Thanks for your interest
in submitting to Indie Voices!
Hi, comic creator! Thanks for considering submitting your recent masterpiece to INDIE VOICES!
If we haven't been acquainted yet, my name is John Yeo Jr – I’m the co-owner of Screaming Monkey Comics. I’ve also been self-publishing comics and novels for a few years now. For some time now, I’ve been thinking about a way to bring these two passions together – and INDIE VOICES is the result. One of the most challenging parts of creating your own comic is to convince comic stores to put it on their shelves. With this project, I believe we can help each other.
INDIE VOICES is not a distributor like Lunar or Random House – it is an initiative of our retail store to shine a light on independently published comic books in a way that minimizes any risk for both us and the creators. Here’s how it works.
Quick disclaimer before we go on! In the sample illustratons below, I used images from other independent comics on the market for illustrative purposes to show off what our magazine will look like. These comics are not affiliated with us in any way, the credits and descriptions connected to them may not be accurate, and they are not currently scheduled to be included in a future copy of this catalog. This is just so you can see what your book would look like in our catalog. (By the way, if you ARE the creator of any of these books, get in touch with us because I liked your book and you'd make a swell addition to the real catalog.) Okay, on we go!
If we accept your comic, we're offering the following:
• Inclusion in the next monthly issue of Indie Voices. (We offer half page ads, full page ads, or double page ads.)
• After that first month, you would have inclusion in two additional monthly issues of Indie Voices in the "Still Available" section.
• Your comic will be listed on our website's Indie Voices sub-page, where customers can purchase a copy and we'll ship it out to them. We'll post all the information contained in the catalog regarding your book, as well as a few interior pages of artwork.
HALF PAGE ADS
With a Half Page ad, your book will get a prominent
listing in the catalog where customers can see your
cover and the book's information.
• Fee for inclusion: 10 copies of your book. You receive $1.50/$3.00 for each copy sold.
• The Half Page Ad will be in Indie Voices for one issue.
• Your book will be added to the "Still Available" section for the next two issues. If we purchase additional copies of your book, the inclusion in the "Still Available" book will be extended. During this time, the book will also remain on our website's shopping cart.
• After three months, any unsold books left from your original supply will be returned to you in the same condition we received them in.
Here's the good part. We are not charging any money up front for inclusion in Indie Voices.
Back before we had established comic book stores in every town, back before the direct market came into existence, back in a time we called the 1970s or earlier --- comics were given to dealers on a more-or-less consignment basis. Dealers got comics every week at no charge from the publishers. If you sold a copy, the publisher's portion was sent back to them and the dealer kept the rest of the money as their profit. The copies that didn't sell were either destroyed or returned to the publisher.
Today's Direct Market is more efficient in many ways -- but this earlier method would still work on a smaller scale. Such as representing independently created comics.
The business model we're proposing is that you send us 10 copies of your new book for us to
represent for three months. If your books' cover price is under $9 or less, we'll keep $1.50 of each copy sold. If your books' cover price is $10 or more, we'll keep $3.00 of each copy sold.
This money will help us keep Indie Voices running with physical catalogs.
At the beginning of each month, we'll send you the money for all books you've sold that month.
At the end of three months, any copies that we couldn't sell will be returned to you.
In addition, if we sell all copies of your book before that three months is over and we think there's a good chance we'll sell more, we'll offer to buy more copies at a wholesale cost. (In most cases, 50% of the cover price paid up front.) Then we'll extend your presence in the catalog and on the website for a little bit longer..
FULL PAGE ADS
With a Full Page ad, your book will get a prominent
listing in the catalog where customers can see your
cover and the book's information. Two thumbnails of your interior pages will also be shown on the page.
• Fee for inclusion: 10 copies of your book. We keep 100% of the profits from the sales of the first two books. You receive $1.50/$3.00 for each copy sold after that.
• The Full Page Ad will be in Indie Voices for one issue.
• Your book will be added to the "Still Available" section for the next two issues. If we purchase additional copies of your book, the inclusion in the "Still Available" book will be extended. During this time, the book will also remain on our website's shopping cart.
