Is it impossible for you to go traditional in publishing if your series here isn't popular?

[KeinanX]

If my story doesn't have a certain number of views/subscribers/likes does that mean I can't go to any publisher that could be big? Let's say Viz for example.

[RedLenai]

If you want to attempt to publish your series with an Editorial or have a physical book then... just try to make an appointment with an editor from one, or figure out how Amazon Kindle works, I've seen lots of writers making their physical copies that way. Popularity helps, since that means there is people that are going to buy that book if it comes out, instead of producing it, wasting time and money and have it sit for almost an entire year until it sells.

Would you buy a brand of food that you've never heard of, never saw any advertisement or at least that is known somewhere?

But the truth about anything is that... most of the time if you don't promote your series, don't take the effort into building up a fanbase, slowly creating engagement and most importantly being patient about things, you kind of need to reconsider if it's a good idea trying to profit or get popularity with two series that are not even a year old and that has an unsteady schedule. Especially, in an oversaturated platform like this one... Most of the time people don't see profit, not even on their first 5 years posting.

[Aleksei]

You can always publish by yourself.
There is Amazon Publish in Kindle. Also you can do it from Clip Studio (if you work on that program).
You can set up your own page, and sell printed copies from an 'on demand' site.
And finally, yeah you can search for a publisher.

Numbers are just that, numbers. If you have a good story, you can send it to every publisher you want and maybe they will printn it inmediatly -or maybe not. You should not equal views to sucess, though. Most of the views and subs comes from good marketing, instead of good story, so maybe there is where you want to go.

[darthmongoose]

Actually... it's not necessarily the case.

Being popular online and being well-suited to print aren't the same thing. In fact, among my friends, I know plenty of professionals who have a huge following online but have never been all that successful in print media, and also plenty who are very successful and well-established print creators whose webcomic following is nothing special.

The key thing you need to look for are "comp titles". A "comp title" (Comparison title) is:

• A work in the same medium as what you want to make (print comic, webcomic, TV series, light novel etc.)
• Aimed at the same rough demographic as what you want to make (ie. Kids 3-6, Kids 7-11, Kids 11-14, Young Adult etc.)
• It MUST be from about the last 10 years and have been at least reasonably successful in the same market as your work (so if it was huge in Japan 20 years ago and never really made much impact in the US where you plan to sell your story that probably won't fly).
• It needs to have a similar "vibe" / "tone" / "look" / "feel" or premise/genre so it feels similar to your work.

Ideally, you should have at least three titles like this you can name.

For example, if I was going to make a print comic, I wouldn't make my webcomic, Errant, I'd make a children's graphic novel and pitch it to Scholastic and similar, because I can name plenty of comp titles similar to the kind of vibe of children's comic I'd make, like Witch Boy, Lumberjanes, Stone Keeper etc. So I can be fairly confident about pitching something like that in print.
As a webcomic though, Errant has a solid foundation for me to be confident about building a moderate readership on Tapas because there are comp titles for an LGBTQ+ themed and character-focused Action-Adventure with bold art, like Hard Lacquer, Pandora's Devils, Magical Boy, The Flying Ship etc.

So really, it's about looking for the best place to sell what you want to sell. If you're already in the best possible place for your product, but it's still not getting readers, it may be a matter of just needing time to build your experience, skill and audience and refining your presentation quality and marketing.

[Shanny8]

With the way time & money is imperative in the publishing world, unless publishers are floored/wowed by your comic(art/story/concept) and they are beyond 100% convinced that your project will generate tons of revenue for them, then the odds are not in your favor. That is why a lot of creators stress building your audience; you cant rely on publishers taking a look at your project if the interest isn't already there.

[NickRowler]

Let's say Viz for example.

Viz Media is not a traditional publisher. They are a distributor who partners with Japanese publications. You would have to publish through the Japanese companies and have Viz decide to pick it for North American distribution. Not really worth the hassle IMO.

[KeinanX]

Well there are Viz originals, which publish English language manga created in the states, which is what I meant.

[KeinanX]

You saying this gives me hope, I know my series isn't doing too well here on Tapas due to my inexperience with highly promoting myself but I at least want to know if I were to go to any of the publisher it would be accepted if the story and anything else was good about it. Either or hearing this kind of information is extremely helpful

[KeinanX]

I do believe my story does at least have the potential, but at this point that's all I can really rely on when it comes to going to a publisher who sees my series isn't super popular.

[Shanny8]

Like @RedLenai said, you at least need to be 5 years(or more) into your comic...at least with that amount of time, publishers can take a look at the body of work and determine something...less than that, and publishers are iffy about the longevity, impact, and resonance of a comic coz there isnt enough history to go on.

They also want to know that there is a full story- beginning, middle, & end; I see a lot of creators that start out with a thing and lose interest in their comic, or realize that they've outgrown that concept/idea and want to do something else, or they're creating on the fly and write themselves into a situation that they can't recover the comic from.

[Llyrel]

Traditionally published author here. From personal experience, let me tell you: unless your comic is huge (and I mean HUGE, think Solo Leveling or Heartstopper levels), traditional publishers aren't probably going to care about your online presence at all Edit to clarify: that is to say, if they think your work is worth publishing, they will publish it, follower counts don't matter.

They just don't have the time to check online profiles and whatever: they're barely going to read the materials you've provided them (story summary, your CV, the first few lines/pages of your story if you're lucky) and that's about it. If they like what they see, they might decide to check what other works you have available, but given the tight schedules the great majority of publishers tend to work with... most likely, they'll not. They simply have no time to: they probably already have 20 other manuscripts to check before the end of the day, they're tired and stressed and frankly not paid enough for the job they do

Tbh, tho, having your series already available online for free may even prevent you from getting a contract, because most publishers want 100% original, previously unpublished work and, to them, even self-published works count as "published". It's a bit different with famous authors, because publishers know that there's already a big and established audience for them and, as a result, will be more willing to take risks.

