How to find a publisher?

[Chocolate]

Anybody here has any tips on how to work for a publisher? Do you try to find one and submit your work? Or do you let them discover you?

[TheDoublekey]

Well, I still don't have much experience in this field, since I still have to pitch my series, but I did some research for myself, so I hope I can be of help.

First thing you should be doing is: search for potential publishers. What publishing houses would accept your story? You have different options:

1) Viz Originals: If it's a manga, you could try Viz originals. Viz is giving a chance to creators from all the world, to publish their own manga with them. Even if it's not a manga, you can still publish your own work with Viz.

2) Dark Horse comics: This one is a more well-known publisher. It's a little bit hard to pitch your story to them, but you could always give it a shot.

3) Saturday AM: Again, if you wish to publish a manga, you could also try Saturday AM. It's a Shonen Jump-inspired magazine, with works from authors from all the world.

These are just a few examples of publishers I know of and that accept pitches. Then again, you're the one who has to do most of the work. Search as many publishers as you can and then pick the one that you find to be the most promising. Once you do the pitch, though, you might have to wait some time (even months) before an actual reply, and there's no guarantee they'll immediately accept you. Sometimes you have to try more than once and try with different publishers.

Now, for the pitch itself, there are some things you'll have to do. Every publisher has their own set of rules when it comes to submitting a story, but generally they all require:

1) A synopsis of the story, where you'll have to include all the key points of your story (don't shy away from revealing important details and major events, publishers don't mind spoilers!).

2) Some examples of the artwork from your story. If you have a bunch of pages or even an entire chapter ready, you should send everything to them (they will be the ones to specify every detail, for example how should you send it, what format you should be using, etc.).

3) Information about the characters and the world.

4) Potential target. Publishers often want to know what kinds of series are the most similar to yours. It's a way to know what your potential target demographic actually is. Is your story aimed at children? Teenagers? Adults?

And they might ask for more details. It's important, as I already said, not to shy away from details and to reveal them as many things as possible. Pitching a story to a publisher is definitely not an easy task, so don't get discouraged if you get rejected on your first tries.

Here's a few videos that I watched to know more about the publishing process and how to pitch to an editor. Hope this helps

It's important to also keep in mind that you can choose to self-publish your comic instead. I suggest you see the pros and cons of both self-publishing and traditional publishing. Best part of traditional publishing is you won't have to do marketing, but the downside of it is that you will have to split your income with the publisher. As I said, you should try and pursue the best options for yourself. Wish you the best of luck!

[Lensing]

I believe in the old way to make business.
Show the product + meet the person.
There are options for meetings in every country which publishes comics.
In germany we have one bigger annual meeting for publishers and artists.
When my comic is finished I will go there and talk to the publishers.
I will also send it to them and talk to them on the phone or drink a coffee
with them and talk about it. You have a completely different relationship to
someone you met in person.
I´m doing the same for commissions, there is often the question how to
get commissions and I always say "start local", simple as that and most of the time
people don´t want to believe that but that´s where I got the regular customers
who paid the most money. Meet them in person, talk to them on the phone

[darthmongoose]

Some great advice in this thread!

In terms of "let them discover you", the options are:

• Enter competitions. For example the Tokyopop Rising Stars of Manga, Webtoons contests like Call to Action, or country specific contests like the UK's Manga Jiman can be good ways to get seen if you manage to place.
• Have a really great looking professional website with good SEO on terms like "Comic artist" "Manga" etc.
• Post your work regularly on social media. Some people get noticed by doing tutorials and similar or going viral with fan art or cool animatics and the like.
• Just make your webcomic! I didn't need to pitch to Tapas to get on the Creator Bonus Program, they approached me. If your comic is building a strong audience organically on places like Tapas, Webtoon, Hiveworks, Spiderforest etc. You might catch the attention of publishers.
• Print small press comics and sell at events. Sometimes people scout talent there if you're making something that looks good.

That said, it doesn't hurt to also go to portfolio reviews with publishers (you can usually book these at larger comics events) and submit pitches directly in addition to these things. Just keep giving every opportunity a shot, keep improving, don't get discouraged, and hopefully eventually one or two of them pay off!

