I feel deeply sad and conflicted seeing how many of my friends in the comics and publishing industry are badly affected by the Pandemic, whilst discovering that it's a perfectly fine time to run a Kickstarter, and that I occupy a niche that is (so far) well protected

A large part of that conflict is that lack of innovation and flexibility in the publishing industry has been a huge fustration to me for years. Avatar were ahead of the curve when they paid me to draw Freakangels as a webcomic, and then... no one really followed...

After that, I had an impossible time convincing a publisher that the online model could be sustainable with the right approach, that the Freakangels experiment was worth trying again with a new title. I lost years trying, and eventually gave up & did it myself.

Meanwhile, huge webcomic platforms appeared with titles that get millions of readers. And now, Freakangels & other webcomics are getting animated adaptations, and the comic I had to put online myself is making substantial money on Kickstarter with sales of just a few hundred.

It's not like this is enough to keep me afloat without a day job. I didn't have the personal clout or resources to build The Firelight Isle into what it could have been with the right backing. But my day job is protected because it's for a comic that sells subscriptions online.

I'm fine in the midst of all of this, & I'm feeling guilty for it.

But then I remember I've been going blue in the face for years telling people in trad publishing that the model is fragile, inefficient & archaic & there's a lot of promise in online models.

And it's not not like online publishing is a wonderland. It's capricious, hard work, and it NEEDS things like experienced editors, business knowhow, risk management, things to take the burden of logistics off creators, the relative safety of collectives that can pay page rates...

But even without this crisis, trad publishing desperately needs to be more nimble, more flexible, it needs more creative freedom and less risk aversion, it needs pay structures that mean that a broader range of audience sizes can lead to sustainable success.

10 years ago would have been the right time for traditional publishing models to start evolving (instead of just getting replaced slowly without realising that were being replaced). Now we're stuck with this mess and we've got to find a solution suddenly....

This is turning into a big "I told you so", but I had no idea a pandemic was coming & I have no idea what to do. I just feel like if I'd met the right person or been more convincing, I could have contributed something back then that might now be helping people other than just me.