Two weeks after the authors of the comics had expressed their dismay at the Angoulême Festival and a few days before the presentation of the Racine Report, which proposes measures to improve the status of creators, the question of the self-publishing, in which some see an alternative to the traditional circuit publishers / distributors.
An obstacle course
Bruno Duhamel, author of Jamais and #Nouveau Contact, knows the subject well since in 2014, he and the lawyer / novelist Isabelle Sivan decided, after all the publishers had refused their album Le voyage d'Abel , to self-publish it . An experience that is more like an obstacle course than a health walk, if we are to believe the testimony that the comic artist gave to 20 Minutes .
Giving up in the face of the publishers' disinterest "would have been to let die a story that we really wanted to tell," recalls Bruno Duhamel. "Isabelle and I therefore created an associative structure to design a print run limited to 1000 copies".
It is a negligible quantity compared to the big machines of the 9th Art (the last Asterix has benefited from a first edition of 5 million copies), but it is enough to allow a title to exist. "We had the hope of selling it on festivals, even if it meant spending ten years there."
Mixed results
In ten months, three quarters of Le Voyage d'Abel's print run out. "Ten months of back-and-forth between the stock (an attic loaned by friends, to Clamart), the home packaging workshop, the Post Office, meetings with bookstores, etc." This first print is now sold out. But orders continue, so the album will soon be reissued by Bamboo, the only publishing house not to have received the project in 2014.
The story is beautiful, but what conclusions does Bruno Duhamel draw from it? "Self-publishing your album is exciting but for the moment it's still complicated," he concedes. Two essential links are missing: distribution and storage. As long as the trucks carrying the books are in the hands of the "big guys", the small publisher and the self-publisher will find it difficult to manage large-scale sales. It will always be dependent on the distributor, or condemned to distribute themselves at trade shows, or at bookstores in their region. They will therefore be limited in quantity. And who says limited quantity says higher price, since printing is an industrial process which costs more on small runs… ”. Not to mention the storage problems, which "still thwart the urge for large print runs".
"We have won nothing personally"
Nevertheless, despite all these hassles, and even with a limited circulation, "at the rate at which" packages "fall among publishers, a self-published author can, if not earn more, win at less as much as with a small or medium publisher. On the other hand, and this is where the rub is, it will be at the cost of weeks, even months of additional work, devoted to manufacturing and distribution. So on arrival, the "gain" is very relative ".
For example, Bruno Duhamel confides that “in absolute terms, we have gained nothing personally. We haven't even reimbursed ourselves for the printing costs. The goal was to generate seed capital, so that we could consider other projects. But if we deduct the printing costs, the album brought in the equivalent of a correct contract with an average publisher (or a bad contract with a large publisher). "
Even if the result seems encouraging, "it must be put in perspective with the 6 to 8 months of full-time work to ensure distribution, therefore without any other income, or free time to create". And yes, whoever embarks on self-publishing becomes de facto publisher. And it's a full-time job that leaves no room for creation.
"The real success of Voyage d'Abel is the visibility it has enjoyed," says Bruno Duhamel. If we have proven one thing, it is that authors and authors can perfectly edit themselves, professionally, and offer an album that holds the spittoon against the production of large publishers. And that is worth gold! ".
What "Abel's Journey" says
In Reclesne, a small village in the heart of France, old Abel lives alone with his dog, his two cows and his sheep. He never left his village. However, all his life, he dreamed of traveling the world, and imagined long journeys. In September, and despite his age, Abel decided to go to Ethiopia ...
In bookstores on March 4, 2020 - 64 pages, 14.90 euros
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