• After three months, any unsold books left from your original supply will be returned to you in the same condition we received them in.
DOUBLE PAGE ADS
With a Double Page ad, your book will gets the best treatment. A prominent listing in the catalog where customers can see your cover and the book's information - and four interior pages were readers can really get a good luck at what they'd be buying.
• Fee for inclusion: 10 copies of your book. We keep 100% of the profits from the sales of the first four books. You receive $1.50/$3.00 for each copy sold after that.
• The Double Page Ad will be in Indie Voices for one issue.
• Your book will be added to the "Still Available" section for the next two issues. If we purchase additional copies of your book, the inclusion in the "Still Available" book will be extended. During this time, the book will also remain on our website's shopping cart.
• After three months, any unsold books left from your original supply will be returned to you in the same condition we received them in.
STILL AVAILABLE
SECTION
Your book will be included in Indie Voices for
three monthly issues. The first month will be
that Half-Page, Full-Page or Double-Page ad
we illustrated above.
For the second and third month, your book
will be moved to the "Still Available" section
at the rear of the catalog. (It's presence on the
website will stay the same.) After three months, your book will be removed from the catalog to make room for newer titles.
Unless......
....we sold out of the copies you gave us, and we made an offer to purchase more copies from you. If that happens, we'll extend your listing in the catalog's "Still Available" section and on the website.
We'll keep doing this until two months goes by
without selling ANY of your books, or you just don't have any more to offer us. But by that time, you should have another masterpiece to offer to the world anyway!
And that’s the grand plan. If this really takes off, perhaps we could distribute these catalogs at other stores. We could possibly set up booths at local cons. Maybe you have an idea that we haven’t thought of yet.
Want to join us on this journey? Here's how you get started:
STEP ONE:
Send us an e-mail to screamerboy23@hotmail.com (please put INDIE VOICES SUBMISSION in the subject line) and tell us a little bit about your book. Cut and paste this questionaire to your e-mail and send it back to us with these questions answered:
1. Your name and contact information
(Mailing address, e-mail, phone, etc.)
2. Your preference for which ad you get
(Are you wanting a Half Page, Full Page or Double Page ad?)
3. Full title of book (including issue number, if this applies)
4. Writer(s)
5. Illustrator(s)
6. Cover artist(s)
7. Type of comic (Standard size, Magazine, Digest, Trade Paperback, other?)
8. Is your book full color, black & white, or black & white with one color?
9. Retail cost of your book
10. How may pages is your book?
11. Appropriate for who? All Ages, Teens, Teens+, Mature, Adult/NSFW
12. Synopsis of your book in 50 - 75 words.
13. What is your book's genre(s)? Super-Hero, Action, western, fantasy,
romance, pin-up, sourcebook, horror, humor, etc....
14. Publisher name
15. Is this a one-shot, part of a mini-series, or intended to be an ongoing series?
16. If this is NOT the first issue of a series, are the earlier books still available?
17. Do you have a website / social media? (When your books sell, we'll let the buyers know how to find more things you offer.)
18. What will be the retail price of your book?
Also, don't forget to include an attachment of your cover and four interior pages of your book. These images will be what we use in the catalog and on the website, so choose what you think will grab attention the most!
STEP TWO:
Give us about a week to take a look at it. I will respond to every submission - so if you don't hear from me in over a week, there's a strong chance it might have gone to spam, so just contact me directly and I'll see if I can locate it.
If this is a book we wouldn't be interested in carrying, we'll give you our reasons why - we may not be interested in this book, but we'd want your next book to be better!
STEP THREE:
If we're interested in seeing more, we'll ask you to send one non-returnable copy of your book to:
SCREAMING MONKEY COMICS
Indie Voices Dept.
11 Ridge Road
Munster, IN 46321
I'll try to respond to you within two weeks of receipt. After we review your submission, we'll contact you by e-mail to let you down gently, or contact you directly to discuss adding you to the next issue of INDIE VOICES!
STEP FOUR:
Once we agree on the initial consignment arrangement, you'll send us nine more copies of your book and we'll get to work on selling them for you!
