Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Why Are There Not Agents in Comics?
(This is my second retro-posting; it was written for WRITE NOW magazine in January, 2006)
I was intrigued by the responses that 27 pros gave to the question in WRITE NOW #11 regarding business advice. Two of them used the word “agent”.
I primarily made my living for over two decades as a business manager for comics professionals. Of the 27 quoted professionals, I did business in one way or another with over two-thirds of them; one was a client for awhile, a few more were writers collaborating with artists I represented, many at the time were editors who hired or failed to hire my clients, and Stan Lee was my own hands-off editor for a time when I was a writer for Marvel.
And yet despite those years of personal interaction in talking about the business of writing comics, two of twenty-seven successful writers used the word “agent”.
I think that’s indicative right there that business representatives have always had a difficult role in comics writing. Of course I can only speak to my personal experiences and speculate as to reasons why this is so.
What I can say, flat out, is that I was never successful representing writers, even though as a superhero writer myself for DC and Marvel, I made a special effort to do so. Whatever success I had was representing artists.
Let’s look at possible reasons why a business rep MIGHT make sense for a comics writer: sales and marketing; contract negotiating; contract enforcement.
As everyone knows who reads this magazine, marketing and selling one’s writing is an excruciating job, especially so when one is starting out, or later on when one is typecast as old hat and all the editors are seemingly half one’s age. In-between, when one has gotten established there is the opposite problem, of having far more opportunities than even the most prolific scripter can handle.
In the first instance, I found that while I could market an artist’s work literally at a glance, it took a tremendous amount of time, effort and expense to get writers the editorial eyeballs they needed to gain assignments and get ahead. In a high percentage of cases the effort would not pan out, and the few successes did not pay for all the failures. This had to do with the second circumstance; once a new writer was established the marketing and sales function disappeared and writers would understandably ask themselves the question of why should they pay someone a percentage of their earnings just to say “no” to people. It saved a lot of money to say “no” oneself.
I’m not even touching on the overt resistance many editors had with dealing with me in my sales rep function. They perceived me at best as a needless extra layer of static.
In the arena of contract negotiating, the value of an experienced negotiator varies widely depending on the market conditions. I was most able to provide value when there was heavy publisher competition; as the comics publisher field consolidated in the ‘90’s that value diminished significantly.
In 1986 Paul Chadwick had eight serious bidders for his CONCRETE proposal, each of which provided detailed written bids and conducted oral negotiations as well. The result was a contract from which Paul was able to offset most of the commissions he paid me for his comics work with the added percentage of revenue I was able to negotiate for him in the film-rights area when those rights later came into play.
Fifteen years later the field had so consolidated that no publisher was willing to bid for a new property that they didn’t own unless the creator was willing to work with no financial guarantees. If anything my expertise had significantly increased in the interim, but my value was down to virtually nothing.
Even in the more limited deals of the superhero field, I was able to provide more value when there was a lot of competition and that value went south when superheroes were once again just published by DC and Marvel.
Lastly in the area of contract enforcement, I steered clients away from fly-by-night publishers because it wasn’t worth my time to chase checks that might bounce anyway. With the more financially viable publishers I was able to provide value when I had a large enough client base that I could afford to hire auditors. I uncovered accounting judgment calls at that invariably were made in the publisher’s favor and not in the creators’ favor; with that information I was able to change things back for awhile.
But as my client base and royalty streams diminished I was financially unable to continue to make that kind of investment.
So today what’s a writer to do today about improving one’s business?
First look behind the illusion of the characters one loves to write to look at the business realities of their publishers. Marvel, DC and Dark Horse make money as publishers, but they make their REAL money in Hollywood and in licensing merchandise. This reality creates a well-established dynamic in their relation to writers. They look for writers who will maintain high-profile characters or invigorate low-profile characters so that they will be simultaneously profitable as publications and more licensable as Hollywood and merchandise properties. Not-so-secretly, they also count on a certain amount of naiveté or disinterest in their writers such that those writers will create new licensable characters that the publishers will own.
At its most extreme, this dynamic leads to a “flavor of the month” mentality. More subtlety, it’s a “flavor of the year-or-two” environment. The teen and young adult readers turn over, and so do the writers they like. It’s little consolation that the same dynamic is occurring for comic artists, or creative talent in all other forms of entertainment.
