A fool and his money.

A few years back an editor at Marvel Comics (perhaps you’ve heard of them) started his own comic book review company.  For a price, he and those working with him would evaluate your book and let you know if it stood a chance of success in the marketplace.  He used a sliding scale to illustrate the amount of feedback you’d receive: to get a thumbs up or thumbs down would cost you a certain amount, to get personalized comments would cost more, to get bulleted suggestions would cost even more, and so forth.

One of his selling points was that “most comic book companies print one issue of one comic and then go out of business” which, obviously, was oversimplifying things, but I suppose he thought that his guidance could increase a book’s chances of survival in the volatile comic book marketplace.  For my part, it seems that if a small press company goes out of business it might be because someone is spending money unwisely, perhaps by throwing needed capital at an editor to tell you if your book stinks or not.  But that’s just me (and before anyone gets the wrong impression, no, I did not submit Teddy and the Yeti to that service, which has been out of business itself for quite some time, as far as I know).

By this logic, Teddy and the Yeti has been around twice as long as it was supposed to, and in another month or so (I've been working hard on getting it done, folks) it'll be THREE times as long!  The editor at Marvel was right - publishing comic books is a tough business - which is why I'm so proud of everything T&Y has accomplished so far.  But perhaps one of the reasons I've been able to publish three issues is that I haven't tossed my money DIRECTLY out of a window.