Are there advantages?
There are a lot of advantages and I think the biggest one is the satisfaction of being your own boss and setting your own course. I tried punching clocks but when you know in the back of your mind you need to get up at a certain time and eventually someone will be telling you "This needs to be done, or...." just didn't appeal to me. Especially when I couldn't wait to grab a pen & start drawing later!
How do you promote your work, Dan?
Promotion & cartooning are pretty much one & the same. You need to do it! It's a prerequisite. In order to achieve any success in this business, you have to figure out a good promotional program. I used to have printers print up 1000 brochures at a time for me with all kinds of samples of my previously published work, along with my phone number & fax number, then buy preprinted labels with addresses of ad agencies, magazine editors etc. Then mail them all out. It can get costly doing that though.
I have also purchased ad space in specialized artist directories and these directories are sent annually to 25,000 recipients like art directors at ad agencies, PR firms, book publishers, magazine publishers, corporations and so on. One year I picked out 3 of these directories to advertise myself in and spent just over ten thousand dollars to promote the availability of my work. It's a bit scary to find yourself pushing that much money out in one day to 3 various sources in the hopes you will get some work but at times you need to take risks & gambles. Of course, that was all done on a credit card basis & needless to say, that helped boost my credit ratings with the big three and etched my name permanently on the mailing directories of credit card companies!
Have you reached your goals in cartooning?
In a way, yes. Just to be actively creating work that sells on a consistent basis is pretty much the goal I've attained. If new opportunities present themselves, I'll definitely pursue them. When I first started cartooning, getting a syndicated comic strip was considered the ultimate but in this technological age, there really aren't any ultimatums anymore because you never know what is around that next curve.
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to Susanna McLeod's Cartoonists topic, please visit the Discussions page.