So recognize that for most writers, writing pre-existing characters is either a stepping-stone or way station to another career or a sideline to an already existing career.
Sadly the economics of the field do not encourage writers to create new storylines and new characters. Writers have to be prepared to write for no money in order to do so.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. A writer can only connect to an audience with a new idea if the writer cares about the story and the characters. If one writes what one’s passionate about, one has a greater chance of succeeding in the long run anyway. One should write because one wants to or write because one has to. Just don’t expect to make a living at it until later.
This is hard gravel to swallow. But once swallowed, what about marketing, negotiating, and enforcement?
In today’s climate, the best marketing agent a comic writer can have is an artist. If a writer can find a superhero artist who wants to draw the writer’s stories, superhero editors are much more willing to give that writer a chance, because they want to keep that artist happy. If a writer can find an artist to draw a personal project for no money, that artist is a friend for life and should be valued as such.
If a writer has a buyer and wants negotiating help, one might be able to find an experienced rep willing to fill that function for a small percentage of the money earned, or alternately, if one has the money to pay an intellectual property attorney an hourly rate, that’s worth consideration. I’ll leave aside the intrinsic differences between attorneys and reps, but they do exist and should be considered in making that choice.
As far a contract enforcement is concerned, I’m afraid most writers are shit out of luck. Established publishers are not crooks, but they use their market clout to operate in their own interest and not that of writers. It takes a lot of business, legal, and accounting skill to enforce one’s contracts; if a writer finds oneself in the top 1% where this kind of skill can be purchased, purchase it. Otherwise look at how much cash one is being offered.
[Mike Friedrich was a comics writer of BATMAN, JUSTICE LEAGUE, IRON MAN, KA-ZAR; he founded the first independent publishing company marketing to the comic store sales channel; he created the Marvel Comics “direct sales” department; he founded the first successful business management agency for comics professionals; he co-founded WonderCon, now operated by Comic-Con International; he was the lead legislative lobbyist in Washington, DC and Sacramento, CA for the Graphic Artist Guild; he currently works as a staff representative for UPTE-CWA 9119, a union of research scientists and technical research support staff [including staff research writers and editors] at the University of California, Berkeley. Talk about an alternate universe!]
I was intrigued by the responses that 27 pros gave to the question in WRITE NOW #11 regarding business advice. Two of them used the word “agent”.
I primarily made my living for over two decades as a business manager for comics professionals. Of the 27 quoted professionals, I did business in one way or another with over two-thirds of them; one was a client for awhile, a few more were writers collaborating with artists I represented, many at the time were editors who hired or failed to hire my clients, and Stan Lee was my own hands-off editor for a time when I was a writer for Marvel.
And yet despite those years of personal interaction in talking about the business of writing comics, two of twenty-seven successful writers used the word “agent”.
I think that’s indicative right there that business representatives have always had a difficult role in comics writing. Of course I can only speak to my personal experiences and speculate as to reasons why this is so.
What I can say, flat out, is that I was never successful representing writers, even though as a superhero writer myself for DC and Marvel, I made a special effort to do so. Whatever success I had was representing artists.
Let’s look at possible reasons why a business rep MIGHT make sense for a comics writer: sales and marketing; contract negotiating; contract enforcement.
As everyone knows who reads this magazine, marketing and selling one’s writing is an excruciating job, especially so when one is starting out, or later on when one is typecast as old hat and all the editors are seemingly half one’s age. In-between, when one has gotten established there is the opposite problem, of having far more opportunities than even the most prolific scripter can handle.
In the first instance, I found that while I could market an artist’s work literally at a glance, it took a tremendous amount of time, effort and expense to get writers the editorial eyeballs they needed to gain assignments and get ahead. In a high percentage of cases the effort would not pan out, and the few successes did not pay for all the failures. This had to do with the second circumstance; once a new writer was established the marketing and sales function disappeared and writers would understandably ask themselves the question of why should they pay someone a percentage of their earnings just to say “no” to people. It saved a lot of money to say “no” oneself.
I’m not even touching on the overt resistance many editors had with dealing with me in my sales rep function. They perceived me at best as a needless extra layer of static.
In the arena of contract negotiating, the value of an experienced negotiator varies widely depending on the market conditions. I was most able to provide value when there was heavy publisher competition; as the comics publisher field consolidated in the ‘90’s that value diminished significantly.
