Carla Speed McNeil: Self-Publishing

Finder
by Carla Speed McNeil

CARLA SPEED McNEIL:
(from The Comics Journal #280, July 2007)

...To give full credit to Dave Sim, I would not be doing this, I would not be doing this the same way and I certainly would not have gotten started when I did this, if it weren't for him on his little soapbox back in the day when it was a lot easier to make money self-publishing than it is now. But just the same, a lot of what he had to say made sense because I've been hearing it all my life - get up, do the work, the money will follow. If the money is not following, figure out what you can do to make it come your way. It's not always easy, and if it doesn't work past a certain place, then you have to do something else. My family is all small-business one way or another. They're all either independent professionals or they're just running their own small company. The only trepidations they had about my going into this was that there was no one else in the family doing anything like it - not even graphic design. So there was no one to advise me about this specific industry. But they could tell me everything I needed to know about scheduling C tax forms and how much of my studio could legally be considered a tax write-off. For me, self-publishing is not an artistic movement: It's a business model, and if it doesn't work, you do something else.

Carla Speed McNeil self-published eight collected volumes of the Eisner Award-winning Finder comic-book series before moving to Dark Horse Publishing for the release of Finder Vol 9 and the Finder Library omnibus editions.