Self-Publishing vs. Publishing Yourself

I ran a book publishing house with my wife Amanda for eight years. I’m proud of The Devastator, which at one time was the sole humor press in America. We grew a full-line press from a Kickstarter for a single anthology that made less than $6,000. When The Devastator ended, Amanda stayed in book publishing and is now a beloved comics editor with an Eisner nomination. We brought together a community of writers and artists who are still friends to this day. Couples formed from our little scene. There is one Devastator Baby (that I’m aware of). Though the press didn’t become our forever business, I have no regrets when it comes to The Devastator.

Okay, that’s a lie. I do have one regret! Sort of? Let’s call it a half regret.

It goes back to the reason we started The Devastator. Amanda and I were young comedy writers who wanted to build a new stage for ourselves and our friends. As such, we published a lot of my writing. Articles, zines, novellas, a licensed and an unlicensed TTRPG. The Devastator had an editorial review board made up of pals, so while I wasn’t just rubber stamping my own stuff per se, I’m sure my position as co-owner of the press and friend to all the editors was somewhat influential in my projects getting greenlit. My passion was writing. I wanted a creative outlet more than anything, a hell of a lot more than the late nights, toil, and drudgery of running an independent small press.

Which leads to my half-regret. I think The Devastator would’ve done better as a business if I wasn’t writing for it.

I love the work I published through The Devastator. (Okay, fine. Most of the work. I wrote an article about Sinistar being a Hitler apologist that feels cringingly relevant for a parody of a 40 year old arcade game.) My experience creating and publishing games through The Devastator, like the Wet Hot American Summer roleplaying game, was formative for what would become my journey into game writing and design. I still think my imagineering parody book is among my best work and it sold pretty well. Even though some of my writing shows its age, I will defend my back catalogue. No regrets on any specific thing I wrote.

However, there was also no shortage of funny comedy writing for us to publish. We had a network of hundreds of writers and artists pitching us and our blind submissions grew every year. What The Devastator needed was more people solely devoted to growing the business. I spent my days crunching numbers, designing social media assets, and editing manuscripts. I spent my afternoons and evenings writing pages of my books and zines. What if I had those afternoons to email more potential advertisers for the magazine? To search the web for the next great comedy voice? To write a half-decent business plan, instead of a half-assed one? To figure out how to crack a book industry that dismisses the entire humor category?

My fantasy was that a reader of The Devastator with an MBA was going to swoop in and say, “I’ll run your business! You just focus on the fun stuff. We’ll grow it together.” That’s what I understand happened for the creators of Penny Arcade when they were a struggling independent. There was a business guy behind the success of National Lampoon magazine and MAD magazine, which we saw as our guiding stars. But it didn’t happen for us. The Devastator needed Amanda and I to make the business our sole focus, but we weren’t business people at heart, as much as I tried to cosplay that role.

All that said, I’m a staunch supporter of self-publishing. “Self-publishing” used to be a dirty term. It implied the artist was rejected by cultural gatekeepers and had to resort to publishing their own work. How times have changed! This is a media ecosystem designed for self-publishing. When I was growing up, it was prohibitively expensive for most people to shoot a movie. Now you can shoot one with the phone in your pocket and upload it to a global distribution platform for free. If you wanted to get your writing into the world without the benefit of a newspaper or magazine, you were probably photocopying and stapling a zine. You could launch a website, but if Yahoo! didn’t list your site, you effectively didn’t exist. (🎶 Yah-hooooooo!) Now you can make zines, which are awesome, but you could also start an email newsletter and potentially reach a global audience… on a platform that supports nazis. But still! If you have a great idea, it’s never been cheaper and easier to write that book, film that movie, or program that game. There are ways to distribute what you make for free with the potential to reach many, many people.

Of course, it’s way easier to make a living if a corporation is paying for your health insurance while you make your art. I wish the current market wasn’t so hostile to professional artists who want a regular 9-5 and don’t want to be influencer-preneurs. Self-publishing is like starting a micro-business where you make your own product. It’s not for everybody, but I love supporting independent artists through Patreon, zine fests, Kickstarters, and commissions. I hope you do, too!

The line for me is when you set-up a business to publish yourself and others. I wouldn’t recommend doing both at once. It’s a distraction. There are so many talented artists out there making incredible work. There’s gold in them hills. People make art for fun. Like me! I love making art for fun! Tons of great media around the world has not been exposed to a wider audience for profit. The rarer thing, in my view, is the business person who figures out how to turn art into a profitable, sustainable business for all involved. That’s the ideal publisher. Someone who pours their passion and creativity into an artist-friendly business model, as opposed to their own YA novel. (Like me! That’s what I did, lol.)

One model is currently dominant. Pay artists pennies to make slop videos to hack people’s attention. I want to see more alternative publishing strategies in the world. We subscribe to Dropout and The Onion, so we put our money where our mouths are. (Not literally. Paper money is gross.)

Of course, Dropout’s CEO is also a game show host on their network, so maybe it’s possible to “publish” yourself and others successfully. I think the more resources you have, the easier it is to buy the time necessary to do both successfully. The Devastator was as bootstrappy as you can get, but if your business makes millions, I suppose you can hire a CFO and accountants to handle the boring stuff, so you can be the company’s top creative.

The model that makes most sense to me for a self-publishing business is what I call The Band Model. In a band, a group of musicians come together to make an album, which is either a shared vision or the vision of a band leader. If the band is lucky and savvy, the album is a hit online and they develop a following! The band employs many creative and business people to support the vision as they tour and make more albums. This model is applicable to games, movies, comics, and lots of other stuff.

If your goal as an artist is to make money in the spotlight, especially as a creator with minimal resources, I recommend building your own spotlight, then making it brighter. Do you really want to start a spotlight company?

🎲 Your Turn: Do you self-publish? What do you put out into the world? Share your links! Have you published other people’s work? What’s your experience been like as a publisher? I found it to be difficult and costly. Are you better at it than I was? I’d love to hear from you. Reply directly to this email or hit the orange button below to leave a comment.

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