In 1986 Paul Chadwick had eight serious bidders for his CONCRETE proposal, each of which provided detailed written bids and conducted oral negotiations as well. The result was a contract from which Paul was able to offset most of the commissions he paid me for his comics work with the added percentage of revenue I was able to negotiate for him in the film-rights area when those rights later came into play.
Fifteen years later the field had so consolidated that no publisher was willing to bid for a new property that they didn’t own unless the creator was willing to work with no financial guarantees. If anything my expertise had significantly increased in the interim, but my value was down to virtually nothing.
Even in the more limited deals of the superhero field, I was able to provide more value when there was a lot of competition and that value went south when superheroes were once again just published by DC and Marvel.
Lastly in the area of contract enforcement, I steered clients away from fly-by-night publishers because it wasn’t worth my time to chase checks that might bounce anyway. With the more financially viable publishers I was able to provide value when I had a large enough client base that I could afford to hire auditors. I uncovered accounting judgment calls at that invariably were made in the publisher’s favor and not in the creators’ favor; with that information I was able to change things back for awhile.
But as my client base and royalty streams diminished I was financially unable to continue to make that kind of investment.
So today what’s a writer to do today about improving one’s business?
First look behind the illusion of the characters one loves to write to look at the business realities of their publishers. Marvel, DC and Dark Horse make money as publishers, but they make their REAL money in Hollywood and in licensing merchandise. This reality creates a well-established dynamic in their relation to writers. They look for writers who will maintain high-profile characters or invigorate low-profile characters so that they will be simultaneously profitable as publications and more licensable as Hollywood and merchandise properties. Not-so-secretly, they also count on a certain amount of naiveté or disinterest in their writers such that those writers will create new licensable characters that the publishers will own.
At its most extreme, this dynamic leads to a “flavor of the month” mentality. More subtlety, it’s a “flavor of the year-or-two” environment. The teen and young adult readers turn over, and so do the writers they like. It’s little consolation that the same dynamic is occurring for comic artists, or creative talent in all other forms of entertainment.
So recognize that for most writers, writing pre-existing characters is either a stepping-stone or way station to another career or a sideline to an already existing career.
Sadly the economics of the field do not encourage writers to create new storylines and new characters. Writers have to be prepared to write for no money in order to do so.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. A writer can only connect to an audience with a new idea if the writer cares about the story and the characters. If one writes what one’s passionate about, one has a greater chance of succeeding in the long run anyway. One should write because one wants to or write because one has to. Just don’t expect to make a living at it until later.
This is hard gravel to swallow. But once swallowed, what about marketing, negotiating, and enforcement?
In today’s climate, the best marketing agent a comic writer can have is an artist. If a writer can find a superhero artist who wants to draw the writer’s stories, superhero editors are much more willing to give that writer a chance, because they want to keep that artist happy. If a writer can find an artist to draw a personal project for no money, that artist is a friend for life and should be valued as such.
If a writer has a buyer and wants negotiating help, one might be able to find an experienced rep willing to fill that function for a small percentage of the money earned, or alternately, if one has the money to pay an intellectual property attorney an hourly rate, that’s worth consideration. I’ll leave aside the intrinsic differences between attorneys and reps, but they do exist and should be considered in making that choice.
As far a contract enforcement is concerned, I’m afraid most writers are shit out of luck. Established publishers are not crooks, but they use their market clout to operate in their own interest and not that of writers. It takes a lot of business, legal, and accounting skill to enforce one’s contracts; if a writer finds oneself in the top 1% where this kind of skill can be purchased, purchase it. Otherwise look at how much cash one is being offered.
[Mike Friedrich was a comics writer of BATMAN, JUSTICE LEAGUE, IRON MAN, KA-ZAR; he founded the first independent publishing company marketing to the comic store sales channel; he created the Marvel Comics “direct sales” department; he founded the first successful business management agency for comics professionals; he co-founded WonderCon, now operated by Comic-Con International; he was the lead legislative lobbyist in Washington, DC and Sacramento, CA for the Graphic Artist Guild; he currently works as a staff representative for UPTE-CWA 9119, a union of research scientists and technical research support staff [including staff research writers and editors] at the University of California, Berkeley. Talk about an alternate universe!]
# posted by Mike Friedrich @ 5:35 PM 
