or remasterings of old work. Backing new work not only brings new money into circulation, it brings new artists in from outside, as well. I don’t have anything against anime auters of the 1990s getting HD reboots, but it doesn’t encourage creativity from them, or give jobs to folks breaking into the business.
One to One, Person to Person
Now, in 2018, we are watching the success of payment processes that allow readers, consumers and fans to fund the work directly. These micro-level publishers are the creators themselves, for whom that income is, well, income, and is used however it is needed or wanted. Patronage is a a pretty old concept, but we have a pretty new technology for it. We can individually fund multiple creators through smaller payments or back a few or one creator with larger payments. This is revolutionary, because we can regularly inject the cash needed to fund people to have the lives they need to have in order to be able to create the work we want to see.
(There are, of course, many external influences to the ecosystem, as well. The ACA was a massively positive change that allowed USA-based creators to have the kind of healthcare that other industrialized countries take for granted and freed people up to just create for a living…and the ongoing sabotage of that has had a detrimental affect to creative industries in the country.)
We are also now in a place where we can directly see the influence of our dollars in a way that we could not have, even a decade ago. Amazon proves for us that sales of a story about a lesbian manga artist with depression can sell well. We can see directly that a small comic company can raise the kind of money that most comic companies would die for and that we are not alone in demanding more diverse and more representative comics for everyone.
As I stated this week, I’ve launched new microgoals for Okazu. For every $50 more we make at this point on Patreon, I will be supporting another creator. I’ll specifically be supporting micro-level efforts like individuals, small collaborations like Okazu (which at this point is 94% me, and 6% other folks creating content, and all me doing the editing, promotion and the like. ) To begin with I’m supporting a talented artist, Nakawē Writer Mari and writer and a feminist collaborative newspaper the Ladybroad Ledger.
What does all mean for us? It means that we can be less naive about how our money is used. Yen Press might seem like a massive company with corporate backing, but it’s still a pretty small company with only a few employees. Sure, you might not want a huge book chain to make more profits off of you, but your money does impact Seven Seas or local comic shop…and the lack of it, even more so. Buy your books at the level of convenience and ethical responsibility that’s comfortable to you. But when you parse your purchases, remember you can directly affect the industry at macro-, meso- or micro-level as you choose, and at at each level, you’ll be helping to support a sustainable industry for the future.