[river121693]

if you have your comic printed along with other merch, book/comic, cons and festivals can be a good way to find publishers too. They often browse these spaces for potential publishings. This is a little more down the line though

[RobertBMarks]

Putting on my "publisher" and "been published by a large publishing company" hats...

(And speaking for the novel side.)

There are two main avenues to do this: agented and un-agented. Agented means that you have a literary agent representing you (and if you succeed and you do things right you will be agented by the end). Un-agented means that you representing yourself. Agented is generally best - it gets you around the slush pile.

Here you run into something of a Catch-22 - agents and publishers are both swamped with submissions from new writers who want their attention. Most will never get anything other than a rejection letter. The fastest way to get a literary agent is to have a contract in hand, contact them, and ask them if they can negotiate it for you (which is a thing you need them to do - a boilerplate contract from a large publisher can have a lot of bad stuff baked-in, like right of first refusal for your next book or a refundable advance, or trying to acquire more rights than they should).

If you do not have an agent, you have to deal with something called a "slush pile" - this is a pile of manuscripts that a publishing company has received from un-agented authors. For a large publishing company, there are frequently hundreds in the pile, and the editors will sometimes just take a day every couple of months to go through them. When I started back in 2000 the response time was measured in months - when I lost faith in the fantasy publishers as an agented author around 2015/2016, I had reached the point of asking how many decades I was supposed to wait for a reply (this quite literally killed my fiction career, and is why I'm publishing serials here instead of puttering away at my next book for a New York publishing house).

Now, perhaps things have changed since 2015/2016 - in fact, I HOPE things have changed. The word I was hearing was that some established Golden Age SF authors had stopped sending in books because they didn't know if they'd live long enough to receive an answer (if it hasn't changed, I'm not kidding when I say you're probably better off self-publishing - I think the worst thing that can happen to an author is sending their manuscript into what is functionally a black hole and having to wait).

If you do decide to go looking for a publisher for your novel, there are some important pieces of etiquette you need to know about:

1. Follow the publisher's instructions. "Thou shalt not waste the acquisition editor's time" is a commandment. If they say they are only interested in agented submissions, or they want only fantasy and science fiction, don't decide that they'll make an exception for you, because they WON'T. When a publisher starts refusing to take un-agented submissions, it means that they are swamped and trying to cut down on the inflow.

2. Do not try to be clever selling your book. The acquisition editor's job is to figure out if a book is worth publishing and will make a profit upon publication, and they are overworked enough as it is. "You won't believe what happens next, but you'll have to ask for the full manuscript to find out" is guaranteed to get you a rejection letter. Provide them with a full synopsis leaving nothing out, identify the genre with precision and accuracy, identify the target audience, and provide your credentials. BE PROFESSIONAL. Speaking as somebody who has received some truly bizarre submissions, I can assure you that the response you get if you try to pull a stunt isn't interest, it's an eye-roll and a rejection letter.

3. Simultaneous submissions must be disclosed. There is such a thing as blacklisting in the world of publishing, and leading a publisher to think that they are the only one considering a manuscript, only to discover that they weren't and somebody else has scooped it, is a really good way to end up on one of those lists. Most publishers won't consider simultaneous submissions at all. Those who will, require them to be disclosed in the cover letter.

4. Send previously unpublished work. There are publishers who will buy reprint rights, but they are few and far between. Most publishers want to be the first one to publish any given book. You can mention that you have built an audience with your previous work on Tapas, for example, but don't expect them to be interested in publishing your serial. Send them something new.

I think that covers the etiquette side. There are a couple more things that come to mind, however. First, don't bother waiting to be discovered - that happens to people who manage to self-publish a bestseller. Publishing houses are already swamped with manuscripts - their editors aren't going to take time trawling the internet for new talent. Second, there is a place for out-of-the-box thinking, like calling an editor and asking if a licensed series is accepting new writers (which is how I got the contract for Diablo: Demonsbane back in 2000) or a telephone inquiry asking if it's worth sending a manuscript in that is an unconventional take on a genre - but once you have done this, you MUST revert to the professional etiquette, and have something that you can send them immediately (again, see the commandment in point #1).

And, that's the novel side of the equation, at least as it was as of the mid-2010s.

[system]

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