{"id":632,"date":"2007-03-07T10:34:20","date_gmt":"2007-03-07T14:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=632"},"modified":"2007-03-07T21:34:52","modified_gmt":"2007-03-08T01:34:52","slug":"my-pulisher-is-dan-vado-and-dan-vado-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=632","title":{"rendered":"My Publisher is Dan Vado, and Dan Vado Says…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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For those you not as ancient as I, that post title is a reference to some TV ads from the 1970s for a brokerage firm. The gag in the ads was that entire rooms of people would stop whatever they were doing, and turn around to listen, whenever they realized a client of the brokerage firm in question was nearby and was about to discuss some advice he had received. It’s not too far from what’s been going on the last few days as Dan Vado, head honcho of SLG (publishers of yours truly) has once again been the cause of much consternation and debate on the internets.<\/p>\n

Here’re<\/a> Dan’s original remarks via Newsarama. If you’re so interested you can get a good wrap-up of the ensuing maelstrom via Dan’s Livejournal page<\/a>. These are of course Dan’s replies to other people’s reactions, but you can easily track back to the original commentary if you so desire.<\/p>\n

I’ve got no burning interest in joining the extended debate going on–a debate which seems frankly to be a classic online “tempest in a teacup.” In fact, I have to admit that, when I first read Dan’s remarks via the Newsarama story, I really didn’t take much note of it; discussion of the financially problematic nature of the creator-owned business model had already been making the rounds<\/a> of late, and what were obviously some off-the-cuff remarks to a highly hypothetical question didn’t strike me as anything either particularly novel or inflamatory. Given, though, that the internets are alive with the sounds of Vado, I’ll just mention two things this jump out at me:<\/p>\n

First, there seems to be a group of folks who have decided that Dan has now revealed himself to be some sort of mustache-twirling money-grubbing soul-stealing corporate comics robber baron. To that, I can say only that I know from personal empirical experience that this is demonstrably false. I’ve had two projects published by SLG. The first, Farewell, Georgia<\/em>, made a modest profit; the second, Midnight Sun<\/em>, has yet to make money. And yet, SLG continues to publish my work. My point isn’t that SLG is some sort of charity, (they’re not–they want to turn a profit, as does every business) but rather that clearly the company’s goals have not been (nor would I wager they’re changing to overnight, as a result of a Q&A at Wondercon) the short-term creative rape and pillage suggested.<\/p>\n

Secondly, just an observation: over at The Beat<\/a>, cartoonist James Kochalka<\/a> comments on his recent, and apparently quite creator-friendly, book deal with publishing giant Random House. James seems like a nice guy (we’ve run into each other once or twice at cons, at CCS<\/a>, etc.), but I think that–aside even from the obvious “apples and oranges” comparison going on–in this case his comment actually buttresses, rather than disproves, Dan’s point. Although not mentioned by either James or Dan (curiously), James Kochalka is in fact one of the many cartoonists who did early work that was published by Slave Labor Graphics–Little Mister Man<\/em> and Magic Boy and Robot Elf<\/em> are both SLG books if I’m getting my facts straight. The fact that now, years later, James could–hypothetically–take characters from those SLG-published books to someone like Random House, and<\/em> that he’d be in a position to do so as an established creator in some part because of<\/em> being published initially by SLG, and yet be able to do so without<\/em> SLG really seeing anything from it, is precisely what Dan seems to be addressing as potentially problematic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For those you not as ancient as I, that post title is a reference to some TV ads from the 1970s for a brokerage firm. The gag in the ads was that entire rooms of people would stop whatever they were doing, and turn around to listen, whenever they realized a client of the brokerage … <\/p>\n

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