Necessary Questions for a "Mid-Career" Author ("Have I Been Owned?)

This is PART SEVEN(!) of a series of posts about preparing for DELILAH DIRK BOOK FOUR, a new graphic novel.

Years ago, when I was first entertaining the idea of dipping my toes in the publishing world, there was no mistaking it: there was self-publishing (or “vanity publishing”) and Real Publishing. The former was inferior, and the latter was not only superior, but legitimate. Self-publishing was self-indulgent and had an air of foolishness about it. Traditional Publishing meant you had “made it,” you were a Real Author. Is this still the case?

As for the stigma or the mental image, I suspect that still exists. But practically, how are self-published authors doing these days? I’m thinking of folks who run their own webcomics, who support themselves with merchandise shops and advertising and Patreons and Kickstarters. My guess is that a self-published author is equally as likely to be able to maintain their work as is any traditionally-published author. I feel as if I can identify as many popular, financially stable, independent, self-published authors as I can identify the same among traditionally-published authors. I suspect the shoulders of both roads are littered with authors whose work did not sell or has not attracted an audience.

I wonder where DD3 falls on this spectrum. I think it’s the best of the Delilah Dirk books, and yet it seems to have done the least well, measured by traditional metrics. I was surprised when DD1 was a bestseller, and it received great reviews and a handful of award nominations. DD2 was very well-reviewed, as well. DD3 seems to have entered the world to no great fanfare, despite my earnest belief that it is more fun, more thematically and visually consistent, more exciting, and overall a “better” book than the previous two. I’ve read a few opinions that agree, too, and none that tell me, “well, it’s just not as good as the other ones,” so I don’t understand why it wouldn’t generate as much interest as DD1. If I make another, do I try to make it “better?” If so, then by what metric? When I have a book on my hands that feels as if it is good, and others agree, but it does not sell especially well or generate as much enthusiasm as previous volumes in the series, it’s hard not to feel like my ideas of what is “better or worse” are mis-calibrated. Was the appeal of DD1 that it was new and novel? It didn’t feel novel to me—it felt like a natural kind of comic to make. I didn’t think I was doing anything different. What would happen if I tried to make something different now? If I have to try hard to make something different, will that ruin the product, like kneading bread dough too much?

It is possible that my picture of this situation is mis-informed or too subjective. I don’t have charts and graphs to show me how each book has been doing. And if I found those charts and graphs, the question would become: do I want to be basing the decision to make another Delilah Dirk book on commercial performance? No, not really. I’d love if it were self-supporting, but again, if I’m going to take the risk of being an independent author, I might as well go all the way and say “to hell with commercial considerations.”

Even if DD3 had been wildly successful, I would not want to repeat the process of making it. It’s time to try something different. It’s time to change up my iterative production process and see if I can discover more life and spontaneity. It’s time to stop trying to be so clever, and make greater efforts toward speaking clearly. DD4 needs to be more challenging. At the same time, I need to approach it with a more carefree attitude. Is that possible? I don’t think those ideas are mutually exclusive.

It’s also hard for me to believe that I am talking myself into making a webcomic. And yet, aside from the online maintenance, I see no downsides to it. It’s its own free promotion, and it keeps DD in front of people’s eyes without a five-year gap between publications. When I ask, “what is the best way I can serve people who would want to read this work,” I like the idea that posting the work online makes it more accessible. Whether I can make that financially viable or not, I’m not sure. I won’t know until I try.

A good friend who is also a comic author asked, “do you even want to make another DD book?” This is a sensible, necessary question because I don’t think I’d be a very good author if I didn’t consider it. It would be unwise to continue blindly down the same path.

The answer, I believe, is “yes.” I like these characters, I like these settings, I like the tone and the spirit and everything that goes into DD books. I am not waiting on storm clouds above me to send down a bolt of vivid inspiration and send me rushing off in the direction of another project. That doesn’t happen. Inspiration is a feeling you have to work to discover or build, and I believe you can build inspiration for any project. Good ideas happen all the time, the tough part is choosing which ones to pursue and having the will to follow through on. 

There are other projects that I can imagine filling my time with, and I do hope I’ll get around to them some day, but none of them feel so charged with urgency that I simply must drop everything else and pursue them. For now, Delilah Dirk provides an excellent venue to make the work I want to make, emphasizing the values I want to emphasize, and (adhering to the old writing advice) being the kind of book I want to read. So I will make a fourth Delilah Dirk book, and this time I will try a few new things.