TWO FISTED SCIENCE!

I don't have a lot of fresh insight to offer, really. There's so much good generic advice out there already in published form that I don't think I have much to add. What I can offer are some observations...

Looking at the list of grant winners from September 1992 to October 1998 [1], there have been 63 recipients since the first one. Of those:

23 folks are "active" in comics right now. [2]
Of those twenty-three, 8 of them are purely (almost) self-publishing.

Of those eight, 6 have moved in whole (or in large part) to publishing trade editions/long-form works as their main way of presenting their work. [3]

I'm not sure what to make of these final numbers other than to wonder about the viability of self-published comic magazines -- you know, the ones with staples on the side and less than 48 pages or so. [4] That may be self-serving, since outside of "sampler" issues I moved directly to a trade paperback from the very start.

To conclude, I think the 23 out of 63 number indicates that self-publishing is still a mighty hard road to travel, but at least for me it's been worth it. I haven't made a lot of money, but that's what the day job is all about. I have made a lot of friends and a couple of trade paperbacks that I'm proud of (so far -- another is in the works), and that's what life is all about.

Notes:

[1] I don't include the most recent Xeric recipients since they're too new to self-publishing to be able to talk about their longevity in a meaningful way.

[2] By active, I mean that I'm aware of new work by them within the last year. That's obviously a definition fraught with problems, but that's the only one I can go by. I do try to keep up, though -- I still love comics!

[3] Of the remaining fifteen (i.e. those folks still active but who are affiliated with a publisher) 8 of them also have trade paperbacks available through various imprints.

[4] It probably doesn't need pointing out that none of the above are purely action/adventure or superhero-oriented.