Okay, let’s have us a little talk about professionalism in comics, particularly within the indie comics scene.

Now, a lot of people working within indie comics have started out working on their own. Often, through sheer necessity, they will write, draw, colour, letter and prepress their entire comic themselves. This tends to lead to some fairly unique ways of working, which is all well and good, we all have our own ways of doing things, and that’s fine.

However, the problem comes when you want to take a step up and hire a professional freelancer to work on your book in some capacity. This is when you really need to be aware that there are set ways of doing things within the industry. There are ways that professional artists, colourists, letters, etc work…and they generally work in these ways for two reasons: 1) It makes it easier to collaborate with other people if everyone is working in the same general way; and 2) They have found through many years of work that it is quicker and easier to work that way and this will be built into their quote. That last part is VERY important, they know how much their time is worth, and their quote will be built around working in a very familiar and set way, and any change to that is going to seriously cut into the value of the project for them.

So, when you are considering hiring a freelancer to work on your project, even if you’re used to working in your own unique ways, it is vitally important that you familiarise yourself with the general way that people within the industry work. You need to fit in with that. You cannot expect professional freelancers to fit into your individual way of working.