Thanks for your time! Now I'm sure you probably have some more questions.
Keep scrolling down and see if any of them are answered by our list of....
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
IF YOU DON'T ACCEPT MY BOOK, CAN I GET IT BACK?
In general, no. It's part of the submission process, I'm sure you've been there, it's part of the gamble. However, I'll be honest, if we get to the phase where I'm asking you to SEND a submission copy, you're probably already in the door.
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE REASONS YOU MIGHT NOT ACCEPT MY BOOK?
We're here to help promote comics, not to judge you on your writing and artistic skill, or whatever genre you want to work in. But there are several reasons why we might pass on your book. There's no way to make an all inclusive list, but here are some of the reasons:
• Unprofessionally printed. Your book should at least look like it belongs on a comic book stand with other books. You should strive to have your book produced by a competent printer. A comic photocopied on one sheet pages and stapled together like a high school book report isn't going to cut it.
• Extremely amateurish effort. We're talking about extreme examples, such as word balloons with such poorly written letters that the dialogue is indecipherable, or full pages that looks like it was done with crayons in five minutes, or books with pages that are clearly out of order.
Look, I don't want to discourage anyone from adding artwork to the world, but we do have a good sense of what would sell and what would be ....well, embarrassing. If we don't think your book is ready for an audience, I'll at least try to tell you what you can improve on before your next submission.
• Books with a price point that's not competitive with similar books. No one is going to pay $15 for a 20-page black and white digest-sized comic. Your uncle, maybe. And that was just because he's trying to make peace with your mom after getting trashed at last year's Christmas party. But not someone who's never heard of you before. Keep your expectations reasonable.
• We believe in books for all tastes, ranges and ages. But books that promote hate, contain excessive amounts of graphic gore and sexual themes just for the sake of shock value might get turned down. See the section below on NSFW themes for a bit more clarification.
• Use of copyrighted characters. I know it's tempting to sell a book by creating a cover featuring your original white-haired hot female character in a Black Cat costume and simply defend it by saying "Hey, it's not Black Cat.....it's my original character in a Black Cat costume. With her boobs hanging out." It's not fooling anyone. Please don't submit any books featuring characters that don't belong to you, we don't want to be in the middle of any issues if that character's owner starts complaining.
That's just a general list of some of the bigger issues we'd like you to avoid.
If your book isn't accepted, we'll try to give you a clear reason for our decision.
DO YOU ACCEPT COMICS FEATURING A. I. ARTWORK?
There are a lot of mixed emotions across the spectrum about A.I. artwork. Speaking personally for myself and no one else affiliated with our company, I feel that no legitimate professional publisher should be using A. I. artwork - there's too many good working artists out there who will do the job a hundred times better than any computer ever could.
As a counterpoint, I also feel that a self-published, amateur artist who has trouble selling more than fifty copies of their books shouldn't be held to the same standards of an organization who can afford to pay a professional artist. If you're comfortable with any backlash that you might receive for using A.I. art (and there will be) I respect that.
My current opinion is that we will accept comics used with A.I. assistance as long as your book specifically acknowledges if it did. Using it is one thing, not disclosing the fact is quite another. Be honest with us and your readers about it, please.
DO YOU ACCEPT COMICS FEATURING NSFW THEMES?
Yes, depending on the comic. There's a lot of great graphic novels out there tackling adult themes, and the average reader of comics these days are adults anyway. But there's a big difference between books that would get an "R" rating (which we'll carry) and a book that contains absolutely stomach churning graphic depictions of violence, torture, sexual imagery. (which we'll judge each on a case by case basis.)
In general, if we get to the point where we ask you to send us a submission book, we've probably already decided that the subject matter is acceptable to us anyway.
DO I NEED A PUBLISHER NAME?
Having a publisher name does make you look more professional, but it's not required.
DO YOU EXPECT MY BOOK TO BE LISTED EXCLUSIVELY WITH INDIE VOICES?