Now, some publishers are less picky than others and may still decide to publish your work even if it's already available online (but they'll probably ask you to take it off any platform it's on so people don't just go get the free online version instead). Some publishers may decide to pick you as an author and will let you have your characters and setting, BUT they may want you to change the plot completely compared to what was online, so that you can retain your old audience but still end up with a work that feels "fresh" (happened to a couple of comics in my country, the original self-published versions had very different plots compared to what was published, but characters were the same). It all depends on the publisher, really.

Best way to figure it out is just... look for publishers who have open submissions, study them for a bit (figure out their target, general style, the kind of stuff they do/don't do... you certainly don't want to send a gore horror story to a children's publisher XD) and see what they ask for. Most will ask for a cover letter, a CV listing your previous publishing experiences (if any), a summary of the work you intend to submit. Some may take the full manuscript/volume (rarely with comics), other will only want a sample, others will just take the summary and contact you later to read the whole thing if they're interested.

A good way to build a portfolio is to look for short story competitions and such. Even if you don't win but manage to get nominated for an award, you can still put it in your CV

Just be very careful and look out for scams (e.g. publishers making the competition winner pay for their work to get published and/or copyright issues that would strip you of any right over your IP).

tl;dr: publishers don't generally look at followers numbers but only quality of work. Famous artists with big follower counts may have it a little easier, but that's no guarantee. Best way to figure out if a publisher will accept your work or not is to... actually submit it to publishers and see what they think

[KeinanX]

The requirements of getting traditionally published sound absurd, I mean solo leveling and heartstopper levels? That's completely unreal! In that case no self-published work could get traditionally published, even if the story is really good

[Shanny8]

The requirements of getting traditionally published sound absurd, I mean solo leveling and heartstopper levels? That's completely unreal! In that case no self-published work could get traditionally published, even if the story is really good

That's where we're at now days in traditional comic and graphic novel publishing...creator owned material is not going to be published unless they are all of certain the idea/concept is a guaranteed money maker, and the creator already has a sizeable audience that they've built themselves; anything more is too much of a time/money waste on their part.

[Llyrel]

Wait, wait, wait! That is NOT what I said!

I'll put it in a shorter way:

Traditional publishers generally do NOT care about your online presence. That is to say, if they think your work is good, they will STILL publish it.

Super popular works like Solo Leveling or Heartstopper may have a higher chance of being published right away. But that does NOT mean that less famous people have no chance!

You do need to have a highly polished work and present yourself in a professional way, though. If a traditional publisher finds your work interesting, they'll publish you no matter your follower count.

[KeinanX]

Yikes, my slow misreading behind read that wrong, 100 sorrys on my part!

[Llyrel]

D’aaaw, no worries!

[thecrystalrook]

You REALLY don't need a publisher. All a publisher does for you is slap their name onto the book and handle advertising and distribution for you. The internet nowadays allows you to publish on your own. Find a good printing company (I suggest Mixam Printing, they're great), and open your own shop.

[Mallory]

Are you trying to publish a book or a comic? AFAIK (I'm in the process of pitching a comic to publishers) publishers would rather publish something completely new rather than republish an already-existing work. In the world of novels you are completely shooting yourself in the foot if you self-publish it, basically no publisher will ever touch it, because they can't buy the exclusive rights anymore (unless you are extremely successful on your own - but then you wouldn't need them). In indie comics I think they're a bit more flexible, but what they'd be looking for is whether they think the idea can make them money if they apply their own marketing to it. They may want to change large portions of your comic to make it more marketable, so having a "pre-made" comic may not be to your advantage since you could end up spending a lot of time re-drawing it (this isn't a bad thing, by the way... a good publisher would know way more about the market than you, and will only be recommending changes that they expect would add to your mutual success).

Read through the submission guidelines for the publishers you're interested in to double-check. But having seen what VIZ has put out, I wouldn't be surprised if they specified that they weren't interested in previously published work.

[RobertBMarks]

Okay - just for background, I've been published by Pocket Books and Osborne/McGraw-Hill, and I've run my own small publishing company since 2007. So, I've got a good idea of what's going on from both sides of the proverbial aisle.

The thing you need to realize is that when you sell a book to a publisher, what you are selling is the publication rights to that book. What any publisher wants is the first print and electronic publication rights, meaning that it has never been published anywhere before. These are the most valuable rights, and the ones that a publisher is willing to shell out money for. If a book has been published anywhere, now you're talking about reprint rights - unless the book was a huge success or significant in some way, the publishers won't touch them (there's just no way to get a reasonable return on investment for them).

Another thing is that genre matters, and not in the way you might think. If it's fantasy or science fiction, you could be looking at response times that are measured in months rather than years. This is what killed my fiction career back in the early 2000s, and I was an agented author at the time (when you reach the point where you're wondering how many decades you're going to need to wait for a reply, it's time to do something new). So, in those genres, you're probably much better served in those genres by self-publication or going through a small, independent publisher.

Self publishing is a huge topic, so if you decide to go that route, you might want to contact me through DM, and when I have a moment I'll try to run you through some of the things you need to keep in mind.

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

Wouldn't traditional, hard-copy publishers have (or believe they do) a different audience than onlline readers? If so, they may not attach as much significance to online followers than one may suspect. Even more so if they are familiar with sub-for-sub sorts of numbers-building.