Read an excerpt from THE BUSINESS OF FREELANCE COMIC BOOK PUBLISHING

Today, Gamal Hennessy launched a Kickstarter marketing campaign for his newest e-book, The Business of Freelance Comic Book Publishing. The new e-book from legal professional and author Hennessy digs into the ins and outs of working as a freelancer throughout the comics business, together with matters like discover work, receives a commission, and the way typically to handle a contract profession. With the marketing campaign in full swing, The Beat is happy to supply an unique take a look at a modified excerpt from the The Business of Freelance Comic Book Publishing, which covers competitors throughout the inventive discipline.

Who Is Your Competition As A Comic Creator?

By Gamal Hennessy

This is a modified excerpt from a e-book I’m engaged on known as The Business of Freelance Comic Book Publishing. It is designed that will help you determine and examine your self to the rivals in your providers. While this may’t be taken as authorized or monetary recommendation, it will possibly assist you to decide your house available in the market.

What is Competition?

In enterprise, Competition is the hassle of two or extra events appearing independently and adversely to one another to safe the enterprise of a 3rd celebration. No matter how specialised your ability set or your abilities, there’ll all the time be competitors. Depending on the place you reside and what you cost, there’ll all the time be somebody charging lower than you. This is particularly true in comics, the place geographical freedom permits publishers to supply expertise from anyplace on the planet.

How Do You Identify Your Competition?

This implies that in principle, you might be in competitors with everybody who can do the identical sort of labor as you may for each undertaking you attempt to safe. In actuality, you can’t and shouldn’t try and determine each FCC in the identical area of interest as you. The purpose isn’t to assemble a complete spreadsheet of all of your rivals. Instead, hunt down three to 5 of the main rivals in your discipline and examine your corporation to theirs. You can discover them within the credit of present comics, on social media, or in conversations with different freelancers and purchasers.

Look at their advertising messages, social media exercise, and shopper lists. Use this data to grasp how you might be comparable, how you might be totally different and why a possible shopper would rent one in every of you in comparison with the opposite.

How Can You Compare Yourself to the Competition?

One software that you need to use in your aggressive evaluation is named SWOT, which is an acronym that refers to Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. For instance, let’s say that there’s an unbiased lawyer on the market who focuses on offering providers to the comedian e-book business. Look out over the advertising panorama, he finds three different attorneys with the identical specialty. By researching every one and discovering out what books they’ve written prior to now, he can develop a singular perspective to assist him stand out from the group.

It is vital to spotlight the significance of diplomacy in relation to your competitors. In virtually all instances, it does you no good to spend time and vitality criticizing or mocking the FCC who work in your area. The business is small. You by no means know who you could be working with or for, or who will all of the sudden grow to be key to your corporation, or who’s pals along with your competitor. Identifying the existence of competitors is beneficial in your advertising, however on an interpersonal stage, collaboration and referrals generally is a higher long-term technique, should you can leverage your rivals to assist clear up your shopper’s issues. Just make sure that everybody is aware of the referral got here from you, as a result of on this case, good karma within the type of work later will be the results of public referrals.

Have enjoyable along with your comedian.

Gamal

The Kickstarter marketing campaign for The Business of Freelance Comic Book Publishing is dwell now, and runs till Thursday, October nineteenth.