No. This is not an exclusive arrangement, please feel free to list your books anywhere that also offers comics, including your own personal website and social media feeds. We are a retail store that wants to put your books on the shelf - but we're not asking that we're the ONLY place to find your books.
DOES MY BOOK NEED TO HAVE A PRICE ON THE COVER?
While it's recommended, this is also not a requirement for us to carry. But we should have a clear idea of what the retail price is so we can let potential customers know!
DOES MY COMIC NEED TO BE IN COLOR, OR CAN IT BE BLACK & WHITE?
Your choice. Color books DO sell better. But they're also more expensive to print - and there's a lot of very amazing black and white books on the market. That's a personal choice.
WILL MY WEBSITE NAME BE LISTED IN THE INDIE VOICES CATALOG?
No. We're trying to sell your books for you - and listing your website in our catalog may guide readers to your website instead of ours. However, if you have a website or social media, you should really include it somewhere inside your book. And on that note.....
IF I GAVE YOU BOOKMARKS, FLIERS or OTHER PROMOTIONAL GOODIES WITH MY WEBSITE and SOCIAL MEDIA INFORMATION, WILL YOU MAIL THAT TO BUYERS WHEN YOU SHIP OUT MY COMIC?
Yes, that we'll happily do! And even if you don't have any goodies to hand out to them, we'll still give them a copy of the most recent issue of INDIE VOICES as well as a thank you letter that will share any contact information you want us to share with them (website, social media, instragram name, etc.) Any promotional materials you give us that are left over at the end of your books' listing will be returned.
ONCE AGAIN, HOW DO I GET PAID, AND HOW OFTEN DO I GET PAID?
We can use either PayPal or Zelle. If you live locally, I'm sure we can pay you in cash. We will pay for any sold books that you have the first week of every month. If we need to replenish copies of your books, we'll buy them at that time too.
WILL MY COMIC BOOK BE ON YOUR COMIC BOOK RACK?
While this isn't part of the offer, our plan is to try and keep the three most recent additions to Indie Voices on our INDEPENDENT COMICS rack in the store, as well as on-line. Certain titles (such as small digest sized books, trade paperbacks or NSFW titles) may just be available from the webstore only.
COULD YOU EXPLAIN AGAIN THAT SMALL BIT ABOUT KEEPING 100% OF THE PROFITS OF SOME OF MY BOOKS IF I ASK FOR A LARGER AD?
Sure! Obviously, a full page ad or a double-page ad will catch more attention from a reader.
Rather than charge a fee of $10 - $20 for the larger ad spot, we're opting to just take it out of the sales of your book.
So let's assume you are giving us ten copies of a book, and each book has a cover price of $5.00. That's $50 in potential sales if I did my math correctly.
With a normal half-page ad, we would keep $1.50 for every book sold. If you sold all ten books, you would get $35.
With a full-page ad, we would keep the profits from the sales of the first two books. Instead of charging you for ad space, we'll use the sales of your first two books to pay for the better ad.
You would get $1.50 for each of the remaining 8 books that you sell.
With the double page ad, we would keep the profits from the sales of the first four books.
You would get $1.50 for each of the remaining 6 books that you sell.
What happens if you don't sell enough books to even cover what would have been our
advertising fee? Don't worry about it, we'll just consider it a loss on our end. If your book is in our catalog, we chose to place it because we felt it would have an audience. But if it doesn't work out, you'll still get your unsold copies back and you won't have to pay for the ad that ultimately went nowhere.
Please contact me if there's any other questions about our ad offers!
WHAT IF YOU DON'T HAVE ENOUGH BOOKS TO FILL OUT THE NEW
INDIE VOICES EVERY MONTH?
It might happen, especially in the early days. INDIE VOICES is planned to be a humble
20-page catalog - there's going to be room for about 12 - 16 new releases every month. If we're short on new entries, the double page ad you have in March might re-appear as a full page ad in the next issue. There's no additional charge to you for remaining in the main portion of the book.
On that note, this scenario might happen as well.....let's say that you request a Full Page Ad.
If we don't have enough entries for a Double Page Ad and we really, really dig your book, you might get upgraded to that larger listing. You'll still only owe us what was agreed to with the Full Page Ad.
