It’s difficult to make a living in any art form. There are twenty thousand wannabe actors who are still waiting tables at the age of forty for every one Brad Pitt. For every true genius, for every Marlon Brando, there are one million six hundred thousand and seventy two sad waiters, standing over by the credenza, hands clasped behind their backs, dreaming of what might have been, and wondering if they should recommend the chicken tonight, or the fish. You might even say that no actor ever succeeds, because the ones who do are such a small subset as to be statistically insignificant. And that’s a multi-billion dollar industry with an established business model and a proven pathway to success. Same with music. Same with television. Same with, oh, I don’t know, mime. Same with every other art form you can name. Webcomics? Pah. You might as well give up.

And another thing. Webcomics is a level playing field, but that makes it a fractious one, too, shaking and screaming with competitive rage. Anybody and everybody around you will take advantage of every weakness they can find. Especially if you look like you might succeed. The moment you have the slightest bit of success — and I mean the slightest bit of success — you’ll be the subject of somebody else’s mad-on. Manifestos (manifesti?) will be written denouncing your very existence. People will send you pictures of their gun collections and mention that they look forward to seeing you at your booth at [insert name of comic book convention]. They’ll be sure to let you know that they’ve memorized your booth number, and maybe even that they know which hotel you’re staying at. You think I’m exaggerating, don’t you? You’ll see. You’ll see. And bloggers will ridicule every single thing you say. They’ll make fun of your weight, your looks, your friends, your family, your sexual practices, and even your little dog, too. They’ll question your business success, and spit on your dreams. Why will they do this? Because they’re bloggers, of course. Because that’s what they do: mess with your head, if you let them, just because they can. Just because you’re there. Just because you’re doing what they thought they wanted to do (but they didn’t want to work hard enough, or weren’t talented enough, or whatever, to get there). And even the other people who have had a little success, or even a lot of success, the ones who aren’t jealous, who can’t possibly be, will often — not all of them, not always, but often enough — view you with mistrust and fear. It’s worse than high school. It’s worse than the pressure and pettiness of any regular office job. And you’ll probably still have one of those too, by the way, for at least the first few years, and probably for the first decade or two or three. Who needs that kind of hassle? You might as well give up.

And another thing. What if you happen to find a few readers? That’s the worst thing in the world that could happen. They never stop wanting more, the readers. The damned readers! Nothing annoys like a reader! Gods! Let’s say you manage, just once, by reaching as far into your soul as you possibly can, to cough up the funny (or the tragic, or the dramatic, or the whatever you’ve promised your readers you’d cough up), and lay it out on a page, a beautiful, bloody, bony piece of yourself you can never have back once you’ve released it into the world — one time. Something that never existed before, that couldn’t have existed without you. Just once. That’s something. That’s amazing. That’s more than most artists (or “artists”) are able to accomplish in their entire lives. One time. One day. One strip. Guess what? Tomorrow, or next Wednesday, or whatever (depending on the schedule you’ve set for yourself), you’ve got to do it again. And then again. And then again. And again, and again, and again. And if you haven’t set a fairly frenzied schedule, if you don’t update often enough, nobody will bother reading your comic. On the other hand, if you set an ambitious schedule, but you don’t bring your heart to the table every time, if you don’t tear yourself up and break yourself down and make it really matter, every single time, if you just offer filler when you’re uninspired, just to hit that update schedule, nobody will bother reading your comic. You’re screwed either way. You might as well give up.

Oh yeah. One more thing. Let’s say you do manage to make enough money with your webcomic, somehow, to “make a living.” What does that get you? For the most part, even if you’re lucky enough to “make a living,” you’re still firmly in the middle class at best, and you’re very probably in the lower middle class. There’s a reason most of the webcartoonists who make a living with their work don’t live in expensive cities; they can’t afford them. I spoke with a reasonably popular webcartoonist not so terribly long ago, a couple of years ago, someone you have heard of, someone you probably think of as a superstar, and she told me that her dream was to make at least $30K that year from her webcomic. $30K. In a major metropolitan area where the median income, the median is higher than that. Which means that secretaries probably make more than that. Janitors probably make more than that. The manager at McDonald’s definitely makes more than that. And you aren’t nearly as talented, or as attractive, or as intelligent, or as much of a publicity hound and businessperson, as this particular cartoonist. Your prospects are even slimmer. You’re likely to make much more money working a regular nine-to-five office job, than you would making a webcomic. You’re likely to make more money hanging out in front of Home Depot picking up day labor! You might as well give up.

Yup. It’s hopeless. You might as well give up. You might as well give up. You know what you might as well do? Give up.

Have you given up yet? Good. Because if I was able to talk you out of it so easily, with one stupid blog post, then you didn’t have what it takes. Not everybody gets to make a living at webcomics, because not everybody is talented enough and determined enough to do so. And guess what? That’s just fine. You’re better off where you are. Making a living at webcomics is hard, it’s unlikely, it’s the most impossible thing you could ever decide to do for a living, and in order to stand a chance you have to want it so badly that you’re willing to push through anything, anybody, any time, push beyond human reason and common sense, and then push a little harder, even, than that, if you’re going to really commit yourself to the grueling effort that is required to succeed at webcomics (or at any art, but maybe especially webcomics). So yeah. One blog post and you’re out? Cool. You can still read them, you know, and enjoy them. That’s what they’re there for! Also: please stop reading this post now. Thanks.

And if you haven’t given up yet?

Congratulations, you damn fool. You sad case. You crazy-rare and beautiful creature. You really are a webcartoonist. You are the one we’ve been waiting for. You will show us new ways to look at the world. You will stand shoulder to shoulder with giants. You will give us, your readers and fans, what we didn’t remember forgetting to need from our comics, from our art, from our entertainment, from our lives. That is the job description, and you’re the one to do the job. I just know it! And those other paragraphs up there, forget those, okay? They were placed there very strategically, to scare off everybody else. The secret is this, the thing I didn’t want them to read: there is no job more awesome than a job, any job, in webcomics. I’m not a cartoonist, but I’ve managed, against all odds, to make a full-time living in the field, as a publisher, as a coder, as a hosting provider, and as that most annoying and useless and stupid of all things in the world, a blogger, for almost eight years now, and I’m still going strong. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. And it will be for you, too. Welcome to the club. Happy to make your acquaintance.

Tags: art, Business, frustration, professionalism, promotion, stalker

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 5:05 am and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.