EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT: ‘The Business Of Freelance Comic Book Publishing’ — Crowdfunding Now

We often feature a good deal of comic book crowdfunders on this site, but not often a book and certainly not one that offers solid advise on how to break into the comic book industry itself. But, The Business of Freelance Comic Book Publishing, proports to do just that, and is currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter:

“The success of indie comics like THE WALKING DEAD, SCOTT PILGRIM, HELLBOY, and TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES have inspired writers, artists and would-be publishers to try to break into the comic book industry, only to discover that the business of comics is chaotic and complex. Enter attorney, author, and business consultant Gamal Hennessy and his new book, The Business of Freelance Comic Book Publishing, a must-read for anyone in the business of freelance comic creation. The book aims to help its readers develop a business model for their services, leverage the assets they offer to the industry, and transform their skill, time, and creativity into financial gain.”

The book’s writer, Gamal Hennessy, had this to say about this informative new book:

“The vast majority of modern comic book characters and stories are created, designed, or produced by freelance creators. But how do these professionals enter this strange world? How do they acquire the skills needed to create comic art? How do they find work? And how do they get paid? Anyone interested in becoming a freelance comic creator or hiring them for a comic book project should understand the answers to these questions and explore the commercial realities of the art form to maximize their chances of success, and The Business of Freelance Comic Book Publishing is designed to help you achieve those goals.

There are fundamental differences between working freelance in comic books and being a comic book publisher. They have different legal relationships to the story, different financial goals, and different definitions of success. While my first book establishes the foundations of launching a comic book company, this new book takes an in-depth look at establishing yourself as a professional freelance comic book creator.”

And, Hennessy has had previous success too, as this new book follows on from the successful The Business of Independent Comic Book Publishing, published in 2020, and exceeded its target by 600% that time. What’s more, this new publication promises to include “insights and research generated from the professional online comic book community, Comics Connection, as well as a foreword by Andy Schmidt, a writer, editor, and publisher with twenty-five years of experience in comics.”

The book is edited by long-standing veteran of the comic book world, Joseph Illidge (editor for DC, Heavy Metal, Valiant, and Lion Forge) who added:

“If you want to hire and work with freelance creators, this book will help you understand the motivations and stress that are inherent in being a modern-day artistic nomad. Hopefully, this book can help improve the working conditions on both sides and improve the business of comics as a whole.”

You can check put and consider backing the campaign for The Business of Freelance Comic Book Publishing here now and read an exclusive excerpt from the book below:

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What Is A Story Pitch?

By Gamal Hennessy

This is a modified excerpt from a book I’m working on called The Business of Freelance Comic Book Publishing. It is designed to help you understand how to build a story pitch for a publisher.  While this can’t be taken as legal or financial advice, it can help structure a story for characters you don’t own. 

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Artists, colorists, and letterers can use finished comic book pages to show their ability to transform a script into a professional comic. But before any of that can be done, the script needs to be produced. Which scripts get produced and which stories get told is determined by the publisher. 

Many publishers in the emerging, independent, and creator-owned sectors of the industry know what stories they want to tell. In many instances, they are writers who are trying to transform their scripts into comics. At the conglomerate level, publishers hold the rights to valuable IP, but look to freelance writers to create compelling stories for them. This is where you need to be able to present a story pitch to the potential client. 

For our purposes, a pitch is a story proposal for an existing IP. There are various types of verbal pitches in the entertainment world, from elevator or convention pitches, and high concept pitches, but the story pitch is a more formal document a writer can use to secure work with a conglomerate publisher. 

Dan DiDio, writer, editor, and publisher for both DC Comics and Frank Miller Presents, advocates the following structure for a story pitch:

Logline: A one or two-sentence summary of the story that hooks the potential client and describes the central conflict of the story. 

Synopsis: A summary of the entire story, including the premise, the inciting incident, progressing complications, climax, and resolution of the story.

Character Breakdown: A list of the protagonist and all the other supporting characters in their satellite relationship to the protagonist in the story.

Situation and Location: A description of where and when the story takes place.

Springboard: Other storylines that can follow from this story

Art Samples: Capture the look and style of the story. This doesn’t need to be the actual art or original art. It merely needs to convey the proper mood.

Story pitches for established IP often have to balance the existing perception of the characters among readers, corporate plans for the character in other media, and the writer’s unique vision. For a historical perspective, some writers try to deal with these factors by reading up to fifty comics about the character before developing their pitch. Others, like DiDio, suggest that the writer only needs to be familiar with the character’s origin story and their last appearance and avoid being swamped by the “endless middle”. The corporate plans for a character are harder to prepare for because the information is often confidential, but networking and staying informed about film, TV, and game projects surrounding the character can mitigate this issue. 

Have fun with your comic.

Gamal