The Taste of Freedom

I simply had to write about a self-publishing event Lisa and I attended last week in Seville

I’ll come back to my Matriarchy versus Patriarchy series shortly, but this week I simply had to write about a self-publishing event Lisa and I attended last week in Seville.

And to encourage my readers who are also writers to visit the UK and Irish equivalents:

The UK event is in London 25 to 26^th June. https://selfpublishingformula.com/tag/james-blatch

The Irish event is March 2026 near Shannon. https://irelandspublishingshow.com/pages/about-us

The Spanish event we went to was the Global Publishing Summit in Seville May 1-2, and it was absolutely brilliant. Authors and organisers were so kind and generous with their time. We were both quite moved.

Although it is primarily aimed at writers of text – fiction and non-fiction – the same principles also apply to graphic novels.

So we found it useful for our various Kickstarters: Sha Vol One: The Shadow One and Ragtime Soldier, recently successfully completed. And coming soon: American Reaper and Hellbreaker.

Talks included how to optimise Facebook ads, writing elevator pitches, how to make AI work for you, merchandising and branding, and honing your writer skills. Tony Lee, well known to many of us in comics, is now a very successful independent author and publisher.

He gave a most informative talk on ‘The Secrets of Writing to Market in a Global Economy’.

Another fantastic talk was by Enrique Parrilla, the summit organiser, and CEO of Lantia Publishing, who talked about how to pitch your ideas to producers and studios. I was very interested to hear how different the European industry is to the US film industry, notably in terms of the subsidies that are available in the EU.

Translations are changing rapidly thanks to AI. Scribe Shadow, DeepL and Claude were all discussed in detail. For now, a human editor is still necessary to ensure there are no awkward translations, and care and thought has to go into cultural references and jokes, sometimes even to the point of cutting out lines of text.

One of the keys to self-publishing success is to have assistants to do the stuff that’s not to your liking. For example, the Social media and marketing side. Probably locally recruited and trained, rather than VA’s hired via the internet. The reason for this being that often VA’s who advertise their skills as social media gurus are often not actually what you want. The personality and the attitude is so important. So local connections are ideal, if you can find them.

All this is tremendously valuable and applicable to graphic novels.

This was the second self-publishing event we attended. The first was Mark Dawson’s in London, just before Covid lockdown. Both events were a breath of fresh air. Absolute beginners and their questions were treated with the same kindness and respect as hard-boiled vets. There was an honesty and an openness about the industry and its mistakes that I found so refreshing. Lisa and I both felt this was ‘our tribe’ and hope to go to the event next year, too.

The reason I stress this is because that has so often not been my experience at comic events which is one reason why I so rarely go. I’ve been on the receiving end of too many snide comments, so much macho competitiveness, so many curved ball insults, or cold indifference by organisers, that I began dreading them. I know many other well-known creators feel the same way.

Self-publishing events are so very different. I came away feeling great, rather than saying to Lisa, ‘I am never going to that fucking event again.’

The one notable comic exception I always find is Scotland, and that’s because it’s the true home of UK popular culture. And it’s why I was so pleased to do Ragtime Soldier, with an all-Scottish team. This actually includes me, as a recent DNA test has me down as a surprising 25% Scottish approx. Yeah, despite my very English accent.

But even on Ragtime Soldier we had a well known 2000AD writer being his usual unpleasant self and trying to rain on our parade. I always ignore him because he’s been hounding me for years on social media. I think he prides himself on ‘creator-baiting’, but other members of the team were noticeably upset – which is what he wanted, of course.

Fortunately, the Kickstarter – the brainchild of Scottish Comic Scene – hit our target so all was well. Doubtless that will be his cue for more snide comments.

But it caused me to reflect on why he did this. Now you’re probably going to say it’s just because he’s a fucked-up individual, but I’m not so sure. I think there’s redemption – even for him. You may think this is hopelessly naïve, but I believe he’s the end-product of working in sweatshop conditions in the comic industry, which is so screwed up thanks to the short-sighted policies of Rebellion and others that I’ve described in past blogs.

There were similar rather macho, bullish, very successful writers at GPS. So when I came across one I thought, ‘Oh, God. He’s going to be just like that 2000AD writer: full of piss and vinegar.’

Not so.

Not so.

He was so kind, so helpful, so generous with his time, endlessly answering complex questions from the audience and conversing with them later. Nothing was too much trouble for him.

And yet he was a dead ringer for all the highly-competitive, aggressive creatives I used to come across at comic events that made them such a chore for me, rather than the joy they should be.

So what was the difference?

The GPS writer was free.

He was master of his own destiny.

So he was happy.

And he wanted to make everyone who attended the event happy. He wanted to put something back.

Okay, he was making a ton of money – six figures – which is not uncommon in the self publishing world, but, from my observation in the comic world, that doesn’t usually make his equivalent especially happy.

So I would encourage that 2000AD writer and other creatives to go down the independent publishing route which is so much better for our well-being, and our wallets, and, who knows, maybe he’ll be a reformed character?!

Above all, it’s better for your soul, your Muse – call it what you will.

We’ve proved with Ragtime Soldier that the whole cost of creating can be done with pledges, so why do we need the comic sweatshops of yesteryear? They’re so last century.

That sense of freedom is something I’ve always jealously held onto, despite working for the sweatshop until recent years. It’s to do with my Muse, as I explain in my book Pageturners, It’s why I – or possibly my Muse – still bristles at a memory from that dark past, when, to my astonishment, one of the Kingsley brothers tried ordering me around at San Diego Comic Con. What the fuck?! I’m a freelance. I take orders from no-one.

That said, there are self-imposed sweatshops that many of the writers at the summit had. When they talked about writing a book a month I did a double-take. And one female journalist in the audience was concerned it was a male testosterone thing. Yeah, there are female writers who have those kinds of self-imposed punishing schedules – Agatha Christie knocked out a lot of her books (Miss Marple comes to mind) and it shows – but generally speaking it’s a male thing.

I’ll come back to that in my next post because it’s so relevant to comics. Thus, the ultimate sweatshop writer, Tom Tully, once introduced himself to Kevin O’Neill with the words, ‘My name is Tom Tully, and I earn more money than the Prime Minister.’ Pre-Blair, of course.

But one prolific writer – Benedict Brown – had the most valuable advice I took away from GPS: Don’t try and do it all. So, if it doesn’t suit you, don’t be on Instagram, Facebook, X, Tiktok, and the rest. Don’t think you have to do audiobooks, translations, large print, get into libraries, have a podcast.

Do what’s right for you.

Because you’re free.

There’s no sweatshop boss to tell you what to do. You are master of your own destiny.

And that’s really what I took away from GPS – the Taste of Freedom.

I invite you to try it. It’s sweet.