WHEN DO I GET PAID?
Any money we owe you will be paid out the first Monday of each calendar month. If we want to replenish our supply with additional copies of your book at this time, it will no longer be on
consignment. We'll just pay you 50% of the cover price up front of the books we order.
IN WHAT ORDER WILL OUR BOOKS BE LISTED ON THE WEBSITE?
Be default, books will be listed in the order they were added to the website - newest titles first. But site visitors can adjust the settings to display them in alphabetical order or by price.
WHO PAYS FOR THE SHIPPING OF THE BOOKS?
• For the submission copy and the initial batch of 10 books you send to us, you pay shipping.
• To purchase copies of the book and having it shipped to the buyer, the buyer pays.
• To return unsold copies to you (or to purchase a replenishment batch of books) we will pay.
HOW ARE YOU PAYING FOR THE PRINTING OF INDIE VOICES?
Proceeds that we earn from our portion of sold books each month is used to pay for the printing costs of Indie Voices.
WHAT IF I HAVE VARIANT COVERS FOR THE SAME BOOK?
People love variants, especially if they look awesome. If you have a book with variant covers, we'll definitely consider including all options for the customer to choose.
HOW WILL YOU DISTRIBUTE INDIE VOICES SO CUSTOMERS CAN SEE IT?
They will be available at the Screaming Monkey Comics retail store for customers to pick up. We'll also include a copy to every person who purchases a book from Indie Voices. If this project takes off, we'll explore other avenues such as distributing them in other comic stores, opening tables at small cons, and so forth.
MY COMIC IS GOING TO BE AWESOME! BUT IT WON'T BE FINISHED FOR ANOTHER FIVE MONTHS.
Good luck, and keep working at it! However, submitting what you have so far would be terribly premature. If the book isn't printed and ready to be in our hands, please hold off submitting it until the book is ready to go.
MY COMIC WAS SOLD ON KICKSTARTER A YEAR AGO, SO IT'S NOT REALLY BRAND NEW. WOULD YOU STILL BE INTERESTED IN CARRYING IT?
Sure. In all likelihood, your book will probably be new to the majority of people who might see it on our website. It may not be brand new on the market, but the whole point is getting your comic promoted as widely as you can. This is just another way for you to do just that.
MY COMIC IS ACTUALLY A 120 PAGE HARDCOVER TRADE PAPERBACK.
DO I HAVE TO SUBMIT A NON-RETURNABLE COPY TO YOU? DO I HAVE TO MAIL TEN COPIES TO YOU?
We will be more flexible on our terms when you start getting into trade paperbacks. We'll try to skip the submission copy stage entirely and just make a decision based on your images and product description - and revise our agreement so we'll just have a couple of copies on hand.
I ACTUALLY DON'T HAVE A COMIC TO SELL. I CREATED A 3-D PRINTED STATUE OF VENOM THAT I HAND PAINTED. WILL YOU SELL THAT?
You think I'm kidding. That's actually a legitimate question I recently got. First of all, Venom is a copyrighted character. We are a retail store that has a cozy relationship with Marvel Comics that would be jeapordized by offering unlicensed products. Your work belongs on Etsy, Craigslist or perhaps that sketchy flea market down the street.
But even ignoring the copyright infringment issues, for now - we're focusing on independently made comic books --- not independently made figures, toys, statues, crafts, games and so on.
WHAT ABOUT MY ORIGINAL NOVEL, OR TEXT-HEAVY FANZINE?
We're a comic book store.....but not a book store. In general, customers will not be coming to our store and to our site to look for a great new sci-fi epic, a fantasy novel, self-help books or coffee table books featuring photographs of tasteful nudes.
As this project develops, we may later begin considering carrying magazines and fanzines.
But for the time being, we're going to pick the indie comie book lane and stay within it.
And that's basically it! Thanks for your time - now if you still want to share your book with us (or if you have additional questions) please contact us today!
Keep being creative, you guys!
John Yeo Jr
Screaming Monkey Comics