I need to stop romanticizing this industry.

Sustainability and Survival is not an easy task.

Hey everyone, it’s been a while!

My name is Chris.

I’m an illustrator, author, and one of the co-founders of Band of Bards (an independent publishing house based in Buffalo, NY). As much as this space is about what I’ll be doing, I’m also aiming to help other creators, and spread some positivity with my platform (not to mention dispel and demystify a little bit of how the publishing industry works from my own point of view).

**Admittedly, this one isn’t the most positive, and I’m not having the best year so far. At this point we all can only try to be better.

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Note: I wrote most of this back in November 2024. Honestly I felt like the whole world was crashing down around me at the time, and I’m glad I waited a bit before I fired this off into the ether. Now that Diamond Comic Distributors has announced what is going to ultimately become it’s demise (bankruptcy), looking back… I can’t say that I didn’t see it coming.

I’m less angry right now than I was back in November. Never-the-less, let’s talk about the challenge that was 2024… and then lets talk about what we can do better for the future.

Isn’t comics romantic? (Spoiler Alert: It’s not)

I can’t believe it’s been almost four years since Tim and I started Band of Bards. Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and ready to change an industry. Lofty goals and aspirations for sure… especially after you spend some real time and money trying, only to realize that the industry, (and some of the people in it) don’t actually want to change. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, the reality is that some of those people are good at pretending to be in your camp, while actively working against you to lift themselves up… instead of everyone.

Listen, I’m not here to throw anyone under the bus or cancel them for not living up to the expectations they created for themselves, or of us… Hell, we haven’t been able to live up to the early hype we generated yet, and we’re four years in.

So what is it than? Lack of understanding? Romanticization of the direct market? A little bit of both actually, and unfortunately a lot more.

(Delays, cancellations, and Vendor dependency)

The comics industry as a whole runs on razor thin margins (and we’re not just talking money, we’re talking time too.) When your book goes up for sale in a catalog like Previews you’ve got around thirty days to sell the book to stores. Once that window closes it takes about a week (sometimes two weeks) for us to get the purchase order from the distributor, and by the time we have it the clock has already been running.

The order for the books has to be placed, artwork reviewed and approved, the books then are printed, shipped, and hopefully get to the distributors warehouse in time so they then can be re-shipped to whatever other corresponding warehouse they need to get to… AND THEN shipped to the Comic Shop.

Suffice to say the last six+ months have been a kind of living hell of vendor issues, creator issues, distribution issues, and our own internal issues.. and while I don’t feel like we’ve personally dropped the ball, it all gets to a point where everyone is just tired, and needs a break. I’m not going to go into specifics because what’s the point? The bigger question for me that I needed to solve was, how do we get back on track and how do we bring Band of Bards back to it’s original mission? Because frankly, being beholden to the industry we are trying to change is not what we ever wanted.

Realization has to come quick, and self-reflecting on a system built where you run yourself ragged working for a never-ending set of deadlines, is quite literally the death of creativity.

That, and regardless of how well-oiled of a machine you’ve got running it only takes one wrench to fuck it all up for everyone.

I’ve spent the last four years of my life working to help lift up other people and their projects for the better, but lately it seems to have been for worse. I feel like every single choice that I had to make this past year was extremely difficult and was not met with a modicum of grace. I’m not infallible, criticism is OK, and in some situations appropriate. All of it feels like it’s things mostly out of my control— like the unexpected darkness of a print vendor’s printing. Nothing feels better than to be told I’m doing my job poorly, and reading a shitty sub-tweet about it.

No shit.

Hind-sight is 20/20 though, and It’s easy to have a negative opinion about something that didn’t go your way. It’s also like having an asshole on your elbow.

It’s easy to complain to the wilds of the internet and never have to mind all the missing context. Just go and get your Twitter pitty parade, and collect your 10 seconds of clout. Your private group chat will hold your hand, and reassure you that I am indeed a horrible person.

I digress. I’m not going to blame this person for being upset about the print quality, it’s a bummer for sure. The fellow is a great writer and he deserves way more recognition for his work than he gets… but I’m not a fan of the personal swipe at me, when I tried my best to make it right, and with what limited resources I had to work with at the time. That’s all.

Truth is I can’t be mad at this guy. Nobody really knows the extent of the bull-shit we’ve been dealing with— mostly what I’ve been dealing with for six months and essentially on my own.

This industry can be a cold and selfish place. I try to operate for the most part from a place of understanding, and sure can I lose my patience? Absolutely, but I don’t lack the gumption to take accountability for my mistakes.

People don’t have to be grateful for the work I’ve done for them (for free). I don’t need to be told ‘Thank you’. I would be happy to just not read or hear about how my peers talk shit, and rip me apart in some private ‘pseudo’ community forum or chat, when the direct market doesn’t satisfy their expectations. That’s not my fault. It’s not satisfying ANYONE’S expectations. That’s your romanticization of an industry that was broken long before me.

The fact is that I love building books, and promoting books, and helping other creators grow. Band of Bards isn’t an IP Farm, we’re not collecting others work to get rich quick (we don’t have any money). This industry is incredibly difficult on all of our emotions, our brains, and very clearly our egos. We need to be a bit more tempered, and a bit more understanding if we’re going to survive.

So… where do we go from here?

I think it’s pretty obvious that this isn’t the only pile of shit we had to wade through in 2024, but this blog post isn’t about airing my grievances, it’s about working for the future.

The comic industry saw this weird revival during COVID, where entertainment was paramount, money was plentiful, and IP licensing was abundant. Many a publisher formed their entire business model on this, After Shock, Scout, IDW and more reaped fortunes and now lay mostly dormant.

It’s weird because on the internet it’s easy to have anonymity for your hardships. These are companies with (allegedly) big money from investors. Where did it go? It’s hard to watch companies indiscriminately squander dollars and lucrative IP deals. To see them flounder, knowing damn well you could have done some real good with only a portion of those funds.

We haven’t been financially lucky, no one has knocked down our door to spoon feed us cash.

Publishing is fun, until it isn’t anymore.

The plan from here on out is to try and do our best to support the creators, and the community that mean so much to us. That means that things will change.

Some of the things that Band of Bards is doing requires us to dig in and sew roots in our local community. We’re looking for a space, big enough to hold a production facility. We’re seeking funding from New York State to buy a state-of-the-art digital printing press, and we’re going to open a collaborative creative hub that can help us provide increased services to the independent creator community we love; and hopefully ease some of the costs of production… not to mention be able to better control the quality of those products being made.

We’ve closed submissions for now. Please don’t be discouraged, they’ll open again later in 2025 or early 2026, but in earnest… we’ve done a terrible job of keeping up on them, and instead of pumping out new series after new series, we’re going to focus and help cultivate and grow the amazing slate of creators we currently have under contract. We made a commitment to them and that’s where my primary focus has been since June. Expanding to the book market and giving these awesome people more opportunities to create including novels, anthologies, and trades. Finding new avenues for their work and continuing to support these amazing up and coming digital marketplaces like Comix.one, GlobalComix, Drive Thru, and LibraryPass are a priority. Maybe that also includes focusing a little bit more on ourselves too.

That’s not to say that there aren’t new stories coming in 2025, so just please keep your eyes peeled. We’ve always been in the business of being transparent, so it wouldn’t be right not to give everyone some kind of update on what has been going on. It’s chaotic, but we have a plan.

We’re not dead yet.

I appreciate you, and want you to succeed… even if (for whatever reason it is) you don’t like me. We’re much stronger together than we are apart.

Peace & Love

Chris

P.S. I promise there will be a Great & Terrible update next newsletter.